Auditor-General says Ontario owes the public more details about spills like Hamilton’s Sewergate
Auditor general Bonnie Lysyk says Ontario owes the public more details - and sooner - about pollution spills like the 24-billion-litre leak of sewage into Hamilton's Chedoke Creek.
Lysyk released several reports on the Progressive Conservative government's handling of environmental issues last week, including a specific audit on how the Ministry of Environment, Conservation and Parks deals with spills of potentially hazardous material.
The audit found the ministry routinely fails to make public the quantity of hazardous spills and the harm they cause" - and what information it does give out is not reported in a timely manner."
Lysyk highlighted Hamilton's now-infamous Sewergate sewage spill, which lasted from 2014 to 2018. The public was only alerted to the magnitude of the leak and a provincial cleanup order after The Spectator published details of a secret legal report to council near the end of 2019.
City council was rocked by resident rage over the sewage secret and has since apologized and vowed to post future provincial orders on the municipal website.
But the province should also provide timely and transparent" information to the public about spill locations, responsible parties and potential health or environmental impacts, said Lysyk in a phone interview.
Her audit noted about 90 per cent of the 40,000 spills reported to the ministry between 2016 and 2020 - a time frame that includes both Liberal and Tory governments - were deemed to pose a potential environmental or health risk. About 1,850 spills were reported in the Hamilton area during that period.
We think they need to do more as a ministry to make people aware," Lysyk said.
In a formal response to the audit, the ministry said it agreed with the recommendation and that more spill information would be posted in future on the ministry's data catalogue' website.
But so far, details viewed on the site by The Spectator do not include the responsible party, estimated amounts of spilled material or locations affected. It's also not clear how quickly details about any particular spill will be posted.
That's not good enough, said Environment Hamilton head Lynda Lukasik.
Whodunnit? How big is it? These are the things people want to know (about a spill) - that they deserve to know, especially if there is a repeat offender involved," she said.
In July 2018, the city alerted the public that a sewage spill had occurred, but provided no information about how much sewage escaped or over what period. The province, however, issued the city an order soon afterwards that contained an estimate of spilled human waste, noted Lukasik. Why not share that with the public?"
The spill transparency recommendations in the auditor general's report echo changes proposed in a bill first introduced two years ago by NDP west Hamilton MPP Sandy Shaw, who dubbed the hoped-for legislation the Cootes Paradise Water Accountability Act.
Shaw argued there needs to be a legislative requirement" for the province to quickly disclose relevant spill information to the public. They are deliberately keeping people in the dark," she said. They shouldn't get a pass."
Matthew Van Dongen covers environment and transportation for The Spectator. mvandongen@thespec.com