Sewer Bypasses

THE LINK to the Bypass Log For The City of Kingston.

It's improved; you can page back in history.

STALE SEWAGE BYPASS LOG, three months out of date, on the Utilities Kingston website.

See also our archive of sewer bypass news items. Utilities Kingston is a disgrace when it comes to reporting and disclosure.

TWO WEEKS AGO, ON JANUARY 13TH the City of Kingston allegedly dumped 10 million litres of sewage into the St-Lawrence River during a power failure in the City's East end.

That's enough sewage to completely fill 280 of these wholesale-sized tanker trailers.

Here's a Whig article about it.

But there is still nothing tallied on the crappy Utilities Kingston sewer bypass log. Not even a note.

Jim Keech is President and CEO of Utilities Kingston. Mr Keech is well-aware of this and other past disclosure shenanigans by Utilities Kingston.

When you think of sewage in our waterways, and the health of Kingston waterfront, think of Jim Keech and Utilities Kingston. And remember: these are the same folks responsible for getting safe drinking water to your tap.

Related:

• 10-million litres of sewage were dumped into the St-Lawrence River on Tuesday January 13, 2009.
• Jim Keech, president of Utilities Kingston, must think we're all stupid from July 8, 2008.
• Pollution disclosure, City of Kingston-style from April 10 2008.
• Massive sewage dumping from April 4 2008.
• Past sewage overflow reports have been understated from September 21 2007.
• We need better sewer bypass accounting from November 21 2006.

10-MILLION LITRES OF SEWAGE were dumped into the St-Lawrence River last Tuesday night during a lengthy power failure.

Nothing's tallied yet on the Utilities Kingston sewer bypass log. They call it a log. It's not a log at all. It's minimum-disclosure b.s., Kingston-style. Here's why.

For a sense of perspective, a very large tank truck, the sort used for wholesale fuel deliveries, can contain 36,000 litres. Imagine a line of 280 such tanker trucks, a queue over 5-kilometers long, lined-up to pump their entire contents in sewage into the water at the causeway. The equivalent of that happened this week in Kingston.

I repeat: Tuesday the City of Kingston dumped the full contents of 280 of these tanks worth of sewage into the St-Lawrence River.

Related:

• Jim Keech, president of Utilities Kingston, must think we're all stupid from July 8, 2008.
• Pollution disclosure, City of Kingston-style from April 10 2008.
• Massive sewage dumping from April 4 2008.
• Past sewage overflow reports have been understated from September 21 2007.
• We need better sewer bypass accounting from November 21 2006.

BEACH CLOSURES are the subject of front-page stories in both The Whig and Kingston This Week today.

Read them both.

Jim Keech, president of Utilities Kingston, must think we're all stupid.

He certainly knows that Osprey Media reporters are pushovers.

Here we have the City of Kingston bypassing over 7,000 cubic meters of sewage -- over 1.5 million imperial gallons -- into our local waterways all within the past 10-days and we're led to believe the e.coli fouling our beaches must be due to birds.

It gets worse: they aren't actually metering all the City's sewer bypass points.

And our mainstream media just parrots what these ass-covering municipal suits say.

For perspective, imagine 300 tanker trucks, each with 5,000 gallon capacity exactly like the one pictured here, lined-up taking turns pumping their full contents of sewage into the water. That's what 1.5 million gallons looks like. The equivalent of that happened this past week in Kingston, by the City of Kingston itself. And big-cheese Jim Keech says that e.coli has "...nothing to do with sewage" and "...the by-passes that we've had have been relatively insignificant".

Related:

• Pollution disclosure, City of Kingston-style from April 10 2008.
• Massive sewage dumping from April 4 2008.
• Past sewage overflow reports have been understated from September 21 2007.
• We need better sewer bypass accounting from November 21 2006.

ON THE LEFT you see the Bypass Log For The City of Kingston.

It's reduced to 500 pixels high so you can see it in one view.

The red box is where they put the "news" about the immense sewer dumping tally of the past three weeks.

Visitors need to scroll way down to see it, past several cues that suggest the page is stale, two months out of date.

Pollution disclosure, City of Kingston-style:

Right:"Table 3" from April 3.
It lists 5 events.

( See it full-size here, from our April 4th news item.)

Right:"Table 3" from April 7.
It now lists just 4 events.

One new row has appeared, a small spill, but two rows have scrolled-off.

Vanished: 57,000 m^3 -- 12.5 MILLION gallons of sewage dumped barely 2-weeks ago.

MASSIVE SEWAGE DUMPING by the City of Kingston over the past several days.

The dumping of the past few days has exceeded the tally for all of 2007 by a considerable margin.

Dumping for 2008 year-to-date is way ahead of ALL of 2006 and 2007 combined.

Word from the Dolphins Scuba club is, at West Street, this is a visibly nasty flow of immense quantities of fecal matter, toilet paper and sanitary supplies.

Shame on the City of Kingston for its massive spending on things like OHL arenas, squares, and theatres, and so today we continue to despoil a natural lake.

No word yet about this from local mainstream media.

Finally, shame on Utilities Kingston for placing this information way down on their combined sewer overflows bypass log.

When you look at the initial viewpane for that page, you see nothing recent worthy of note. You need to scroll way down to see the real news.

They call it a "bypass log". It's nothing like a bypass log. It's a selective and obfuscated tally, with no links to details.

Related: don't barf when you read this.

PAST SEWAGE OVERFLOW REPORTS have been understated, according to this Whig-Standard article by Jennifer Pritchett.

The City of Kingston has installed new monitors on its sewers that has revealed the municipality spews millions more litres of untreated sewage into area waterways each year than previously documented.

Read the whole thing.

For what it's now worth, here's a link to the Bypass Log For The City of Kingston.

Two new topics are now prominently linked on the home page:

THE HIGHWAY TRAVELLER'S HOME PAGE seeks to brief Highway 401 travelers, who might otherwise bypass Kingston, about economical and time-efficient options involving Kingston's waterfront.

THE RESIDENT'S HOME PAGE seeks to brief most Kingston residents who, on balance, don't participate in their waterfront as much as they could.

Like all topics here, these topics are subject to incremental improvement, so suggestions and contributions are welcome.

WHAT'S BEHIND AND UNDER THESE UGLY BUILDINGS?

Should someone be made to answer for these?

Here's the project that put them there.

Also, click the various images and diagrams for larger versions.

If you read the public documents, there's apparently no reference to the ugly bunkers.

Interesting: Here is how the major pipes connect. Our sewers and our waterfront are inexorably linked.

That's 10 million imperial gallons.

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.

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.

The city's sewer bypass log reports 5,400 cubic meters (1.2 million gallons) were dumped into our waterways on June 27th. For a sense of perspective, a typical tank truck, the sort used to make fuel deliveries on highways and around town, can contain 5,000 gallons. Imagine a line of 240 such trucks, lined up to pump sewage into the water at the causeway. The equivalent of that happened this week in Kingston.

Tuesday we dumped the contents of 240 of these.

The City of Kingston announces that the Inner Harbour sewer overflow tank (is now) in operation.

Lake Ontario Waterkeeper reports that Kingston dumps raw sewage ... again ... and again... and again... and again... and again.

Kingston has bypassed sewage seven times during five "events" in the first quarter of 2006. According to Waterkeeper, since 1999, the city has dumped well over 1-b i l l i o n litres of raw sewage into area waterways. How embarassing.

It turns out that the City won't be forced to abide by these proposed rules (see also here).

In short, the City won't have to do this:

1. Notify downstream communities prior to bypassing sewage into waterways.
2. Monitor every bypass and publicize the length of the bypass, the quantity of sewage discharged, the direction and size of the plume, the level of contamination present in the bypass (eg, E. coli concentrations), and other similar data.
3. Ensure that every waterway is cleaned up after being exposed to a bypass.