The time is nigh

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 13/10/2023 (740 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

THE oak desk behind the door stencilled with Minister of Environment and Climate has been cleaned out and the provisional occupant Kevin Klein is now a distant memory. As Premier Wab Kinew seeks to appoint Klein’s successor, there is a file that must occupy a prominent position on that desk.

It is a file that is dear to Manitobans who find their beloved Lake Winnipeg inundated with a disgusting pea soup of algae due to a reluctance of politicians to act.

Part of the solution lies with upgrading the North End treatment plant and separating combined sewers, actions that are firstly expensive and secondly not very sexy for politicians hoping to leave their mark. Klein expressed his will to improve the situation while a councillor, but did little as minister to address the problem.

The City of Winnipeg released 27.5 billion litres of raw sewage last year and continues to break our provincial laws, but eliminating their exemption or prosecuting the municipality will not contribute to the solution. The real problem has been laid out by Councillor Brian Mayes, and envisions a revised plan with financial commitments from all three levels of government. Federal minister Dan Vandal would be a worthy ally for such an endeavour.

Those of us who regularly use our urban waterways would like to see progress in our lifetimes, because by the time the present scheme is even partially complete, we’ll be long gone.

The timetable in Jacob’s Engineering “master plan” for the reduction of sewage is woefully inadequate, especially in our rapidly changing climate. The objective of reducing 80 per cent of sewage into our rivers by the year 2095 is unfathomable. City council has called for revisions to cut 50 years off the existing timeline for combined sewer releases, but city staff has not fulfilled that requirement. Councillor Mayes rightly referred to this neglect of duty as “nonsense.”

Those in charge of water and waste refuse to be accountable, declining interviews and not fulfilling council’s directive. Mayor Gillingham has a rogue department on his hands and clearly needs to clean house.

Although over budget by $482 million and 15 years later than expected, upgrades to the North End sewage treatment plant must be better managed and promptly completed.

Alternatives to our combined sewers that include swales, ditches, holding tanks and green/gray infrastructure are imperative in the interim to keep our sewers from being overwhelmed. New construction in areas where old infrastructure cannot cope must be deferred.

This is only to deal with our existing climate, the real wildcard will be the lack of resilience to climate episodes which have become inevitable.

The city of Atlanta is a case in point but there are many others that have drawn on new and progressive ways to deal with sewage releases into natural waterways. Using a retention pond and grey infrastructure Atlanta has reduced combined sewer overflows by 62 per cent since 2001 and have lowered untreated overflow volume by 97 per cent.

The myopic engineering master plan that Winnipeg has hitched its cart to will not yield these results.

In the United States, there is a clear policy under the Environmental Protection Act which dates back to 1995. This federal initiative outlines nine clear objectives and provides budget incentives for municipalities to reach them.

Although we do have national water quality guidelines, enforcement for releases from combined sewers is left up to provincial officials who are hamstrung to insist on infrastructure that the municipality can ill afford. In Canada, federal dollars are distributed on an ad hoc basis for such projects and would be better served by a national program aimed at increasing capacity of our sewer systems.

The time is nigh for a new provincial environment minister to wholeheartedly commit to leverage funds and seek new and innovative means to purge our rivers of human waste. It is also time for our federal government to allocate funding and a clear policy to provide clarity for all levels of government when the pollution of rivers is at stake. It behooves our new premier to choose an individual who will work with all parties involved to achieve these results that Manitobans deserve.

Dave Taylor has drawn attention to the pollution of rivers in Manitoba for several decades and is a regular contributor to the Winnipeg Free Press.