Poo at the zoo: Province investigating sewage dumped into river

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This article was published 14/08/2017 (2445 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It’s too early to tell what, if any, repercussions the Assiniboine Park Conservancy will face after it was disclosed it had been dumping raw sewage from a toilet in the zoo into the Assiniboine River for several years.

A provincial government spokesman said staff from the department of Sustainable Development has launched an investigation, but it’s at the preliminary stage.

“The incident is under investigation, so it would be premature to decide what, if any enforcement action might be taken,” a provincial government spokesman wrote in an email to the Free Press.

Meanwhile, city hall and the Conservancy said their staff are working together to determine if there are other illegal sewage connections into the land-drainage network at the park and zoo.

The illegal dumping of sewage into the river was revealed Monday afternoon on the City of Winnipeg’s website, on a page that reports incidents of spills of untreated sewage into the rivers that flow through the city.

The situation was discovered Aug. 8 by civic crews doing routine maintenance on a river crossing chamber, when they noticed a strong odour coming from a land-drainage outfall. Crews tracked the sewage three days later to the toilets at an ice cream concession building at the zoo, which had been illegally connected into the land-drainage line.

The province said the Conservancy immediately shut the concession when informed of the illegal hookup. The city reported on its website that a sample taken from the drainage outfall for analysis found levels of E. coli.

A Conservancy spokeswoman said Monday it’s not known when the illegal hookup was done, explaining that no work had been authorized on the building since the Conservancy took over management of the park and zoo back in 2008.

Archie Pronger, head of the Conservancy’s facilities and capital projects, said Tuesday the building that houses Winston’s Ice Cream Shoppe is a seasonal operation, adding the washroom was small, for staff only.

Pronger said an investigation was launched internally to determine if anyone on staff now might have known about the illegal connection, adding, however, there’s been a complete turnover of staff over the years.

“There’s nobody here on staff who used to work for the city in that capacity,” Pronger said. “I don’t know how the building was procured or constructed. I don’t know whether it would have been a city employee or a contractor (who did the illegal connection) or how that would have been put together. At this point, it’s really not known.”

Conservancy staff are working with city crews to track the illegal hookup to determine if sewage facilities from any other buildings are connected to the same land-drainage line, he said.

aldo.santin@freepress.mb.ca