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Ontario has ordered Hamilton to beef up sewer inspections and sampling to find hidden sewage spills in response to the discovery of two 26-year leaks into Hamilton Harbour.

The Ministry of Environment, Conservation and Parks is so far not requiring the city to send cameras through every sewer pipe in Hamilton - a job the city previously estimated could take four years and $10 million.

But the order issued Wednesday directs the city to assess the feasibility of a detailed in-pipe inspection" as well as the city's preferred option, targeted risk-based" inspections.

The city stumbled upon a repair gone wrong under Burlington Street in November that had been diverting sewage from 50 homes straight into the harbour since 1996. A similar quarter-century spill from 11 homes on Rutherford Avenue was found early this year.

The original 337-million-litre spill discovery prompted Environment Minister David Piccini to suggest in an interview with The Spectator that he would like Hamilton to look at all of the pipes."

I think they're looking for a comparison between (the minister's suggestion) and what we have proposed," said city water director Nick Winters, pointing to a pilot inspection program that began in December sending workers to eyeball maintenance holes in high-risk" areas with older pipes.

We think what we've suggested is faster, equally effective and also cheaper to implement," Winters said.

Provincial environmental officer Tyler Kelly made clear in the order he believed the city could find new unpleasant surprises underground.

It is my opinion that the city of Hamilton does not have adequate programs to inspect, monitor and identify unauthorized connections causing spills," he wrote in the order. It is my opinion that additional spills similar to this event could be currently occurring."

The order gives Hamilton staggered deadlines through the end of June to complete a number of tasks, including coming up with an in-sewer sampling program, the comparative analysis of pipe inspection options and procedures to update discrepancies" in its sewer mapping.

The city has said it believes a contractor inadvertently connected the Burlington Street-area sanitary sewage pipe to a storm drain based on faulty maps available in 1996.

The city is not required to try to figure out how much environmental damage resulted near the pipe outfall that ushered sewage into the boat slip in the industrial port near the end of Wentworth Street North.

But we're going to do that anyway," said Winters, who is planning to bring a detailed report on the order and next steps to councillors in February. We will initiate a project to quantify, to the best of our ability, the impact of the spills."

That could be tough, given the same pipe outfall routinely belches overflow sewage into the harbour during storms that overwhelm Hamilton's aging combined sewers, those that flow both flushed sewage and rain water.

Hamilton is already struggling to fulfil a provincial order to dredge Chedoke Creek after a 24-billion-litre, four-year spill revealed by The Spectator in 2019.

Charges related to that spill remain before the courts.

Matthew Van Dongen is a transportation and environment reporter at The Spectator. mvandongen@thespec.com