Beach closure & sewage discharge report - July 19, 2023
Dear Community members,
Many of you were shocked and saddened to see the main beach close due to a sewage discharge, from Sunday until today. We understand these feelings entirely.
Having received two consecutive clean water-test results from the Department of Health, the beach is now re-opened.
Below, I am sharing for full community transparency:
- how the wharf lift station is designed to function
- what went wrong & how we responded, and
- what we are doing to prevent a recurrence in future.
Before this, a few other quick updates:
I want to offer that if any of you are seeking relief from hot & humid summer weather, and wish to sit in an air-conditioned space to cool down, you are welcome to visit the Schoolhouse kitchen, here at 730 Victoria Rd, any time that the municipal office is open. There’s tea and coffee and sometimes also snacks available to share.
There is a deadline of July 27 for expressing interest in providing Canada Post services to the community from September onwards. (See last newsletter for details)
With thanks,
Anna Keenan
Chief Administrative Officer for the Rural Municipality of Victoria
Sewage Discharge & Beach Closure - Report to Community, 19 July 2023
How the wharf lift station is designed to function
The wharf lift station is a tank that collects all wastewater from the businesses on the wharf, both kitchens and bathrooms. When the station is working correctly, two pumps within the tank activate, to pump the contents of the the tank into the interconnected municipal sewage system on the land.
If those two pumps in the lift station tank fail to activate - which is what occurred last week – the tank will become full, and a warning light switches on which indicates that the tank needs immediate attention.
The tank also has a ‘bypass’ pipe which, years ago, was intended to empty overflow directly into the harbour, when the tank was installed decades ago. This was environmentally unacceptable under more modern sewage standards, and so a ‘bypass cap’ was installed many years ago. This cap effectively buys a small amount of additional time, before an over-full tank overflows from the lid of the tank.
Overall: this is an outdated lift station. It was built long before the municipal wastewater system, but was connected when that system was installed. While the lift station has newer pumps (replaced about 5 years ago), the station itself has many dated components, and an outdated design. Notably, the station has no modern communication system, which automatically informs operators of a fault in the system. Such a system would have prevented the situation we saw last week.
For these reasons, as well as the need to raise the height of the station to account for future sea-level rise, the Department of Environment has been working with the Municipality over many years, to replace this lift station with a more modern design. Council and the Water & Sewer Commission have allocated budget for this replacement project to take place this year, and we are currently waiting on the engineers, Stantec, to finalize the new designs so we can move forward and have the system installed this fall.
What happened
Around 4pm on Saturday July 15, the Department of Environment Engineers who oversee PEI’s sewage systems received a concerned report from a member of the public. If you were the person who made this report: thank you.
Our Water & Sewer Operator was immediately informed by the provincial engineers, and he immediately acted by arriving at the site, arranging for the overflowing tank to be pumped out, which stopped the discharge by 6pm. On Sunday morning at 7:30, the tank was brought back to full working order, including repairing the pumps and replacing the bypass cap. Our Operator communicated well with staff from the Departments of Environment and Health throughout, including visiting the site multiple times between Sunday and Tuesday, to verify the continued safe functioning of the system, and making clear recommendations to the municipality.
On Sunday morning, the Department of Health made a verbal request to close the beach. This was done out of an abundance of caution, as water testing services were not available on the weekend. They informed us that 3 samples from around the area would be taken on Monday, and that we could expect to hear results by Tuesday morning.
On Tuesday night, we heard the results of the first set of tests: enterococci levels were 0 (deep water), 2 (beach) and 11 (boat launch) CFU/100mL. This was well below the public health threshold of 70, indicating that the beach was likely safe to re-open. However, the health department asked us to wait a further day for a second set of test results, to reopen the beach.
Today (Wednesday July 19) at 3pm we received the second set of results: 4 (deep water), 1 (beach) and 1 (boat launch) CFU/100mL. This gave the all-clear to reopen.
When the tank was pumped out on Sunday 16th, 3 things were discovered:
1 - the primary reason the pumps had failed to activate was an accumulation of non-degradable wipes which had been flushed into the system. We have had similar issues at some residential sewage tanks in the village in past. These types of wipes - even if they are advertised as ‘flushable’ wipes - are a bane on sewage systems across the Island, and indeed the world over. Click here to reach about one large-scale example.
2 - there was a significant accumulation of grease in the tank. This will also be addressed by working with local restaurants, and also crafting a new municipal bylaw, but it was not the primary cause of the pump failure.
3 - the ‘bypass cap’ on the tank was entirely missing. This was also not the primary cause of the problem, but was a confounding factor which may have made the leak less easily to detect.
In our investigations since Monday, we have since determined that the discharge was likely occurring for at least 5 days before it was reported to Dept of Environment: multiple community members have told us that they saw the emergency warning light on, or seeing discharge from the side of the wharf, but they were not aware what this signified. As a municipality, we consider this lack of detection for such a long period unacceptable, and are taking responsibility for it, by taking the following actions to ensure that this never occurs again in future.
What we are doing to prevent a recurrence
Immediately (today and in the next 2-3 days):
Installing a sign at the emergency light location, informing any member of the public, and the staff of wharf restaurants, that if they see the light on, they must notify the Water & Sewer Operator immediately, on the phone number provided. A paper sign has already been placed as a temporary measure, and an aluminium sign has been ordered for installation as soon as it is printed. Such a sign was requested by our Operator to one of our past CAOs, and we are glad to be finally acting on this requirement.
A lock will be added to the lift-station access hatch, so that it can only be opened by the certified operator or his staff. The lack of a lock is a potential explanation for why the bypass cap was missing.
Making changes in the local support for our water & sewer operator, including adequate training, to ensure more-regular monitoring of any manual systems in the village, improved communication and faster response times.
This public report, so that all members of the community have the information they need to be able to be able to act, should they notice anything out of the ordinary.
In the next few weeks, we will:
Install a siren/alarm that activates whenever the warning light activates, to ensure that the operator is immediately aware of the problem so it can be addressed within hours, rather than days.
Ensure that there is signage in all restaurant washrooms discouraging flushing of wipes.
Get clear commitments to a delivery timeline from our engineering firm for finalizing the Wharf lift-station Upgrade Project’s approval package, tender package, and tender closing dates.
Replace the temporary bypass cap installed on Sunday morning with a more permanent cap.
In the next few months:
Staff will to draft and recommend to Council a new bylaw requiring restaurants to keep a record of their grease-trap cleanouts, and for this cleaning out to occur every 4 weeks during restaurant opening season, or when grease-traps are 25% full, whichever is more frequent.
We will publish the tender for the Wharf lift station upgrade, so it is able to be completed by the end of the year.
As CAO, I will report on progress against these actions at every Council meeting. Please contact your elected representatives on Council if you have any further concerns about this unfortunate incident.
We hope that you, as the public we serve, will collectively hold Council, and thereby staff, to account for delivering on these important actions, for protection of public health, and our environment.
Thank you for reading,
Anna Keenan
Chief Administrative Officer for the Rural Municipality of Victoria