Face it: if you’re on a municipal sewage system, just about the only time you think about what you flush is when something goes horribly wrong, and your basement starts to fill with … shall we say, the byproducts of you and perhaps many others in your neighbourhood.
(I once did a television story with a woman who described the horror of great gouts of raw sewage jetting up under pressure through her toilet and drains — she paused, halfway through the story of packing her best towels into the rushing waste, to opine, “It wouldn’t be so bad, if it were your own.”)
Think about it: everything else a town or city provides is far more obvious. If your garbage doesn’t get picked up, you know it. When the water turns rusty or the town puts out a boil-water order, complaints come in fast and furious. Potholes? The phone is ringing at the town hall. Sewage is the most easily forgotten of municipal services, which is why everyone should have to spend a period of time on a septic system, if for no other reasons than to experience the existential dread of what lies beneath the yard.
Sewage and waste water are literally out of sight and out of mind. And that means they are often at the bottom of the priority list.
They are also expensive. The provincial and federal governments, along with the town of Wabush, just joined forces to build a new sewage treatment facility for the town. It’s expected to cost $14 million — at the last full census, Wabush had around 1,900 people, so about $7,300 per person.
The sewage problem is quickly coming to a head.
This past week, Municipalities NL held an emergency meeting about new federal rules on what towns and cities are allowed to dump through outfalls. The new rules will result in fines for those who don’t meet compliance deadlines.
Here’s the head of Municipalities NL, Tony Keats; “We know we cannot meet the requirements set out in this legislation. Our municipalities do not have the money and the timelines simply cannot work. …With a federal election coming, we need to make this a priority issue. Enforcement is ramping up and municipal staff and councils are on the hook for millions of dollars in fines and possible jail time.”
Sewage and waste water are literally out of sight and out of mind. And that means they are often at the bottom of the priority list.
In all, 115 municipalities — including the cities of St. John’s and Mount Pearl — would be in violation of the new rules. Most are already breaking the rules, and it will cost hundreds of millions of dollars and years of work to catch up to the new standards.
Except the rules aren’t that new. The regulations were first brought in in 2012, almost seven years ago. The clock really started ticking in 2014, when official timelines were put in place and everyone knew exactly what they were looking at, and when. But sewers still weren’t sexy, and no one seemed to feel the time pressure involved.
In other words, after moving slowly for seven years, cities and towns in this province are suddenly realizing that that their homework’s late. They are asking both for an extension, and for federal money to get the work done.
You can understand that request, especially during the promise-heady time of an impending federal election. But this is a Hail Mary pass — the task has always been an enormous one, but it seems that the solution for the last five years has been to turtle up and just hope the law goes away.
It hasn’t
We’re in a hole that’s so deep, we can’t help but see what we’re standing in.
But it’s more than just starting to bubble up.
Russell Wangersky’s column appears in 36 SaltWire newspapers and websites in Atlantic Canada. He can be reached at [email protected] — Twitter: @wangersky.
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