Montreal to dump 8 billion litres of sewage into St. Lawrence River

www.cbc.ca...

The St. Lawrence River could reek like sewage for a week, starting on Oct. 18.

That's when the City of Montreal plans to start dumping a colossal amount of untreated wastewater directly into the river from a major sewer interceptor for a seven-day stretch.

The amount dumped will be 13 cubic metres per second over seven days: that's eight million cubic metres in all, or eight billion litres — the equivalent of 2,600 Olympic-sized pools of raw sewage, from homes, industries and hospitals.

Up until the 1980s, it was common practice to clear the sewers this way, although it is no longer considered acceptable.

Holy CRAP .... I guess I won't be fishing the river anytime soon that's horrible shame on Canada!!!!

a reply to: WP4YT

What?!

How is that even legal?!

Do they not know that there are ANIMALS and SEA CREATURES in this river?

a reply to: WP4YT
At least it's just a temporary measure. 13 cubic meters per second waste out of 6000 cubic meters per second total isn't a large percentage, but it could cause health concerns if someone drank the unprocessed water so at least they're giving warning in advance.

By the way that site is the first to ever give me this message from my security software, I've never seen this before from any other site:


I wonder what kind of data they are trying to store on my computer?
I'm not inclined to allow it to store anything so I guess I won't find out, but I am a little curious.

Common sense isnt very common these days!

a reply to: WP4YT
I know the practice is now not considered acceptable, but having worked for the statutory authority administering a river-system in a major city--Sh*t happens more often than people realise.

The Department of Water (who runs the sewers here) would do it every time there was heavy rains, we would give them the big corporate fines, they would sign a cheque and then do it again. Because they were a public utility, another government agency, we really couldnt do anything to them but take the cheque and mutter some stern words. Just for them to do it again the next time it rained.

Yes, I am talking about raw, untreated sewage being pumped into the river, not storm-water drainage.

Just because the practice is now shunned, the infrastructure in most cities is still 50-100 years old and it will take time for each city to get its Sh*t together to build sewer systems that dont flush into the nearest natural water course, but in the mean time, we will be swimming in our own sh*t.

a reply to: ItVibrates

I understand it's happened before, but... There's a lot more chemicals and pharmaceuticals now then there used to be... Don't know if it's a good idea to be dumping it into the water

a reply to: WP4YT

Wow that's just crappy and nasty.

That is a lot of poo, what do they do with it if they do not do this?

a reply to: WP4YT

Well we shouldnt dump sewage into our rivers regardless of what new crap is in the crap, the bio waste is enough to cause major health problems.

Sorry if you thought I was being apathetic to this, I was just rtying to point out that everyone living in a major city with a river running thru it is experiencing the same sh*t.

It is my mistake I miss read the OP as 8 million, that is pretty big if it happened here (I remember a few that size), ummm after posting I realised it was 1000x that--its pretty bad on the bad end of the bad scale.

a reply to: Xtrozero

The way we deal with it (when its not raining) is to pump it to a sewage treatment plant, this process takes a lot of the # out--some of which ends up in commercial fertilizers (black compressed b*ng resin looking stuff), other bits like hard plastics are taken out, it goes thru UV filters to kill off some of the bugs in it then...

WE DRINK IT

Well, no we dont, but there are plans to upgrade that treatment plant and pump the treated sewage into a nearby aquifer. These plans are now on the back burner, but they are not fully scraped unfortunately.

We normally pump the treated sewage out to sea (again not ideal, but this is the systems in place).

Honestly as sh*tty as the system here is, its pretty much the same through out the developed world.

Every drop of water on the planet has been recycled
by nature throughout history .
So your next glass of water has been through a million
dinosaurs etc. before you drink it.
Most sewerage treatment involves removing solids that
go into landfill , the remaining majority is liquid .It goes
through extensive processing , in some cases making it
cleaner than tap water , then is released into the local
river/sea.
In this day and age , one would expect these facilities
to have a large holding pond for any overflow/maintenance
purposes .
So don't swim or drink downstream from any outlet they have
for a while...yetch