Confusion at the Ontario Ministry of the Environment Threatens Ontario's Fresh Water Ecosystems


"The ministry needs to rebuild its internal technical expertise"
Environmental Commissioner of Ontario. 2010. "Sewage Treatment: Not Good Enough" in Redefining Conservation, ECO Annual Report, 2009-10. Toronto: The Queen's Printer for Ontario.

The Ontario Minsitry of the Environment has published the results of a 6 month technical review of small waste water treatment facilities in Ontario, focusing specifically on the facilities in the Municipalities of French River and St. Charles. The report, 10EBR006.R, deals primarily with the Noelville Sewage Lagoons (NSL) in the Municipality of French River and is a tragedy of errors, beginning with their conclusion that,

"The facility was designed to operate as a continuous plug flow reactor"
MOE review 10EBR006.R

The problem is that the NSL facility is NOT a continuous plug flow reactor. The NSL facility consists of two large open air waste stabilization ponds. That fact was clearly indicated in the original Certificate of Approval and in the Engineering specifications for the construction of the lagoon.

"This approval is for the construction of a sewage treatment system consisting of a 300 day retention waste stabilization pond"
Certificate of Approval #1-485-77-006, issued for construction of the works, June 13, 1977


Open air waste stabilization ponds are fundamentally different from plug flow reactors and the different types of facilities require different operating guielines. How could the government officials get it so wrong? Apparently, apathy and incompetence are de rigueur at the Ontario Ministry of the Environment.

Noelville sewage lagoons
Satellite image of Noelville sewage lagoons off of highway 64. The town of Noelville is to the left of the lagoons.

The review was initiated in response to an application under the Environmental Bill of Rights. The contents of the original application and supplemental material requested by MOE staff clearly indicate that the NSL facility is a waste water stabilization pond. The point of the application for review was that MOE officials determined the capacity of the facility using a model of a plug flow reactor. Rather than accepting the possiblility of an error and addressing the concerns in the application for review, the MOE 'experts' simply declared that the facility is actually a plug flow reactor. This Orwellian declaration cannot change the fact the the NSL facility was designed and constructed as a waste stabilization pond and operates in batch treatment mode.

I have submitted a response outlining some of the problems with the review to the MOE and to the Environmental Commissoner of Ontario (ECO). The MOE officials are not interested, but the office of the ECO has indicated that they may comment on the matter in their annual report in 2012, fifteen months after the review was completed. I have also contacted various government officials but they all appear to be quite happy with this departure from reality, because they can now claim that there are no problems with the guidelines for the operations of Ontario's 100s of waste water treatment lagoons. This 'bury our heads in the sand' approach apparently serves those in Toronto well, but it signals an impending environmental crisis in Ontario due to their mismanagement of hundreds of sewage treatment facilities accross the province.

More 'highlights' of the MOE review will be posted shortly.

This slideshow shows what is at risk if this
official incompetence is allowed to persist.

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"The province has increasingly stepped away from some key Environmental assessment (EA) decision-making responsibilities, and the Ministry of the Environment (MOE) is not adequately meeting its vital procedural oversight role. As a result, the EA process retains little credibility with those members of the public who have had to tangle with its complexities.
Environmental Commissioner of Ontario. 2008. "Environmental Assessment: a vision lost." in Getting to K(No)w, ECO Annual Report, 2007-08. Toronto: The Queen's Printer for Ontario.



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