Colin Mosier investigates sewage debris on Wolfe Island. Photo courtesy of The Kingston Whig-Standard.

We are just two months into the year 2010 and the City of Kingston has dumped the equivalent of 58 Olympic-sized swimming pools of sewage into Lake Ontario. The City has bypassed 29,526 m ³ from pumping stations (that’s about 11 pools, if you’re keeping track) and 118,747 m ³ from combined sewer outfalls (47 pools).

The data is on the City’s website if you want to review it. A comparison to previous years suggests that Kingston may be on its way to one its worst sewage pollution years yet. Since other cities do not publish similar information, it is hard to tell if the city is doing better or worse than its neighbours.

We do know that other cities with combined sewer systems have struggled to keep up with the unusually mild and wet winter. The City of Niagara Falls was one of several that pumped sewage into local waters to prevent backlogs in people’s basements during massive January rains.

These ailing, aging sewage systems are just one of the driving forces behind a new regulation from the Canadian Government. The regulation will replace the general prohibition against polluting fish habitat with a very lengthy technical set of rules about what Canadian sewage treatment plant operators can and cannot do.

A preview of the 70-plus page regulation is available online. We expect the official public consultation period begin later this month.

The new regulation could be good if it maintains the existing rule that no one can harm fish or fish habitat. Our communities will be better of if it goes beyond that general prohibition to provide technical guidance about how sewage treatment plant operators can make sure that bacteria, pharmaceuticals and other sewage by-products do not harm us, the environment, or our access to water.

If the regulation eliminates the prohibition, then the 70-plus pages of dense technical language could be a cover for a devastating rollback to an important environmental law. If the regulation allows sewage treatment plants to continue to pollute with impunity for another generation, then it will also fail our communities. (more…)