Municipality Is Expert At Releasing Manure

04/07/2023

This is part of the release sent out to council and the media on Thursday. To read the whole document, click here.

The Bulldog’s comments on the release are in boldface. The other material is from the city release on the waste-water spill into the Ottawa River from the Pickard plant:

Water Treatment Plants

Throughout the weather event (translation: storm), the two drinking water treatment plants, Lemieux and Britannia, worked in tandem to provide continuous clean and safe drinking water. All of the City’s drinking water pumping stations and six communal well systems also functioned as intended and without any service interruptions.

As commenter Been There pointed out, the first paragraph of this release says that the city continued to give us safe water to drink as though that was a really good job. The city is expected to produce clean water for the residents of this city whose salaried employees and elected officials serve. It’s worth noting that the current administration had nothing to do with the location of the plants. The water filtration plants are upstream from the sewage release … doubtful an accident.

And again, as has been there pointed out by Been There, what of the people who do live downstream from the Pickard plant. Then of course there is the alternative if city employees didn’t do what was expected of them. In other places it’s called doing your job. If not, the headline is “City Employees Poison Hundreds Of Thousands Of Ottawans.” Lousy event but damn good story.

Wastewater Treatment Plant

The Robert O. Pickard Environmental Centre (ROPEC), located at 800 Green Creek Road, is the City of Ottawa’s wastewater treatment plant. The facility receives and treats wastewater from across the city before discharging treated effluent to the Ottawa River, ensuring it is safe for the environment.

Well, most often safe for the environment.

On April 5, 2023, at approximately 4:00 pm, ROPEC lost utility power, and it was restored on April 6, 2023 at approximately 3:30 pm. During the utility power outage, critical processes were powered by diesel generators to continue to treat wastewater, though at a partially reduced quality. The plant operations responded as expected; however, when the treatment quality is impacted, the Regulations classify this as a by-pass, and staff have reported the event to the Ministry of Environment, Conservation and Parks.

Did we not spend $225 million on the Combined Sewage Storage Tunnel (please note this is not the Ottawa Light-Rail Tunnel, though its vehicles should probably be stored in the CSST, treated when effluent is at normal levels, then flushed) so that this sort of dump doesn’t happen? Did we not spend enough?

Is this sewage tunnel the LRT of effluent projects? And how can you tell which project is which because they both come to the same crappy conclusion. “The plant operations responded as expected …” Does that mean the city expects to flush sewage into the Ottawa River? The city expected the treatment quality to be impacted? Good grief.

Meanwhile, the province calls the dumping a “bypass” because it is a bypass which the release infers is not fair. “Staff have reported the event to the Ministry of Environment, Conservation and Parks.” Well yeah … staff followed the law? Did someone expect them to do otherwise? You know, like lie to a judge at a provincial LRT inquiry?

And how much sewage was released? That’s not a small fact missing. Was this a big release or a little release? I’m guessing that if the communities downstream had to be notified, it wasn’t a small one. That would make it a big one. And it appears from this missive that all the communities downstream are happy about this. “Hey Bill, there goes another turd from Ottawa. Yup … playin’ to form.”

LRT Had Chance To Shine In Storm And Didn’t

A story or a press release should answer the questions who, what, when, where, why, how and how much. At the least the ‘how much’ is missing in terms of cost and turds per litre. How much sewage was released? If the figures are not there, how much should journalists figure? And remember you’re in a field journalists have great expertise. We’ve all shovelled a load of boring manure on occasion. So don’t try to snow us on crap. We know what we’re talking about.

If Happy Town News is not sure what should be in a release, they can knock on Mayor Mark Sutcliffe’s door. Sutcliffe stood firmly beside us on the barricades of truth for a number of decades until he took a post on the dark side of ‘truthiness’.

Which brings your agent to the data leak at the MyServiceOttawa website. Having been unable to reach Happy Town News, beset with technical problems for a whole day, about the number of people who lost data in a city glitch, about $600,000 in annual salaries could only produce “about 300.” You know, one man’s ‘about’ is another man’s ‘too much’ or ‘too little.’ And perhaps we could say the code and construction of the MyServiceOttawa website was ‘about’ right. That’s how accidents like this happen. ‘About’ doesn’t get you past three-months probation in newsroom and be assured that the current salary of a reporter doesn’t fit into the city-hall pay-scale.

We have been in contact with our partners in the Ministry of Environment, Conservation and Parks, as well as Ottawa Public Health and municipalities immediately downstream from the outfall. Wastewater treatment is a highly regulated industry, and we continue to follow all regulations to
ensure our wastewater is safe.

Doubt that the ministry is your “partner”. In fact, it’s unlikely the city and ministry have kissed or held hands let alone partnered. No the ministry is oversight when the city does something wrong like release a big load of turds into the Ottawa River. Imagine the joy in the voices of the diplomats from the municipalities downstream. “You did what?”

“Wastewater treatment is a highly regulated industry, and we continue to follow all regulations to ensure our wastewater is safe.” True (one of the few things true in this release) wastewater is regulated but the city broke the regulations. Yet “we continue to follow all the regulations.” Well no, the city just broke some of the regulations. You said so in the release. There was a “bypass.” Sounds like a colonoscopy.

So if HTN gets past its technical problems, perhaps the mighty bureaucrats can tell we peons how much effluent went into the river and how it compares in size with other city turdfests. Maybe a little something about the provincial regulations which the city does or does not follow. Please don’t use the word ‘about’.

And so Bulldog afficionados, the above is how the god-king-emperor of this publication spent his Good Friday. Perhaps the editor will be resurrected by Sunday.