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LETTER: Innisfil flooding should be a wake-up call for Orillia

Letter writer says the 'tragic' incident in Innisfil is why he lobbied the city not to build a sewage pumping station on Cedar Island Road

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In October 2018 Orillia city council approved a sewage pumping station to be constructed on Cedar Island Road very close to a waterway that flows into Lake Couchiching. 

This location is reclaimed land and flood plain. Myself and others told council that, from an environmental perspective, this was a terrible location for a sewage pumping station and an accidental spill would pollute Lake Couchiching but our protestations were ignored. 

I subsequently filed an appeal to the province requesting this project be subject to a thorough environmental assessment and I am still waiting for a response. 

Last weekend there was a spill from a sewage pumping station in the town of Innisfil that caused raw sewage to flow into nearby homes and the basement of a synagogue. 
 
It is instructional for us Orillians to note the comments/responses of the bureaucracy, the mayor and an affected homeowner:
  • "We're looking at every entrance into that pumping station. Where it came from, because this is groundwater that is infiltrating the sanitary sewer where it shouldn't be in the first place." (The Mayor)

  • "We're sympathetic to the residents. This was a tragic event that happened."  65 millimetres of rain fell over the weekend. "This is an extreme climate change weather event that occurred... It was a huge downpour of water that came down at one time."  (President of the waste department)
  • "They told me straight out on the phone - the gentleman - that the plant itself overflowed and flooded out." (the homeowner).
The president of the utility seems to be blaming climate change for the event and the mayor offers an astute observation that groundwater is getting into the sanitary sewer system. 
 
Then we have the homeowner who was told the plant itself overflowed and flooded out - quite straightforward and simple.
 
We can avoid sewage overflowing into our basements and the lake by incorporating the realities of life in the 21st century; extreme climate change weather events do occur and we have the intelligence and utility to not locate critical infrastructure on unstable flood prone lands.
 
Tom Griffiths
Orillia

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