Québec leads provinces in dumping raw sewage into Canadian waterways

01/09/2020

Municipalities are dumping nearly 400 billion gallons of raw sewage annually into Canadian waterways.

According to a Department of Environment report titled Wastewater Systems Effluent Regulations, obtained by Blacklock's Reporter, 374 billion gallons of sewage "was untreated and did not meet the limits".

Actual discharges were likely higher.

As usual, anti-oil Québec led all other provinces in discharging sewage that failed to meet federal regulations for water safety:

Québec municipalities dumped one billion cubic meters of sewage per year, five times the volume in British Columbia (260 million cubic metres) and nearly ten times the amount in Ontario (104 million cubic metres).

Eighty-five lethal discharges occurred in 2016, with the largest number, 42, occurring in Québec.

Mechanical shutdowns and lagoon breaches were typically blamed for the release of fish-killing sewage.

In 2015, in one of her first decisions on the job, Liberal minister of environment, Catherine McKenna, approved Montreal's plan to dump 8 billion liters of untreated sewage into the St. Lawrence River, which is home to endangered beluga whales.

In 2016, a massive fish kill in Quebec's Yamuska River was investigated in relation to a sewage dump from nearby Saint-Hyacinthe.

It is unclear if the Liberals have done any gender-based analysis of the ongoing sewage problem.

Original article >