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MAY 14, 2015 | Volume 28 No. 58
CITY FINED $30K FOR SEWAGE LEAK INTO RIVER EMPLOYEE ERRORS LED TO ENOUGH SEWAGE TO FILL TWO CANADA GAMES POOLS TO FLOW INTO THE SOUTH THOMPSON; PUBLIC WAS NOT NOTIFIED The City of Kamloops’ O’Connor lift station in Dallas, from which 4,300 cubic metres of sewage was released into a nearby creek and drainage ditches, which drain into the South Thompson River.
ANDREA KLASSEN STAFF REPORTER andrea@kamloopsthisweek.com
Eight months after it released about five-million litres of sewage into the South Thompson River, the City of Kamloops is coming clean about its mistake — but questions remain as to why it took so long for the public to be notified of the September spill. Mayor Peter Milobar downplayed the decision to keep the sewage backup under wraps until the province had finished its investigation and penalized the city, saying there was no health risk from the spill. “In the grand scheme of things, it’s not a large volume. In terms of what was happening, there wasn’t really much anyone could do once it had already happened,” he said. At a Community Environmental Justice Forum earlier this month, the city was ordered to spend $20,000 on fish-habitat rehabilitation on Tranquille Creek and install $8,000 worth of alarms on its
sewage system to prevent a similar backup from going undetected. Milobar said the penalties themselves show the incident was “very minor.” City public works director Jen Fretz chalked up some of the decision to a mistake on the city’s part. As is required, the city informed the Ministry of Environment its Dallasarea lift station had backed up and sent sewage into a nearby creek leading to the river. But, Fretz added, the city didn’t realize it was supposed to alert the Interior Health Authority, the Tk’emlups Indian Band and others, and only learned this spring the province had never done so. Rob Fleming, environmental health officer with the IHA, said the health authority typically works with the water provider, in this case the City of Kamloops, on a public messaging around the risk to human health.
DAVE EAGLES/KTW
How and why the leak happened: Turn to page A6 “In this instance, Interior Health would have indicated there was a low risk to human health due to the quick dilution and the robustness of the Kamloops Water Treatment Plant,” he said. “Although Interior Health was not informed at the time of the incident, we do not feel that human health was impacted as a result of these actions.”
Asked why the city did not release the information on its own, Fretz was at a loss for an answer. “I don’t really know how to answer that question. If it was a public emergency, it’s something that we would have announced at the time,” she said. Milobar said that if boaters or others using the river during that time frame are concerned
about the sewage, they should consider what else is in the water. “If you think that the South Thompson River untreated is pure water, you should be questioning that every day of the year because there’s feedlots near it, there’s runoff, there’s lots of things,” he said. “I think we have to keep this in perspective of the actual volume compared to the volume of the river.” Other councillors contacted by KTW said they are comfortable
with how the incident was handled. “I don’t think there was any real threat that they perceived that would have required them to notify the public,” Coun. Denis Walsh said, adding he’s satisfied the incident won’t happen again. “It was definitely a serious and unfortunate event, but as soon as they became aware of it, they dealt with it properly.” Coun. Donovan Cavers said he wasn’t pleased to learn about
the release of sewage into the waterway, but believes the incident is minor compared to another that occurred in the city in 2011. In that event, a sewer line in Mission Flats failed, forcing the city to pump waste into a Domtar retention pond after a waste backup shut down the nearby lift station. “This is bad, but it’s not as bad as the olden days. So, that’s how I slept last night,” Cavers said. Asked whether he felt there should have been more public notice, Cavers, too, was lukewarm on the idea. “I don’t know about initially,” he said. “You might have had people going out with shovels and trying to help, but the city crews were doing the best they could.”
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