The City of Toronto has just completed an assessment of the effect we have on Lake Ontario's water quality.
Nine years in the making, the report is part of the wet-weather flow master plan, passed by council in 2003.
"A few years ago, the
International Joint Commission reviewed the state of the Great Lakes and issued a report that pointed to sources of contamination around the lakes," says councillor
John Parker, whose Ward 26 includes large parts of the Don Valley through which much of the city's lakebound rainwater flows. "Toronto didn't do as badly as some, but we had our share of responsibility for the state of Lake Ontario."
The report makes three categories of recommendations related to sanitary sewer systems, wet-weather flow collection and storage systems, and treatment of the water, which collects various contaminants on its way through the city to the lake after rain and snow falls. The report itself is available online
here and in physical form at the Beaches Library, Leaside Library, City Hall Library and the St. Lawrence Library until September 24.
"This is another one of those enormous capital costs that we face that isn't on everybody's radar," Parker says. "It isn't something that's immediately at top of mind when people think of what we need to spend money on now and into the future, but it's something we can't ignore forever and it's a cost we have to build into our budgeting as we look towards the future.”
Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Councillor John Parker
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