In the last five years, more than one trillion litres of sewage has leaked into Canada’s lakes and rivers.  Last year alone, data provided by the federal government reported 215 billion litres of raw sewage leaked into our waters across the country. To put that in perspective, that is enough waste to fill nearly 86,000 Olympic-size pools.

Most Canadian cities don’t monitor how much sewage leaks into their rivers, lakes or oceans in real time.  In an effort to change that, Kingston, Ont., has become the first Canadian city to install monitors in its pipes to measure the amount of sewage leaking in real time.

“Up until last year, it has been information after the fact,” Jim Keech, President and CEO of Utilities Kingston told CTV’s Your Morning on Monday.

“For the last 15 or 20 years we have provided information to the public when bypasses occur. But now we have a real-time system developed in house by some of our technical experts,” Keech said.

According to Keech, the system will allow Kingston residents to make informed decisions regarding water activities.  

Kingston, located about 195 kilometres southwest of Ottawa, has a huge community of triathletes. If they want to do some training in the open water, they can check the Utilities Kingston website and then make an educated decision, Keech said. 

According to Keech, sewage leakages or bypasses occur because Kingston’s sewage system was designed to allow them. 

“Many years ago you had one single pipe installed that collected the sewage from homes and businesses,” he said.

“This worked well most of the times, but in situations where you have heavy, more intense rainfalls… The capacities of this single pipe just were not good enough to transport all the material to the sewage plants. So you actually ended up with bypasses or overflows in the water course, to avoid sewage from backing into peoples’ basements,” Keech said.

Over decades, this design feature became less acceptable due to increased knowledge of the hazards associated with water waste.

“We have concerns with things like E.coli but in addition to that, a lot of things are flushed down toilets that shouldn’t be flushed down,” Keech said.

“I am talking needles and prescription drugs,” he added. 

On top of installing the leak monitors, the City of Kingston is also aggressively replacing its outdated sewage system and working with home owners to ensure they are not inadvertently adding to the growing amount of waste in local water.