City of Hamilton finds even more sewage has been flowing into Lake Ontario since 1996

The city of Hamilton has discovered even more sewage has been pouring directly into Hamilton Harbor since 1996 – and it may not be the last leak the city will find.

The news was announced on Monday, seven weeks after the city found that around 337 million liters of sewage had spilled into the harbor front since 1996.

In 2019, the city said 6.5 billion gallons (24 billion liters) of sewage entered Chedoke Creek over the past four years. The city is still working to clean up this spill.

“Unfortunately, we’re likely to discover more similar discharges,” Nick Winters, director of Hamilton Water, told reporters during a news conference on Monday.

Winters said the 337 million liter spill found in late November prompted the department to trial a risk-based inspection program that focused on potentially cross-connected pipe sections.

Winters said there have been 151 inspections since December and the process will help determine what resources it will take to potentially video inspect every meter of a combined sewer pipe.

After the latest leak was spotted in November, Ontario’s Environment Secretary David Piccini said he wanted Hamilton to audit all of its sewage infrastructure. The city has yet to receive official direction from the department, but Winters said preliminary discussions have taken place and the city has made its own recommendations.

Winters said the team was conducting work under the inspection program last weekend and smelled an odor near Rutherford Avenue and Myrtle Avenue in Ward 3, prompting further investigation.

Early Monday afternoon, the team discovered that a 100-year-old combined sewer pipe had been connected to a newly built storm sewer in 1996 — the same year the last leak began.

Winters said he hopes the fact that this may have started in 1996 is just a coincidence.

As many as 11 residential buildings have since dumped sewage directly into the storm sewer and into the Port of Hamilton, he said. Winters said it did not affect residents’ drinking water.

Two City of Hamilton vans and a contractor’s truck were parked on Rutherford Avenue Monday night, waiting for a large vacuum truck to begin sucking up sewage from a supply hole near the corner of the Rutherford and Myrtle venue. (Bobby Christova/CBC)

It’s unclear how much wastewater flowed into Lake Ontario from that pipe, how much it will cost to clean up, and what impact it may have had on the environment and people who live and work near the port.

Native species of fish such as pike, walleye, largemouth bass, bluegill and yellow perch as well as non-native species such as carp, goldfish and rudd can be found in the harbour.

“This combined sewer runoff in particular is quite active,” Winters said.

“It doesn’t take a very big rainstorm for some mixed sanitary sewage to come out of this drain.”

The mayor says the city is trying to be proactive and honest

In his update around 4 p.m. Winters said a vacuum truck was on site to stop the flow of further sewage. The truck wasn’t there at about 6:00 p.m. ET, but a few city vehicles and a contractor’s truck were parked waiting for the vacuum truck to arrive. Local residents in the area said they saw a truck earlier in the day.

Winters said he contacted the Department of Environment, Conservation and Parks (MECP) Disaster Action Center and the city’s reporting line early Monday afternoon.

Mayor Andrea Horwath, who also attended the press conference, told reporters the city has a “very old” combined sewer system and stressed that it is taking a proactive, transparent approach.

“No one wants this news … but it’s our responsibility and obligation to let Hamiltonians know if anything happens,” she said, adding the point of the inspection program is to find problems as quickly as possible.

“One of the things we could learn from this process is exactly the importance of not shrugging things like this off,” she said.

Horwath said she spoke with Piccini and reached out to local Indigenous community leaders, including Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation and Six Nations of the Grand River.

She also encourages residents to contact the city if they find a leak or smell a septic odor.

Winters said, as far as he is aware, there have been no complaints from residents to the city about an odor in the area.

Local residents not surprised by discovery

Scott Holmes told CBC Hamilton he moved into his Rutherford Avenue home in September.

He said his house had smelled of sewage for months, but he never complained to the city.

Instead, he went to the online forum Reddit, where people on the Hamilton page said a sewage smell in Hamilton was normal.

“I feel like it’s probably all Hamilton,” he said.

A maintenance hole.The city says sewage from 11 homes near Rutherford Avenue and Myrtle Avenue has been flowing directly into the Port of Hamilton since 1996. (Bobby Christova/CBC)

Casey Bruton said he has lived on Rutherford Avenue for 10 years and said he has never smelled sewage.

A city worker informed him that a vacuum truck was parked on the street because of a connection problem with the pipes.

When he found out about the sewage leak at CBC, Bruton said he wasn’t surprised.

“It seems to be a monthly thing in this city right now…Hamilton has made a name for itself for things like this,” he said, while praising the city’s transparency regarding recent incidents.

“The advice seems to be going in a positive direction…we’ll wait and see now I guess.”

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