On March 15, 2010, council got down to a crappy and complex business in front of approximately 10 people. Crappy because council received the 2009 Water Pollution Control Plant (WPCP) Annual Report dealing with everything that Brightonians flush down their toilets and sinks; complex because the report is full of tables with difficult-to-comprehend numbers.

Public Works staff reported that the 2009 WPCP report indicated an “extremely good performance.” To determine what an “extremely good performance” looks like, I crunched numbers from Table IX of the report. By my calculations Brighton’s “extremely good performance” caused 7.7 metric tonnes (MT) of suspended solids (that’s all the very fine left-over bits of toilet paper, waste and everything else you flush down your toilet), 8.6 MT of ammonia, 11.7 MT of nitrogen and 0.2 MT of phosphorous to be dumped into Presqu’ile Bay in just one year.

That’s right. An “extremely good performance” means Brighton dumped 28.2 MT of pollutants into our bay.

Is Dumping 28.2 MT of Pollutants into the bay illegal or wrong? Even though subsection 36(3) of Canada’s Fisheries Act states, in summary, that no person shall deposit a deleterious substance into waters frequented by fish, subsection 36(4) states, in summary, that subsection 36(3) is not contravened when the depositing is of a type and quantity allowed by a permit.

Because it has Ministry of Environment permits, WPCP pollution of the bay is legal. But you can be sure that if you dumped even one 50-kilogram bag of ammonia into the bay, you would probably be charged under the Fisheries Act. Whether it is you or the WPCP polluting the bay, its negative impact on fish, plants and animals will be the same. By this test, WPCP pollution of the bay is wrong.

Who cares? Remember that diagram with arrows going from a lake to clouds and arrows going from clouds back to the lake? It is the hydrologic cycle and it connects us all. So whether you are concerned about your well water in Codrington or Hilton or enjoy walking along, or fishing in, the bay, you should be concerned about what the WPCP pumps into the bay.

How can you tell something has gone wrong with this council? At a July 19, 2010 meeting, councillors proudly discussed partnering with St. Marys Cement to create a Presqu’ile Bay Species at Risk Centre of Excellence. They had forgotten that just five months before, they approved dumping 28.2 MT of pollutants into the home of these species at risk.

It is very disappointing that council approved dumping 28.2 MT of pollutants into our bay. Particularly when Councillor Kerr, who is also chairman of the Board of the Lower Trent Conservation Authority (the agency charged with source water protection), gave his explicit “thumbs up” to WPCP operations.

Even if the WPCP’s pollution of Presqu’ile Bay is legal, I think it is wrong. I also think something is very wrong when this council agrees that dumping 28.2 MT of pollutants is an “extremely good performance.”

Something must change soon.