City charged for putting partially treated sewage into Red River in 2011

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This article was published 25/10/2012 (4706 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The province has charged the City of Winnipeg under the Environment Act for releasing partly treated sewage into the Red River for seven weeks in 2011 following a biological treatment failure at the South End Water Pollution Control Centre.

Manitoba Conservation and Water Stewardship filed the charges Thursday, the province announced in a statement.

The province also conducted an independent review of the incident and has made recommendations to ensure it won’t be repeated.

Partly treated sewage began flowing into the Red River on Oct. 7, 2011, due to a mysterious die-off of beneficial bacteria that digest sewage particles in the South End plant’s clarifying tanks.

They were replaced by stringy bacteria that got in the way of treatment processes.

To remedy the situation, the city applied chlorine to the tanks to kill the harmful bacteria and used polymers to allow them to clump together.

The city also trucked in beneficial bacteria from the North End Water Pollution Control Centre and sought expert U.S. engineering advice in an effort to kickstart biological treatment, which was eventually restored after seven weeks.

The city’s environmental licence required the malfunction to be reported immediately. But the province wasn’t told until Nov. 1, 2011.

As a result, the province has laid the following charges:

• Releasing or allowing a pollutant to be released;
• Releasing or allowing a pollutant to be released in an amount, at a level or at rate of release that exceeds limits provided under the licence; and
• Failing to report the release of a pollutant that may cause an adverse effect on the environment.

The city did not determine the cause of the die-off. The provincial independent review nontheless recommended the City of Winnipeg prepare to indentify similar problems in the future and establish protocols for deploying chlorine and polymers if a similar problem emerges.

Winnipeg’s water and waste department is already prepared to deal with similar incidents in the future, the city said in a statement.

The city has already implemented some of the changes recommended by the province, it said.

Those changes include regular evaluations of the beneficial bacteria as well as the establishment of protocols to respond to future incidents, the city said.

The city will also report future incidents immediately, it said.