Fecal Gate begs bigger questions

By SUSAN SHERRING

Sometimes, you just have to use your head.

Give it a good shake, and do what you think is right.

You're allowed to think, even if you're a City of Ottawa employee.

In fact, it's encouraged.

And just because your job description doesn't say you should report the fact that 960,000 cubic metres of sewage gushed into the Ottawa River because heavy rainfall caused a gate to jam, you probably should anyway.

It seems Fecal Gate may not be a case of covering up a controversy after all, though apparently it's too soon to say so definitively.

At this point, all signs point to a group of employees simply just not realizing the jammed gate, and human fecal matter polluting the waters and beach of Petrie Island, was something that should be reported up the line.

It seems there wasn't anything written down advising employees to report such a major incident.

In city hall speak, it means there was no "protocol."

Following a meeting yesterday with the Three East-End Amigos, Innes Coun. Rainer Bloess, Orleans Coun. Bob Monette and Cumberland Coun. Rob Jellett, Mayor Larry O'Brien and senior city staff, city manager Kent Kirkpatrick told the media the incident is under investigation.

A preliminary look at the situation now suggests it's just a case of city employees doing their job, not knowingly covering up anything at all.

It turns out that frontline workers discovered the jammed gate during a regular maintenance inspection. They did what they were supposed to do and reported it verbally to the Ministry of the Environment.

The gate was fixed immediately, problem solved.

Except, of course, that no one but a handful of unidentified workers knew piles of poop were floating in the Ottawa River.

That's not good, to put it mildly.

And while "protocols" have now been put in place to ensure this never happens again, that's not very comforting.

Just how likely is it that there will be record-setting rainfall, the Keefer Gate will jam, and that 960,000 cubic metres of human waste will leak into the Ottawa River again?

Not very, in case you didn't realize that was a rhetorical question.

As everyone recognizes now, city staff from the bottom up need to use a little common sense when they're at work.

While the Ministry of the Environment was advised in August 2006, for some reason it wasn't until April 2007 that the MOE asked for a written report.

(This time gap would seem to suggest that there are employees within the MOE who also need to give their head a shake.)

And it of course begs the question, as one city councillor joked out loud, just how much human fecal matter needs to be dumped into the Ottawa River before some alarm bells start going off at the provincial level.

(Hey, Ottawa-Orleans MPP Phil McNeely, if you love Petrie, maybe you'd like to ask your provincial bureaucracy who was asleep at the switch?)

It was actually the province that received the first written report on the overflows, and city council and senior staff remained in the dark.

It wasn't until last month that the events of 2006 and their serious ramifications began to come to light.

Unfortunately, things move slowly at city hall, despite the severity of this incident. Even senior management were slow to inform each other when they found out. And when Kirkpatrick was first alerted to the problem, he didn't think to give O'Brien or his office an immediate heads-up.

Kirkpatrick said it will take several weeks before he'll have all the information they're looking for.

But perhaps even more importantly, Kirkpatrick realizes there's an opportunity here to get a message out to the entire bureaucracy.

You've got to think.

You've got to use common sense.

If you see a problem, it's not enough just to solve it.

Use your head.

SUSAN SHERRING IS THE SUN'S MUNICIPAL AFFAIRS COLUMNIST.

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