Great Lakes Article:

Alarming Level of Contaminants Found In City's Surface Water

Press Release
08/22/2002

Environment Hamilton has released a report on the impact of City sewers emptying into Hamilton’s Red Hill Creek. This is the latest step in a 15-year effort by friends of the valley to rehabilitate the valley from decades of municipal abuse.

Last December, the Ministry of the Environment ordered the City of Hamilton to identify, test, analyze and remediate all outfalls to the creek by July 1 of this year. Having failed to meet this deadline, the City obtained a 45-day extension to August 15. In the meantime, the citizen’s group "Environment Hamilton" obtained a small grant from Lake Ontario Keeper to carry out three of the four tasks. In June and July, Environment Hamilton staff visited and sampled 16 pipes where liquid was found flowing into the creek. Nine of these pipes are only supposed to carry only storm water, but were flowing despite weeks of no rain. Six of the other seven are combined sewer outfalls. These should only flow during large rain storms or snowmelts, but in Hamilton pipes don’t seem to behave properly. They were all flowing as well. The final pipe sampled was the discharge outlet from the Woodward Avenue sewage treatment plant, Hamilton’s main sewage facility.

Samples were taken from each pipe and analysed by a professional laboratory. Every pipe was contaminated with coliform bacteria including e coli. The flows from 15 of the 16 exceeded the allowable pollution limits set by the province of Ontario. In one case, the e coli levels measured 160,000 per 100 mL -- 1600 times the allowable limits!

These findings further tighten the noose being drawn around the City’s neck. The Environment Hamilton report has been forwarded to the Ministry of the Environment and released to the media. The City has already been ordered to solve these problems, and it has already been granted a time extension to complete this work. Further delays should result in Ministry charges (or charges by citizens if the Ministry doesn’t act).

The mounting pressure to deal with the contaminated pipes is the third wave of citizen action over the last 15 years that is gradually restoring the health of the creek. The effort began in 1987 with the initiation of annual volunteer litter cleanups in Red Hill Valley and a campaign to get the City to take action against illegal dumping. That led to a 1995 major cleanup funded by the Rae provincial government and continues with the weekly litter cleanups carried out by Friends of Red Hill activists.

The second wave focused on leaking landfills. This battle began in the 1970s with major citizen protests about the continued operation of the highly toxic Upper Ottawa Street dump. These protests forced the closure of the dump in 1980 and a provincial blue-ribbon enquiry that confirmed the health fears of local residents. A partial leachate collection system was put in place, but only on three sides of the dump. In 1996, water quality testing by students under the direction of a McMaster University professor identified leachate seeps from the dump. This was followed by the revelation that the dump was in danger of collapsing. Exposing and publicizing these problems led to the construction of a leachate collection system along the side of the stream in 1998.

In 1999 a group of citizens laid private charges against the City for allowing another dump to leak PCBs into the creek. This resulted in Hamilton being fined $480,000 fine in September 2000 and being forced to begin $23 million in work at the Rennie, Brampton and Nash dump sites that should stop leachate from all three of these toxic sites from getting into the creek.

The sewers are the third wave of the citizen-forced cleanup. Friends of Red Hill congratulates the latest effort by Environment Hamilton to end the flow of sewage into the creek. It seems likely that we are now on the verge of major improvements.

For many years, Hamiltonians have been assaulted by the ignorant assertion that "the proposed Red Hill Creek Expressway will clean up the creek". History shows, however, that the real clean-up is being accomplished by determined citizens.