Duane Hicks
A group of east-end residents has petitioned town council to make fixing their sewer problems a higher priority.
Spokesperson Kendall Richardson presented a petition signed by 45 people, accounting for nearly all of the residents living in her neighbourhood in the southeast part of town.
The petition asks the town to investigate and fix sewer issues in the neighbourhood south of Scott Street and east of the Sorting Gap Marina.
“My neighbourhood is concerned about the excessive sewer problems that we have experienced,” Richardson told council Monday night.
Upwards of three-quarters of the homes in her neighbourhood have had sewer back-up over the last 13 years.
One home has had more than one back-up this year alone while another resident has had six incidents in the 20 years they’ve lived in the neighbourhood, she added.
“Many homes with sewer back-up problems have actually stopped calling Public Works to complain, or the town to ask for assistance, because they feel their issues have not been dealt with in the past and that it’s now a waste of their time,” Richardson noted.
Her own home has had four insurance claims due to sewer back-up since 2000, and the town has come to snake a line through her property twice to prevent two more potential claims.
Richardson has been told there is a sewer bottleneck at the corner of Minnie Avenue and Nelson Street due to pipe narrowing and a level change at that location.
The problem is made worse during times when the sewer system is maxed out due to heavy rainfall.
But Richardson also feels there is a lack of communication between the town and residents.
As far as she knows, none of the many complaints filed by neighbourhood residents were responded to by the town.
Many of the complaints, which were filed online via the town’s website, were deleted due to spam issues.
Richardson suggested the online link to file customer complaints should be removed until the problem is fixed.
She also said if the town isn’t convinced that something needs to be done about the recurring sewer back-ups, they should contact every resident in the neighbourhood and ask them to share details of any problems they’ve experienced.
“The problems in this neighbourhood cannot be dropped or ignored,” she stressed.
“I suggest council move towards immediately investigating and planning repairs for early spring at the latest.”
Operations and Facilities manager Doug Brown said the town has been investigating its sewer system since 2003, and one of the biggest problems is infiltration by groundwater and surface water.
Last year, the town used a closed-circuit camera to record the condition of pipes in the Minnie Avenue and Nelson Street area, and found it was not as critical as other spots in town.
“We have 36 kilometres of pipe that are critical, that have to be addressed,” Brown noted.
He added there’s nothing wrong with the pipes in Richardson’s neighbourhood. Rather, it’s the amount of water getting into the pipes, especially during extreme events like earlier this year.
Coun. Paul Ryan agreed that inflow infiltration has been a major concern of his over the past eight years.
This past June, for instance, the sewage treatment plant treated an average of 1.3 million gallons of wastewater per day that should never have entered the town’s pipes.
“It came from infiltration, from people’s weeping tile, whatever—it’s a major problem in this town,” Coun. Ryan stressed.
“We’ve been doing as much as we can with the limited resources we have,” he added. “We’re going out for grants all the time.”
But Coun. Ryan also noted aging infrastructure is a problem across Ontario, and it would cost $43 billion to fix all of the problems in the province.
“We’re watching this constantly,” he pledged. “The infiltration study has been a great benefit.
“We’ve got to go after the worst places first,” Coun. Ryan reasoned.
He noted if the old clay pipe underneath Central Avenue hadn’t been replaced in recent years, it would have collapsed and no one would be able to flush a toilet in the whole east end of town.
Brown noted the town also has to be putting more money into infrastructure replacement, adding council only has been socking away one-fifth of what it should be to keep pace with its asset management plan.
Council referred Richardson’s presentation and petition to the Operations and Facilities executive committee for its recommendation.
