Kingston waterfront news: November 2006
SIERRA LEGAL PUTS IT ON THE TABLE: Wave of raw sewage escapes treatment. Kingston rates poorly, but check out Detroit, Cleveland, and Toronto.
Update: Read the CBC's report.
THE CITY SEWER BYPASS LOG was updated sometime late yesterday (November 20) to acknowledge November 16th bypasses of 34,753 cubic meters (7.6 million gallons) due to heavy rains. This represents a delay of four days between the event and the acknowledgement on the website. At the same time, the city acknowledges 755 cubic meters (166,100 gallons) for November 11-14, which is a six to nine day delay, and a further 159 cubic meters (34,980 gallons) on another, presumably prior date.
If you get the sense that the city is providing this environmental accounting grudgingly, and in a half-assed way, you would be right.
For example, we learn that October hath 32 days. Honest mistake? or maybe they really don't give a damn? You decide. Just know that we waited 24 hours to post this story hoping they'd fix obvious mistakes like this. So far, they haven't.
There's more: The Whig reported, on November 18th, citing Jim Keech, president of Utilities Kingston, bypasses of 50,000 cubic meters, not the 34,753 currently being acknowledged by the City. What's going on?
The City doesn't even provide a "last updated" or "valid through" date on the sewer bypass page, so anyone looking-in within a few days of a heavy rain, even a week or more hence, would mistakenly conclude there were no bypasses.
All this isn't good enough, and the waterfront deserves better and prompter sewer bypass accounting than we're getting.
This land is adjacent to Music Marina, and very close to the landing of the so-called "third crossing".
It looks like there is some shoreline infilling involved in the diagrams here.
A GLANCE UPSTREAM AT WATER LEVELS IN THE GREAT LAKES shows that the big lakes, Superior and Michigan / Huron, continue to be notably below average. Lake Superior levels are approaching record lows for this time of year. Superior's November levels haven't been this low since the 1930's.
THE PRESERVE OUR WRECKS FALL 2006 NEWSLETTER is now online. Preserve Our Wrecks Kingston (POW) is celebrating its 25th year of protecting Kingston's Marine Heritage through its preservation efforts of the local area shipwrecks.
CKWS-TV REPORTS that Belleville's Morch Marine is planning quite the expansion and makeover. $150 million worth. Wow.
THE CITY OF KINGSTON SEWER BYPASS LOG has been rather slow with updates in the past few months. Let's see how long it takes for them to acknowledge any bypasses resulting from these rains.
Update (Saturday Nov 18): The Whig reports the city dumped an estimated 50 million litres (50,000 cubic metres) into our waterways this week.
- Utilities Kingston bypassed 14 million litres (14,000 cubic metres) at the Collingwood station, and
- 15 million litres (15,000 cubic metres) at the north end station.
- The OKill water-treatment plant was bypassed for 25 hours.
- There was also the unusual step of bypassing secondary treatment at the west-end sewage plant for 15 hours. The plant removed large solids from waste water but didnt purify it.
No mention yet of any of this on the City of Kingston Sewage Bypass Log.
THE 2nd ANNUAL LIMESTONE CITY MARINE HERITAGE SYMPOSIUM will be held Saturday January 6 2007 at The Ambassador Resort Hotel from 8:00 AM to 4 PM.
The theme of this years show remains ship wrecks of the local area with a special focus on marine archeology and wreck preservation.
The lineup:
- Locally:
- Jeremy Jones - Shore Dive Sign Project. Jeremy reports on regional effort by divers to place in water signage for the protection of both wrecks and divers.
- Scarlette Janusas, a professional underwater archeologist, on researching, working on, and protecting our Marine Heritage.
- Ed Burt reports on his discovery of the almost mythical HMS Speedy
- Dr. Ed Reinhart presenting on his geological and archeologic efforts in Caesarea
- the always popular photograher Vlada Dekina show casing the wrecks of Belle Isle, Nfld
- Dr. Doug Smeaton on historic shipwrecks of Halifax
Tickets may be reserved by contacting wreckshow@ontariodiving.com. Seating is limited so please book early to avoid disappointment. Doors open at 07:30 am.
THE HERITAGE NEWSPAPER, via Lake Ontario Waterkeeper, reports Pollution-to-housing waterfront deal hits a snag about the Davis Tannery site development.
