Sound familiar? Quebec City preps for raw sewage dump
1 year after Montreal's flushgate, Quebec City plans its own mass discharge of wastewater
Quebec City will release 135 million litres of untreated water into the St. Lawrence River, starting next week.
The measure will allow city workers to conduct maintenance work on two water treatment and two pumping stations.
Mayor Régis Labeaume said the city has no other option but to do the repairs.
"If it breaks down, it will be ten times worse," he said.
Similar to Montreal, but not the same
The plan may sound vaguely familiar.
In October 2015, Montreal dumped 4.9 billion litres of raw sewage into the river.
Flushgate, as that controversial operation became known, made headlines around the world.
The Montreal sewage dump, however, was 36 times larger than the one Quebec City will perform.
Labeaume said the discharge of raw sewage is not exceptional, but after the storm of protest that preceded the Montreal operation, he said it couldn't be done quietly.
"It's the Montreal events that lead us to explain to the public what it is," said Régis Labeaume. "We call that Montreal syndrome."
Environmental impact negligible, says mayor
Labeaume said the sewage dump is being done at a time of year when it will cause the least damage, and the municipality said the dump will have a negligible impact on the environment.
The raw sewage released will amount to 0.1 per cent of all the wastewater Quebec City treats on average, annually.
The city is asking residents to reduce their use of water during the period of the repair work in order to curb the amount of wastewater that will be released.
Work on the water treatment station in the Sainte-Foy neighbourhood is scheduled to begin on Nov. 22 and is to last for 14 hours.
Repairs on a station at the Baie de Beauport start on Nov. 23 and should last 13 hours.
The shutdown of a pumping station at Poste Saint-Pascal near the Baie de Beauport is scheduled to last six hours. Work will start on Dec. 1 or 2.
The municipality is also planning to undertake repair work in Limoilou next February.
with files from Radio-Canada