City reports unknown amount of untreated wastewater discharged into Hamilton Harbour
Published October 5, 2021 at 8:58 am
The City of Hamilton is reporting on Tuesday (Oct. 5) that an unknown amount of untreated wastewater has been discharged in Hamilton Harbour.
According to a press release, the City said equipment failure at the Woodward Avenue Wastewater Treatment Plant, coupled with the heavy rainfall of the past couple of days, has resulted in wastewater being discharged into Hamilton Harbour without treatment.
“The issue occurred in the screening area of the treatment plant – where two of the plant’s four-bar screens failed and forced a temporary full-plant bypass to avoid permanent damage to the facility and surrounding infrastructure,” the release said.
“This was a very unusual circumstance and something the City has not experienced since 2015.”
The release goes on to say that the failed equipment has been repaired and the plant is back to operating at full capacity but the volume of wastewater that was discharged into Hamilton Harbour is still “being calculated.”
The City also experienced overflow events at four combined sewer overflow tanks (Royal Ave, Main/King, Greenhill Ave and Red Hill Valley Pipe) and four other monitored locations (Pleasant/Edenbridge, Wellington St. N, Wentworth St. N and Strathearne Ave. N) during the recent storm.
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As of Tuesday morning, the Main/King CSO was still in bypass mode.
The City said details for the overflow and bypass events related to the October 3 to 4 storm will be added to its website within the coming days.
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