Sewer overflow backwash

City manager investigating why incident not reported

Ottawa's city manager says he is not out to fire anyone over the inadvertent release of 960,000 cubic metres of sewage and human waste into the Ottawa River in 2006. He just wants to know why it took members of city council two years to find out about it.

City manager Kent Kirkpatrick said yesterday that his investigation of why the August 2006 incident was not reported to senior staff members immediately after the discovery is continuing, but at this point he doesn't foresee any city employee being fired.

GATE MALFUNCTION

"I will rule out anyone losing their job over this," said Kirkpatrick.

On Aug. 15, 2006, a city maintenance worker discovered that a sewer overflow gate at the intersection of Keefer St. and River Lane had jammed and soon learned that almost one million cubic metres of raw sewage had been dumped into the Ottawa River.

It was around the same time the beach at Petrie Island downstream was closed for several days because of high levels of fecal matter found in the water.

The reason for the high levels of raw sewage at the beach was only recently made public.

Kirkpatrick said he is also concerned that the city's Public Health branch wasn't contacted about the incident and only found out last month along with most of the senior city managers and directors.

"We are trying to get a better understanding of what happened," said Kirkpatrick, who plans to discuss the matter at the next executive management meeting. "Managers should have understood it (the information) was relevant. It was an error in judgement."

The city manager said at the time of the incident the city had no clear protocol in place to escalate the communication of the accident to senior levels of staff, but did suggest it's regrettable it took two years before the information reached his desk.

"The significant overflow is something that should have been reported to council," said Kirkpatrick.

Although the provincial environment ministry was notified verbally of the accident a few days after the discovery of the faulty gate, the ministry didn't request a formal report until a year later.

The city is currently in the process of implementing protocols that will bring similar events to the attention of the appropriate senior levels of staff.

OVERFLOW TIMELINE

- July 31 to August 3, 2006: City received 113 mm of rain.

- Aug. 1: City sewer at intersection of Keefer St. and River Lane began to overflow and continued until Aug. 15 due to jammed sewer gate.

- Aug. 15: City staff discovered flow was still present in overflow sewer, which indicated a malfunction. Faulty gate is fixed. The Ministry of Environment is notified a few days later.

- March/April 2007: In assembling the data for the 2006 Summary Combined Sewer Overflow Report, staff became aware of the volume of sewage overflow from the Keefer regulator incident in Aug. 2006.

- April 23, 2007: City and MOE staff discussed the Keefer regulator overflow incident.

- May 16, 2007: City staff submitted a report to MOE detailing the events surrounding the August 2006 Keefer overflow situation. The report was submitted by the program manager of wastewater collection with copies to the manager of wastewater and drainage and senior engineer of water resources.

- May 23, 2007: City staff submitted the first such annual 2006 Combined Sewer System Overflows report to MOE.

- April 2, 2008: City staff (Infrastructure Services and Ottawa Public Health), in preparation for presentation surrounding the 2007 Beaches Report, first identified the likely link of prolonged discharge from Keefer and extended Petrie Island Beach closure.

- May 20, 2008: Memo to mayor and members of council regarding impact of August 2006 sewer overflows on Petrie Island Beach closure.

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