Two major storms tore through NOTL in June and July of this year,causing floods on rural and urban streets and, in some cases, resulting in sewage backing up into residential basements in the bedroom community of St. Davids.
The June 18 storm was the heavier of the two. Immediately following that storm, residents questioned whether the wastewater infrastructure was failing.
In this installment of our flooding series, The Lake Report investigated and found the “generational storms” that occurred were simply never planned for and infrastructure in place for wastewater management, while operating as designed, couldn’t keep up with a storm that is supposed to happen only once every 100 years.
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On June 18, St. Davids resident Art Powis awoke to the sound of water in his basement.
What he saw upon descending the stairs of his home, located, on Line 9 in the community’s northeast, would have dropped the heart of any homeowner.
The bathroom was spewing sewage out of every drain.
His toilet, he described, was spitting out effluent like a fountain, his bathtub was filling up with black water and the sewage on the shower floor was a thick, disgusting syrup.
The deluge that flowed out of the drains destroyed his fully finished and furnished basement.
“When I got to the basement and saw a turd floating out of the bathroom door down the slope to the toward the drain in the basement, I’m thinking, ‘What the f*** is going on?'” he told The Lake Report.
His wasn’t the only home to experience a backup of sewage on that day.
“We were flooded out in the early hours of June 18 during the powerful monsoon that blew in and flooded our St. Davids home,” said Marie Giles in a written statement to The Lake Report.
Giles’ photos and a submitted video show the same disgusting mess Powis experienced: soaked and blackened floors, encrusted shower beds and damaged furniture, storage boxes and collectibles.
“Apparently, the local infrastructure could not handle the amount and (the wastewater) had nowhere to go, but back up into our home,” she said, adding to a chorus of opinions coming from throughout the community that local infrastructure is not up to standards.
The Lake Report investigated and found the basement floodings can be attributed to two things: first, the pumping station that sends wastewater from the community to the Niagara Falls wastewater plant wasn’t designed for that much rain in such a short period of time, and second, a process called infiltration.
Phil Lambert, director of water and wastewater services for the region, said the St. Davids pumping station and Niagara Falls wastewater plant, to which the pumping station in St. Davids sends it waste, were both operating to normal standards.
The pumping station is owned by the Niagara Region but maintained by the town of Niagara-on-the-Lake.
“The St. Davids pumping station No. 1 and our Niagara Falls wastewater treatment plant, I can verify that both of those were functioning as designed and appropriately on the day of the storm,” he said.
That being said, Darrin Wills, the town of Niagara-on-the-Lake’s supervisor of environmental services and acting manager of public works, said the normal operating standard wasn’t sufficient.
In one area of Queenson just east of St. Davids on June 18, residents Win and Kal Laar measured an incredible 100 millimetres of rain in an hour on their property.
“Our (flooding) situation was caused basically by the pumping station in St. Davids,” said Wills.
He explained that when the Niagara Falls wastewater plant gets over its capacity the normal process is to bypass partially treated effluent into the nearby Niagara River.
The Lake Report learned earlier this summer partially treated effluent at the plant still gets descreened, removing debris such as sticks and household sanitary products.
That effluent is also disinfected with chlorine to kill all bacteria before being released into the river. It doesn’t, however, get the full treatment to remove things such as phosphorus or organic material.
In the case of June 18, the pumping station in St. Davids was pumping to its capacity but the rainfall amount was too much for it to handle, causing it to create an uncontrolled local bypass situation in St. Davids.
“So with that public basin in St. Davids, obviously there’s no water body nearby, so nowhere for that to overflow,” said Wills, adding the waste then backs up and can re-enter homes.
The backups could have continued for much longer, Wills said, had it not been for town staff quickly responding to the station to manually remove the excess wastewater.
“When the region called the town and said that the level in their holding tank was getting high and needed attention, we called in vacuum sewage trucks to suck it out to lower the level and truck it away to the plants,” he said.
Infiltration or inflow
There is another possible contributor to the basement backups, The Lake Report has learned.
It is a process called infiltration, also known as inflow.
The Niagara Region’s web page describes inflow and infiltration as “water other than sanitary wastewater that enters a sewer system from sources such as roof leaders, cellar (or) foundation drains, yard drains, area drains, drains from springs and swampy areas, maintenance hole covers, cross connections between storm sewers and sanitary sewers and catch basins.”
Darren Mackenzie, the town’s director of operations, said there are other ways infiltration can happen.
He points to cracks in the piping, improperly connected access ports during the construction phase, or by property owners who want to get off an existing septic system and mistakenly connect to the stormwater system.
Upon inspection by town staff with CCTV cameras, cracks in the piping have been counted out, he said.
“There doesn’t seem to be any problems with the main infrastructure.”
In addition, the town has begun putting filters on roadway access points to prevent overland flooding water from entering the sewer system.
“There are 22 different ones in St. Davids that we’ve put those measures in,” he said.
The next step, he added, is for staff to investigate any improper connections homeowners have done.
“People buy houses and maybe (the previous homeowners) have made those connections, or it may have been done by accident, where they think they’re connecting into the storm and they’ve accidentally connected into the sanitary,” he said. “It happens.”
Those inspections won’t begin until next spring.
In the meantime, Wills is reminding homeowners to take preventative measures to ensure their properties and belongings are safe from future massive rainfall events.
He notes, for example, that most homes nowadays have a backflow valve on their sewer line.
“When you buy a home and you call your insurance company for home insurance, one of the very first questions that they ask you is, ‘How far to the nearest fire hydrant?’ And the second question is, ‘Do you have a backflow valve on your sewer line?'”
For Powis, he admits he did not have a backup valve on his line, but “I am in the process now to install one. After that clean up, it went to the top of the list.”
Next: In Part 5 of Summer of Flood we look into a planned rural ditch and culvert clean-up by Town of Niagara-on-the-Lake.
