The first comprehensive look at the amount of raw sewage flowing into the Great Lakes from cities in Canada and the United States has found that billions of litres are being dumped untreated every year into the sources of drinking water for communities on both sides of the border.
Read the article from the globe and mail….
The largest discharges came from big cities such as Detroit, Cleveland and Toronto, where antiquated sewage treatment systems are regularly overwhelmed when it rains and their contents swept untreated into the lakes. But even smaller communities, such as Ontario’s London and Kingston, release large quantities of raw sewage.
Information on the discharges was compiled by the Sierra Legal Defence Fund, based mainly on estimates the environmental group obtained from the municipalities themselves. According to city figures, sewage dumping occurs hundreds of times a year, releasing a cocktail of human waste, disease-causing organisms and hundreds of synthetic chemicals from drugs and personal care products.
The total volume of untreated waste at the 20 cities from which the group obtained information was about 98 billion litres a year, enough to fill 37,000 Olympic-size swimming pools with sewage. This volume likely underestimates the magnitude of the pollution problem because it is based on cities representing only about a third of the region’s 35 million residents.
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