Assiniboine Park Zoo found to be draining raw sewage into river

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This article was published 13/08/2017 (2446 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The Assiniboine Park Zoo has been illegally dumping untreated, raw sewage into the Assiniboine River.

The illegal dumping was discovered August 8 by civic crews who were doing routine maintenance on a river crossing chamber, when they were alerted to a strong odour coming from a land drainage outfall, according to a report on a City of Winnipeg website that reports spills of untreated sewage.

According to the entry on the website, on August 11 city crews tracked the sewage to the toilets in a building at the zoo, which had been illegally connected into the land drainage sewer.

The report on the website contains few other details.

Analysis of the water sample taken from the river on August 8 revealed the presence of E. coli but the city website doesn’t indicate levels of contamination.

The website indicates that the province was informed about the illegal connection August 9.

The website states the zoo building’s toilet has been “disabled” until the Zoo connects it properly to the waste water line.

It’s not known when the illegal connection from the toilet to the land drainage system was first made or how much sewage was spilled into the Assiniboine River.

A spokeswoman for the Assiniboine Park Conservancy, which operates the park and zoo, said the illegal connection was tracked to an ice cream concession building inside the zoo, Winston’s Ice Cream Shoppe.

“Upon receipt of that information, we immediately ceased operation of the concession,” Conservancy spokeswoman Laura Capak wrote in an email in response to the Free Press. “We have been cooperating fully with the City of Winnipeg and will continue to do so.”

Capak said the illegal hook-up predates the establishment of the Conservancy in 2008, as no drainage work had been carried out at the concession building.

aldo.santin@freepress.mb.ca

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