Cootes – mackaycartoons

Tuesday November 26, 2019

December 3, 2019 by Graeme MacKay

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Tuesday November 26, 2019

Hamilton city council, staff have kept a 24-billion litre sewage spill secret

A confidential city report shows councillors have known since January that 24 billion litres of untreated sewage escaped undetected over a four-year period from a massive sewer overflow tank into Chedoke Creek, which runs along Highway 403 into Cootes Paradise.

November 23, 2019

The watery sewage — enough to fill 10,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools, or an area of 12 square kilometres to a depth of two metres — seeped out of the tank because a gate had been left partially open for more than four years.

The confidential report to council on Jan. 16, along with a second one on Sept. 4, show city staff have been recommending that details of the spill be kept secret from the public as long as possible because of potential legal action the city could face.

The two reports, obtained by The Hamilton Spectator, state Ontario’s environment ministry is investigating the massive spill, which could lead to charges.

Neither the remediation work or any fine levied would be covered by the city’s insurance, according to the reports.

The Spectator informed the city it had obtained two confidential reports and submitted a number of questions Wednesday morning to councillor Lloyd Ferguson, chair of the public works committee. Late Wednesday morning, council went in camera to discuss The Spectator’s questions.

Several councillors, including Ferguson, declined to comment when they emerged from the in-camera session.

March 28, 2009

About an hour later, in response to The Spectator’s questions, the city put out a press release acknowledging publicly for the first time that approximately 24 billion litres of watery sewage had been discharged because a gate at the King Street West tank had been left partially open for 4.5 years.

“Hamilton city council takes this matter very seriously and today is sharing additional information that has become available based on the city’s investigations,” the press release stated.

Lynda Lukasik, executive director of Environment Hamilton, said the long-standing discharge from the overflow tank “is shocking.”

“That’s a brutal impact on Cootes Paradise and Hamilton Harbour,” said Lukasik. “Those (overflow) tanks are just a Band-Aid solution.”

“The City of Hamilton better have a good plan going forward to make sure it doesn’t happen again,” she added.

The two confidential reports were prepared jointly by the city’s public works department and the legal and risk management services division of the corporate services department.

The reports state the city was unaware that a bypass gate at the King Street West overflow tank across from the Cathedral of Christ the King had been left partially open from Jan. 28, 2014, until July 18, 2018, allowing untreated sewage to flow into the creek for 1,633 days.

During heavy rainfall, a combined sewer overflow tank captures a mix of rainwater and sewage that would previously have flowed untreated into Cootes Paradise, the harbour or the lake. Once the wet weather subsides, the overflow can be pumped from the tank to the main sewage treatment plant at Woodward Avenue. (Hamilton Spectator)

Saturday January 9, 2015

January 8, 2016 by Graeme MacKay

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday January 9, 2015

Hamilton Harbour becoming giant goldfish bowl

Millions of tiny ones are swimming around after a summer that saw weather and water conditions turn Cootes Paradise into a massive breeding ground for the carp-like creatures.

The non-native fish species — that people buy as pets and sometimes, ill-advisedly, release into local waterways — have suddenly gone viral in the bay and have become the latest complication in its rehabilitation.

It used to be that goldfish in the Ontario outdoors had a very low survival rate and little success at reproducing.

But officials at the Royal Botanical Gardens and the Department of Fisheries and Oceans Canada say that’s been changing in recent years in the warmer weather we’ve been experiencing.

They’ve noticed exponential increases in numbers being counted at the Desjardins Canal Fishway — from 20 or less per year in the late 1990s to 2,500 this past spring. And early this winter, millions of five centimetre, young-of-the-year goldfish have been seen swimming in giant schools at various locations in the harbour, including the section of the canal below the railway bridge.

“They seem to be heading toward taking over,” says Tys Theysmeyer, the head of natural lands for the RBG.

Becky Cudmore, an invasive species expert with Fisheries and Oceans Canada, says it’s a problem being noticed at numerous locations in the lower great lakes, with Hamilton Harbour being a particular hot spot.

“With increased warming trends we’re seeing an increased ability of some fish species to survive in areas where we wouldn’t think they could survive,” she says.

Theysmeyer says low water levels in the early summer in Cootes Paradise — where fish tend to reproduce — that suddenly rose later on also assisted goldfish reproduction. Shallow water is good for eggs, slightly deeper water is better as the tiny fish start to swim around.

When water levels jumped 50 cms, doubling the volume of water, Cootes Paradise “basically turned into a goldfish factory,” he says.

Most troubling, he says, is when the invading fish become fully grown. They can reach more than 40 cms in length, much smaller than mature carp, but big enough to cause similar damage to a fragile ecosystem.

Carp are destructive because they crowd out other species and are constantly churning up the bottom in their search for food. This inhibits the growth of plants and indigenous fish species.

The RBG has taken extensive steps to push them out of Cootes Paradise, most notably by using the fishway that operates like a gate for hand sorting of desirable and non-desirable species trying to return from Hamilton Harbour to Cootes in the spring. Those efforts have been largely successful.

But huge populations of carp remain in the harbour throughout the year and are a factor in discouraging the growth of desirable fish species such as pike and bass there. (Source: Hamilton Spectator)