Evidence of meeting #14 for Environment and Sustainable Development in the 41st Parliament, 2nd session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was area.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Conservative
Stephen Woodworth Conservative Kitchener Centre, ON
Has your city received assistance, as we heard Hamilton has, from Environment Canada's Centre for Inland Waters? Did those scientists get involved in your efforts too?
Executive Director, Engineering and Construction Services, City of Toronto
Absolutely. As I noted, we are quite excited about this high-rate treatment facility that we would like to construct as soon as the first leg of our tunnel system is constructed. We have been working with our colleagues, scientists, and engineers at Environment Canada for over a decade, looking at different technologies and how you would squeeze efficiencies out of that technology. Working with them, we retrofitted a stormwater tank at one of our sewage treatment plants based on computer modelling and physical models that were undertaken at the inland waters centre.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Harold Albrecht
Thank you, Mr. Woodworth. You're time is up.
We'll move now to Mr. Choquette.
François Choquette NDP Drummond, QC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I would also like to thank all of our witnesses for joining us today.
As I was saying earlier when the mics were off, I am really glad that you are here and that we're doing this study on the Great Lakes. I think it's critical. The Great Lakes are a vitally important source of drinking water for your cities. In fact, Canada should have a national water strategy, but unfortunately, that has yet to happen.
My first question is for the three of you, but perhaps a little more so for Mr. Ulrich given that he talked about this.
The Canada-Ontario Great Lakes water quality agreement expired in 2012. The government promised that the agreement would be renewed quickly. Unfortunately, we still have no agreement.
Were your cities consulted on their needs as part of the agreement? Does Ontario consult with you so you can make recommendations to the federal government?
Executive Director, Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Cities Initiative
What we do is interact primarily with the province on this. The federal government is very aware of our interest in this. But obviously in respect of the way business is done in Canada, we basically have waited until the federal government and the provincial government sort out the essential elements of the Canada-Ontario agreement. The reason it has been held up is that the water quality agreement from which the Canada-Ontario agreement flows wasn't final until just a little over a year ago, February 2013.
There were a lot of things that needed to be done in terms of getting the new water quality agreement up and running, and my sense is that there was just so much going on at once, it was difficult to focus on the Canada-Ontario agreement very specifically. We think it's very important that it go forward.
We have had preliminary discussions with the provincial government about the types of things that we think would be helpful in that agreement and once we have a memorandum of understanding, really kind of setting priorities within the agreement so we can have an understanding and agreement on what's most important to move ahead with first. But we think it's absolutely essential that it happens sooner rather than later.
NDP
François Choquette NDP Drummond, QC
Thank you.
Mr. Ulrich, you talked in general terms about climate change and its impact. The flooding in Thunder Bay, among other things, was mentioned. I am convinced that climate change is putting pressure on Hamilton and Toronto to adapt their infrastructure as well.
You talked about runoff, flooding and places that don't have enough water. And given the presence of ports, you probably have to monitor water levels there too.
I assume all of those things are included in your list of requests for the Canada-Ontario agreement on Great Lakes water quality. In other words, financial consideration needs to be given to climate change and investments need to be made in green infrastructure in order to adapt and to even out the situation as far as flooding and drought in other areas go.
Is that part of what you are asking for? The question is for all three of you.
Executive Director, Engineering and Construction Services, City of Toronto
Perhaps to provide a bit of context, it's not unique to Toronto. We've experienced a number of extreme weather events over the last number of years. In Toronto, the history goes back to about the mid-1980s. In August of 2005, we had the biggest storm since our regional storm, Hurricane Hazel, in 1954. We had over 4,500 instances of basement flooding. It forced us through our council to take a very critical and hard-nosed look at our infrastructure because the initial feeling was that it was old infrastructure, and that basically it was just not able to deal with this. It was dilapidated infrastructure.
As we did our detailed reviews, there was nothing wrong with the infrastructure. The infrastructure in the areas that were most impacted was built in the 1950s and 1960s. In Toronto, that's some of the newest infrastructure that we have. It simply wasn't designed for these extreme storms.
I'll throw some numbers out, and I apologize. We designed our storm drainage systems back in the fifties and sixties for a one-in-two-year to a one-in-five-year return storm, a storm that you would expect to see every five years, for example. That storm, August 2005, was in excess of a one-in-100-year storm. One of the things that we found was that during that period, and this is not unique to Toronto, we developed just as quickly as we could get approvals and we could get the servicing in place, so in the Toronto context we have what I'd call a series of soup bowls, and we have houses in those soup bowls. If you're at the bottom of the soup bowl, then once that sewer system is overloaded, it's going to begin to flood, and as a result of that flood, water ends up in our sanitary sewer system, and then it basically backs up into people's basements.
Council directed us to provide a much higher level of service, to a one-in-100-year storm. It's the level of service that we provide for new development in the province of Ontario. You can imagine what it would take in terms of infrastructure to intercept that storm volume that otherwise would have just ponded in the middle of that urban centre. It's unbelievable. It's massive. We have very little room to put stormwater ponds because there isn't much green space in these areas. You're looking at twinning-pipes underground storage systems.
To be very brief, we're wholly supportive of green infrastructure, but when you look at green infrastructure, you can probably intercept maybe 5 mm to 10 mm of rainfall. The storm that we were dealing with was 150 mm, so you need much more than green. Green helps, but it doesn't get to the root cause of one of these major storms.
The fact is we're seeing these storms more frequently than we have before. It's incumbent upon us to do something about it, but it requires an infusion of funding for that.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Harold Albrecht
Thank you very much. Your time is up.
We'll move now to Mr. Sopuck for seven minutes.
Conservative
Robert Sopuck Conservative Dauphin—Swan River—Marquette, MB
Thank you very much. I found all the presentations extremely interesting.
I'd like to ask Mr. Murray a question about the Randle Reef project. I understand that our government is partnering with you on remediating that particular site. Could you describe that project for us?
City Manager, City of Hamilton
You're absolutely right, the funding of that $140-million project is split between the federal and provincial governments and the community equally. Basically, what we have is a coal tar deposit that is equivalent to what we believe is in Sydney, Nova Scotia, and it is a containment strategy that we are all sharing in the funding of. Work will be under way starting next year and it will extend over about a 10-year period. Effectively, what we intend on doing is containing and capping it, and overtopping of that we will create a hard asphalt membrane, which will be utilized by the port authority.
It is a project that's been long on the books. It is a significant contribution to cleaning up the harbour as this deposit has been there for several decades. The technology being used, I think, was described earlier. It's exactly the same. It's one of these things that the community was quite happy to finally come to a conclusion with. As I said before, the federal government I think did a great job of helping to lead us to this conclusion.
Conservative
Robert Sopuck Conservative Dauphin—Swan River—Marquette, MB
Our bias, of course, is for spending taxpayers' money on projects that actually generate real environmental results, so this is one that our government is particularly proud of.
I was fascinated, Mr. Murray, when you said that about half of Hamilton and the area is agricultural. Did I hear that right?
City Manager, City of Hamilton
Yes. I think the image of most people...and I'm originally from New Brunswick, so my stereotypical understanding of Hamilton before I moved there was that of the industry and the harbour and the pollution. The truth is that we are more than 50% rural, agricultural. Our urbanized area is growing, but by and large our economy is much more diverse than it's been in the last several decades. We're no longer just a steel town. We are probably one of the more diverse economies in the country. We're more of a knowledge economy than we are really manufacturing.
Conservative
Robert Sopuck Conservative Dauphin—Swan River—Marquette, MB
In terms of runoff, sometimes the intensification of agriculture can increase runoff and create issues with phosphorus. Do you see that in your area? And if so, how would you deal with that, or any non-point source pollution issue, for that matter?
City Manager, City of Hamilton
I'll start and I know John is going to want to talk about this as well.
We have over the last several decades been focused on the contributions to the harbour from our water/waste water treatment facilities and as well dealing with problems such as the coal tar situation that Randle covers. Our shift now is more to what happens at the headwaters of these stream systems. Watershed planning is obviously key to our future, and the rural area, obviously, does contribute to some of the problems that we experience downstream. We are meeting with John and the conservation authority from Hamilton, as we speak, to start to forge more of a strategy for dealing with that runoff.
John, maybe you could contribute.
John Hall Coordinator, Hamilton Harbour Remedial Action Plan, City of Hamilton
One of the things that we did over the last few years was studies with monitoring instream during storm events to see how much phosphorus and sediment were coming through the system. This was done in conjunction with both Environment Canada and the Province of Ontario. It's no surprise but as you get through a storm system, you find that at the peak flow times, there are extremely high levels of phosphorus and sediment. The take-home message is if you see dirty water flowing through the stream, it's not just sediment-laden, it will likely be heavily laden with phosphorus.
To give you a feel for things, our watershed contributes about half the flow into Hamilton harbour. The other half, as it was previously mentioned, comes from the waste water treatment plants.
In the past, the heavy burden of phosphorus that was contributed by the waste water treatment plants overwhelmed the watershed. Now, with upgrades that are going to be taking place to these waste water treatment plants with tertiary treatment, it's our watersheds that we have to focus on. And we literally have to cut in half the amount of phosphorus coming into the watershed.
The simplest analogy is that right now we have an amount of phosphorus every day going into Hamilton Harbour that is about four times the equivalent of my body mass—every day. Four guys like me, made up of phosphorus, jump into the harbour. We will cut it down to one person jumping in, made out of phosphorus, from our waste water treatment plants, and we need to do the same in our watersheds.
Conservative
Robert Sopuck Conservative Dauphin—Swan River—Marquette, MB
Obviously, that will require an interaction with the agricultural community. I'd be interested in hearing about how you're coordinating this with the agricultural community. Second, I don't know if you've heard about the New York City watershed project. You have heard about that? New York City sent funds upstream and paid producers to change their farming practices, which resulted in very significant improvements in water quality for New York. Would you be willing to entertain that kind of program, assuming there was help from other levels of government? And I'll make the point that out of the Growing Forward program under our agriculture policy framework, those kinds of projects can actually be funded.
I was wondering if you would be interested in looking at those kinds of policies.
Coordinator, Hamilton Harbour Remedial Action Plan, City of Hamilton
We have two task teams that we've put together for watershed. One is the rural watershed; the other is the urban. And it's exactly programs like that, that the rural watershed people would be looking at.
I want to make it clear, though, that if you look at the amount of phosphorus and sediment that's contributed in most watersheds, and certainly in the Hamilton area, per hectare area, your urban area will generate much more phosphorus and sediment per hectare than your rural area will, under normal conditions.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Harold Albrecht
Thank you very much.
Thank you, Mr. Sopuck.
We'll move now to Mr. McKay for seven minutes.
Liberal
John McKay Liberal Scarborough—Guildwood, ON
Thank you, Chair.
And thank you, each of you, for your excellent presentations.
I'll start with Mr. Ullrich. This is something that was not in your presentation, but I've been thinking about it. We've had a brutal winter right across the watershed, if you will. I'm given to understand that Lake Superior has almost frozen over. It's the first time in maybe a generation that it's actually happened. So it's reasonable to anticipate that there's a lot of stored ice and snow that's going to be coming into the watershed in a potentially very short period of time. In your capacity, or in other joint areas of responsibility, what's been the thinking?
Executive Director, Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Cities Initiative
You are absolutely right. Actually, as I flew over Lake Michigan today I didn't see any open water there either. The latest figure I saw, about a week ago, was 88% coverage across the Great Lakes. It went down a little bit, but with days like today the coverage is becoming greater, as well. It has been very cold and very snowy.
Just before our meeting, I was on the phone with Mayor Keith Hobbs of Thunder Bay. First of all, he said it was minus 40 there. This is going to be a very serious issue. We've had six feet of snow in Chicago this year, and most of it has stayed.
What is going to be critical is what happens in the springtime if we get a really strong warming trend right away. The real killer—and Mr. D'Andrea probably knows this better than I do—is when there's still snow on the ground and the ground is frozen, and you get a rainfall. The volumes of water that have to be dealt with are just phenomenal.
There isn't a whole lot that can be done right now other than knowing that it's going to happen. Just as an example of the way we try to operate, after Thunder Bay was hit so hard and their waste water treatment plant got knocked out completely, the mayor of Grand Rapids was in touch with the mayor of Thunder Bay. They had bad floods in Grand Rapids, Michigan, last spring. It wasn't a very high-tech approach, but basically people from all over the city came together and sandbagged around the waste water treatment plant. We can't do that long term.
Liberal