Montreal dumps sewage into the Saint Lawrence

Montreal has been pretty shitty lately, and I mean that literally.

On Wednesday, Nov. 11, 2015, the City of Montreal began dumping sewage into the Saint Lawrence River. The sewage dump is part of a city project to fix some impending infrastructure problems.

The pipes the city was trying to repair were old, rusting and just about ready to pop; 17 kilometres of pipeline had to be replaced. The city decided that the fastest way to replace the pipes was to divert the sewage into the nearby Saint Lawrence River instead of building a temporary diversion pipe.

There were nets set up along the river to catch solid waste and residents in the surrounding area had been advised not to flush anything solid down their pipes.

Richard Fontaine, head of Montreal’s wastewater management department, said “There’s a very simple test—before you throw it in the toilet bowl, would you put it in your pool or your bathtub?”

The sewage release began on Nov. 11 and ended on Nov. 15. The repair on the pipeline only took four days. That seems pretty good.

However, it was not all peachy, not unless someone in Montreal had recently eaten peaches.

The city-folk in Montreal were promised that the parts of the river where sewage to be released would not smell due to the high speed of the river, and that ideally, there would be no real, lasting impact on the environment. I give kudos to them for finishing their project so fast, but were they lying about the other stuff?

The only coverage I could find of a reporter going down to the river where the dump was happening was by Vice Canada. On the Daily Vice video release for Nov. 12, Simon Coutu, a reporter for Vice News, visits one of the tributaries flowing into the Saint Lawrence. Coutu says “Mayor Coderre said that the dump wouldn’t stink, but honestly, it smells like shit.”

In their coverage of the scene, Vice Canada also shows images of dead fish and debris assembling along the edges of the water.

It looks pretty bad.

Montreal has been in the international spotlight for several weeks since they announced their decision to carry through with the dumping plan, but what they chose to do is not unique.

As Les Perreaux from the Globe and Mail said in an article on Nov. 10 “Almost every major Canadian city occasionally releases sewage into the nearest major waterway.”

Montreal is just following the process. The only real issue is that, in Canada, that kind of thing is allowed. There are laws in place to ensure that fresh water is drinkable and liveable for fish, but those are easy to work around and rarely enforced.

What could happen, in a perfect world, is an inquiry into how damages to environments and ecosystems could be mitigated or avoided.

What will happen is probably nothing. Montreal has fixed their infrastructure for now and that’s that. Any of the outrage that came with the project in regards to the environment or the billions of litres of sewage will be swept under the rug because it was not as much as was expected.

The reality of waste management situations that any large volume of sewage really should not be entering our major waterways at all. There should be no discussion, because there could be a better way, just not an easy way.

All in all, it was a pretty shitty event. Hopefully they can figure out a better way next time they have to clean the poop-pipes.

Since The Ontarion undertakes the publishing of student work, the opinions expressed in this publication do not necessarily reflect those of The Ontarion. The Ontarion reserves the right to edit or refuse all material deemed sexist, racist, homophobic, or otherwise unfit for publication as determined by the Editor-in-chief.