#459 Pipe the Poop

Move the Pipe, Not Just the Paperwork

There's a sewage outfall discharging into the Ottawa River within swimming distance of the newly renovated and very popular New Edinburgh Boathouse. The City knows exactly where it is, when it activates, and how much comes out. The public mostly doesn't — because that information lives on an interactive map most residents will never think to look for, describing an overflow point most residents don't know exists.

The red and green combined sanitary and sewer outlet

The permanent fix is sewer separation. West Rockcliffe and Manor Park are named by the City's own Ottawa River Action Plan as among the largest remaining areas that still haven't gone through it — a multi-year, capital-budget-scale undertaking with no fixed completion date. The nearby Hemlock Pumping Station upgrade, explicitly designed to reduce these overflows, sits partly on NCC land and needs federal land-use approval before a shovel goes in the ground. That's not a criticism of the engineering. It's an honest description of how long "permanent" takes.

In the meantime, people swim there.

An Interim Fix That Doesn't Wait for the Permanent One

There's a middle option between "do nothing until separation is complete" and "wait years for the pump station upgrade to clear federal review": extend the outfall pipe itself past the boathouse swim area for the duration of swim season, so the discharge point is no longer inside the zone people are actually swimming in.

This isn't a novel idea. Outfall relocation is a recognized interim CSO mitigation approach elsewhere — Richmond, Virginia's CSO Outfall 004 project included relocating an outfall to a less sensitive receiving point as part of its interim control plan while the underlying capacity fix was still under construction. DC Water posts CSO event indicator lights at outfalls and explicitly advises the public to stay away from discharge points. New York State requires posted signage at every CSO outfall warning of possible contamination after rain. Every one of these is an admission of the same thing Ottawa is dealing with here: the permanent fix takes years, so cities in the meantime manage where the water goes and what the public is told about it.

Extending the pipe doesn't reduce the volume of overflow. It doesn't touch the underlying capacity problem. What it does is take the discharge point out of a spot where people are swimming, while sewer separation and the pump station upgrade work through their multi-year, multi-jurisdiction timeline.

The Jurisdiction Problem, Again

Given that the Hemlock Pumping Station upgrade already needed federal land-use approval because of NCC land, a pipe extension into the river near the boathouse likely runs into the same split-jurisdiction terrain — NCC river frontage, and land recognized as federal heritage. That's worth saying plainly: the same jurisdictional overlap that's slowing the permanent fix could just as easily be used as a reason not to act on an interim one. It shouldn't be. An interim measure with a defined end date is exactly the kind of project federal and municipal bodies coordinate on when there's will to do it quickly.

The Other Rockcliffe Water Story

This isn't the only water-safety gap in the immediate area. McKay Pond, a short distance away, has no rescue ring or reach gaff on site and no lifeguard supervision despite a posted 7am–2pm swimming window — a separate near-drowning incident on August 14 made that plain. Different mechanism, same underlying pattern: public recreational water in Rockcliffe Park where the safety infrastructure hasn't kept pace with public use.

Silence From the Ward Office

This outfall sits inside Ward 13, a short walk from one of the ward's best-known landmarks. It has not come up in Rawlson King's newsletter. Not the discharge point, not the Hemlock Pumping Station upgrade, not the interim options while sewer separation works through its multi-year timeline. That's consistent with a pattern that shows up across this ward's other unresolved infrastructure files — the St-Laurent LRT tunnel's structural risk, the transit oversight gap — where the councillor's public communications skip past exactly the issues that would require taking a position or pushing City staff for a timeline.

What Should Happen

1. Extend the outfall past the boathouse swim area for the current swim season, as a bridging measure while sewer separation for West Rockcliffe/Manor Park proceeds on its existing timeline — not instead of separation, ahead of it.
2. Publish the CSO outfall locations and activation history near recreational water in plain language, not buried in an interactive map residents have no reason to know exists. If DC Water can post lights at the outfall itself, Ottawa can post a sign at a swim area two hundred metres downstream of one.
3. Confirm the federal approval pathway for an interim extension now, rather than treating jurisdiction as a reason to wait for the permanent fix. If NCC/Parks Canada coordination is required, start it before swim season is over, not after.

The City already knows where this pipe is. The fix that gets people out of the discharge zone this summer doesn't require finishing a decade-long infrastructure project. It requires moving a pipe and posting a sign.