THE WEEK: 5 things wrong with how Comox tried to hide sewage spill information

THE WEEK: 5 things wrong with how Comox tried to hide sewage spill information

Brooklyn Creek below the Noel Avenue culverts — as it looked after the sewage spill clean-up  |  George Le Masurier photo

THE WEEK: 5 things wrong with how Comox tried to hide sewage spill information

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There’s something fishy going on in the Town of Comox.

Here’s the story in a nutshell: Two pieces of the town’s infrastructure failed and some undetermined amount of raw sewage spilled into Brooklyn Creek for some undetermined length of time. Then, on the afternoon of Sept. 3 (a long Labor Day weekend) the town marshaled an “army” of workers and heavy equipment to dredge out tonnes of accumulated muddy silt and vegetation immediately below the Noel Avenue culverts.

When Decafnation discovered the spill — thanks to several alert readers — we published a commentary on Friday, Sept. 24 asking why the town, including the mayor and councillors, hadn’t informed the public of such a concerning situation.

The very next day, Saturday, Sept. 25, the town — which up to this time had not even publicly acknowledged the sewage spill — issued a news release that implied the incident was no big deal, just a “small leak” that was found and all fixed up in the same day.

And, oh, by the way, said the news release, the mayor and council never knew anything about any of this.

What?

 

FIVE THINGS WRONG

First, as you will see, the facts are that the town did not “discover” raw sewage in the creek. They were told about it.

Second, there is no such thing as a “small leak” of raw sewage into public waterways. It’s always a big deal.

Third, when lumps of human excrement and toilet paper float down a creek, there are obvious public health risks. Dogs regularly drink from the creek. Children have been known to play there. To say otherwise — and the town is not qualified to make such an assessment — is misinformation.

Fourth, the town clearly hoped to hide the sewage leak from the public. When it could not hide it any longer, their communications were so confusing that it couldn’t even get it right about the amount of contaminated soil removed from the creek during the clean-up operations.

And, finally, this is accumulated soil that Brook Place condo residents had complained about to the town starting in February and were told not to worry — including by a letter from Mayor Russ Arnott just a week before that same soil turned out to be, in fact, a problem.

It’s hard to know where to start unpacking all of this. But let’s just start by setting a few facts straight.

 

THE TOWN DID NOT DISCOVER THE PROBLEM

We don’t know who wrote this news release, but we can assume that at least the mayor was involved along with CAO Jordan Wall and most likely the town’s Communications Coordinator Lara Greasley. Public Works Engineer Shelley Ashfield may have also contributed.

The release starts off, “On September 3, Town Staff discovered a small sanitary leak ….”

But the town actually knew about the sewage leak a day earlier on Sept. 2 when staff members of Current Environmental, who were doing field work as part of an independent fish habitat study in partnership with DFO, the Pacific Salmon Foundation and the provincial government observed raw sewage solids and low dissolved oxygen levels in the creek below Noel Avenue. They reported their observations to DFO, PEP and the Town of Comox.

Rupert Wong, a principal of Current Environmental, then gave the town technical advice about how to proceed with source control, spill clean up and remediation, which began on Sept. 3

Town staff didn’t “discover” that sewage was spilling into the creek, but they did subsequently find the source of the leak.

 

HOW MUCH SOIL WAS REMOVED?

The news release didn’t say that a major amount of sewage-contaminated mud and plant growth was removed from below the Noel Avenue culverts, but CAO Jordan Wall said in a follow-up email to Decafnation that 38 cubic meters were taken out.

But Brook Place residents say they witnessed 15 dump truck loads being removed, which they estimated at 180 tonnes.

So Decafnation asked Wong to clarify the number. Wong told us that his staff’s timesheets show that on Sept. 3 vacuum trucks removed 73 cubic meters and excavators dug out a further 38 cubic meters, or 111 cubic meters in total. Depending on the density of each load, that converts to more or less 200 tonnes of material. The timesheets also show that an additional 18 cubic meters was removed on Sept. 7.

 

NO PUBLIC HEALTH CONCERN?

The town’s new release says the creek’s “water was tested and no health risks to the public were identified.” This is misleading.

The water was tested, but only after the clean-up was completed when, if the crews had done their job well, the test should have shown acceptable water quality. There was no test before the clean-up.

Certainly, the public was at some level of risk during the undetermined time that raw sewage was leaking into the creek.

It’s possible that the cracks in sewage and stormwater pipes that transferred sewage into Brooklyn Creek did not suddenly bust wide open. It’s likely that they started as small cracks, perhaps just allowing a trickle to leak downstream, and that over time the cracks grew larger and larger until on or before Sept. 2, whole lumps of human excrement and toilet paper were seen floating in the creek.

When did fecal coliform levels reach the point where a public health risk existed? No one can say for sure. But the town was in no position to say on Sept. 25 that no public health risk ever occurred.

And it appears that our local health authorities were not informed about the sewage spill, although that’s not necessarily unusual, according to Wong.

“When we report spills to PEP, it is like a triage center that processes, evaluates and refers the incident to other agencies,” he told Decafnation via email. “We do not know what other agencies PEP would have referred. In our experience, the health authority will be part of the referral list if there are potentially affected water licenses.”

Wong says that preliminary bacteriological lab results showed the cleanup was effective in bringing fecal coliform levels down, but that the final lab results are not yet in. They are still waiting on lab results for other water quality parameters that will hopefully help delineate non-human fecal coliform sources.

The Town of Comox does not regularly test waters in Brooklyn Creek or any of its waterways despite being advised to do so in several past consulting engineer’s recommendations.

 

WHO KNEW WHAT, WHEN?

The basis of this matter is that a raw sewage leak into Brooklyn Creek was discovered and has been fixed. Stuff happens.

But the most disturbing aspect of this story is that the Town of Comox tried to hide this information from the public and, it appears, also from our elected mayor and councillors.

The public should have been informed right away.

But what about the mayor and councillors? What did they know and when did they know it?

It’s hard to believe that the town’s CAO didn’t at least inform Mayor Arnott on Sept. 2 or 3. But let’s assume the news release is accurate. The mayor and council didn’t know. In the corporate world, not reporting up about something this serious that has high negative public relations potential would trigger major consequences.

So what have the mayor and council done to ally public concerns or clarify information since the sewage spill became public? So far, it appears they’ve done nothing beyond writing a news release.

There was no public discussion of the matter last night at the council’s first regular meeting since Sept. 25. There was a special council meeting called for Sept. 22 where they might have discussed it, but that meeting was held entirely in-camera.

And from what we’ve seen on social media, councillors have only referred people to the town’s news release. Publicly speaking, no council member has expressed outrage. No council member has shared their thoughts about how to prevent such a spill from happening again or how to catch it sooner. No call has been made for regular water testing.

No councillor has expressed concern about what effect such a sewage spill might have on fish in the creek.

The Town Council apparently feels that issuing a news release is all the information Comox residents deserve or need to know from their elected officials.

 

CITIZEN CONCERNS IGNORED

And, finally, the residents of Brook Place, the condominium buildings adjacent to the Noel Avenue culverts, have a justifiable complaint with the mayor and town councillors.

Over the past nine months, the Brook Place strata council has complained more than once about the accumulation of silt below the culverts installed in 2019. They feared the build-up of stinky mud and extraordinary plant growth might pose a threat to their buildings.

The town administration, the mayor and council ignored these concerns.

A week before the town dispatched employees and heavy equipment to remove that stinky, contaminated soil and vegetation, Mayor Arnott wrote the Brook Place residents to say that he had concluded there was no problem with the culverts and offered to take no action to help.

But anyone looking at the photographs of the section of Brooklyn Creek below the culverts prior to and after Sept. 3 can see that something unusual was happening. It should have been more thoroughly investigated.

 

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Tonnes of sewage mud removed from Brooklyn Creek, nearby residents say its been piling up for years

Tonnes of sewage mud removed from Brooklyn Creek, nearby residents say its been piling up for years

Town employees armed with dump trucks, vacuum trucks, excavators and other equipment removed stinky silt from Brooklyn Creek on Sept. 3  |  Photos submitted

Tonnes of sewage mud removed from Brooklyn Creek, nearby residents say its been piling up for years

By

Following the publication of a Decafnation commentary on Friday about leaking pipes that spilled raw sewage into Brooklyn Creek, the Town of Comox has gone on a hurried public relations campaign.

Mayor Russ Arnott has been posting on his Facebook page and doing media interviews this week even though he says he only found out about the leak on Saturday, three weeks after it occurred. And the town took the unusual step of issuing a news release on a Saturday, a day after the original Decafnation article appeared.

The PR campaign has minimized the seriousness of raw sewage leaking into the creek for an undetermined length of time and downplayed any ill effects the leak might have had on fish or dogs and other animals that drink from the water or children who play in the creek.

The town’s news release dated Saturday, Sept. 25 characterized the problem as “a small sanitary leak” that it “discovered” on Friday, Sept. 3, and assured citizens that the matter was remedied that same afternoon by removing tons of “contaminated water and soil from the creek.”

A test of the creek’s water quality after the remediation measures showed no public health concerns, according to Chief Administrative Officer Jordan Wall.

While the town says it found the source of the sewage leak on Sept. 3, it has not said how long the failed sewer and stormwater pipes had been leaking. Nor have they stated the length of time between when town employees first noticed diminished water quality and when they located the source of the problem.

But thanks to multiple Decafnation readers, we have learned that raw sewage may have been leaking into Brooklyn Creek for a long time, possibly years.

That would explain high levels of dissolved oxygen in the creek, unusual plant growth near Noel Avenue, dead smolt fish found on the creek’s bank and a definite sewage odour noticed by at least one person who walks the Brooklyn trails regularly.

Photo of the Brooklyn Creek bed just below the Noel Avenue culverts taken last summer.

 

PIECING TOGETHER WHAT HAPPENED

According to the town’s news release the sewer breach occurred near the Hillside Avenue-Highland Road intersection where stormwater and sewage manholes are located side by side. The town says concrete at the bottom of the sewage manhole eroded and flowed into a crack in a stormwater pipe one meter away

“These types of issues are increasingly common in these systems due to the age of some of the infrastructure,” Wall told Decafnation. He says the town plans to invest “heavily” in replacement and repair over the next several years.

Based on that explanation, the affected stormwater pipe would have to have discharged its polluted water into the creek somewhere upstream from the new culverts lower down on Noel Avenue. That’s because, as the town says, its response to discovering the leak included removing “contaminated soil” from the creek at the location of the new Noel Avenue culverts.

Neither Wall nor the town’s news release has said clearly that the removed soil was infused with the leaking raw sewage, but residents who live close to those culverts have told Decafnation that the smell of sewage was “overwhelming” as they watched town crews dig out tons of “contaminated soil.”

Asked if the septic smell had been strong, Brook Place Strata President Dennis Strand said, “Strong? That isn’t the word for it.”

And other residents of Brook Place, a 36-unit condominium building that borders the creek say that over the past two years they have observed unusual growth of plant life and silt buildup at the site of the culverts, and a definitive smell of sewage.

Carol Neufeld, a Brook Place resident who walks the creek trails every day, told Decafnation that she has noticed a septic smell along the creek for more than a year.

Strand says he and other nearby residents suspect that sewage may have been leaking into the creek at least since the Noel Avenue road work was conducted two years ago. But it’s also possible that sewage has been leaking into the creek for even longer and conceivably from multiple sources.

Strand says he was told by an environmental professional working at the site that there have been reports of toilet paper and lumps of human excrement floating in the creek.

Recent photo of the same section of Brooklyn Creek bed after remediation following the discovery of a sewage leak for an undetermined period of time | George Le Masurier photo

 

 

ROLE OF THE NOEL AVENUE CULVERTS

But in a written response to the Brook Place concerns, Strand says Mayor Russ Arnott denied any problems of capacity or silt buildup with the culverts.

In the mayor’s letter dated Aug. 20, Arnott said the culverts were “working as expected.”

But just a week later, at 1 pm on Sept. 3, at the start of the long holiday weekend, “an army of people and equipment descended on us, full force,” Strand told Decafnation.

Strand and other residents watched as approximately 15 employees with two dump trucks, excavators, two vacuum trucks, backhoes and other heavy equipment spent more than six hours removing 15 truckloads of contaminated, stinky silt and plants from the culvert location. The crews came back over the weekend for another few hours.

The vacuum trucks were used to reach places the excavators could not.

Regular tandem-axle dump trucks can carry 12.5 tonnes and a vacuum truck holds about 12 tonnes. Fifteen loads (11 dump truck and four vacuum truckloads) would equal approximately 180 tonnes or nearly 396,000 pounds of sewage-infused silt.

But town CAO Wall disputes those estimations. He told Decafnation the town only removed 38 cubic meters of material or about 57 tonnes, equivalent to a little more than four truckloads, and that most of it was gravel.

Strand says that’s “just not true and the photographs we have prove it.”

He says other people who watched the six-hour operation counted 15 loads — 11 by dump trucks and two each by the two vacuum trucks.

“If they only took out 57 tonnes, why did they have two dump trucks and two vacuum trucks onsite,” he said.

Strand, a former two-term Comox Council member and Comox Valley Regional District director, also disputes the town’s claim in its Saturday press release that they discovered a sewage leak, found its location and fixed it, and then coordinated with federal and provincial agencies and mobilized a large contingent of employees and equipment all in the morning of a single day.

The reparation work at the culvert site began at 1 pm.

“They had to have known sooner. I know governments can’t do all of that in a half-day,” he said. “They didn’t come and remove the silt because of our complaints. The mayor had just said a week earlier that there wasn’t a problem there. So they came Friday (Sept. 3) afternoon because of the sewage leak.”

What really angers Brook Place residents, Strand said, is the fact that the town had for a long time failed to even acknowledge their complaints about a problem that could have affected the condo building.

“But all of a sudden they arrive in full force. Working overtime on a holiday weekend. As I said, they weren’t here for us,” Stand says.

Strand is particularly upset with how the council has handled the issue.

“Nobody is taking ownership for not doing it right (the culvert design) in the first place. They didn’t account for the periods of low flow in the creek,” he said.

“It’s total disrespect to me and our strata owners.”

The stormwater (left) and sewage manholes at the intersection of Hillside Avenue and Highland Road

 

TURBIDITY FROM NEW GRAVEL

The turbidity observed in the creek recently is linked but not directly related to the sewage discharge.

Following the clean-up of contaminated silt and vegetation below the new Noel Avenue culverts, well-intentioned streamkeepers laid down new gravel as part of the reparation measures for potential spawning fish. Some of the gravel was reportedly unwashed, meaning it wasn’t clean of sediment. A subsequent flush of rainwater sent the silt (turbidity) downstream.

Sources told Decafnation that the turbidity was temporary and not likely to have any long-term effect on the creek’s water quality.

 

OTHER POLLUTED COMOX CREEKS

Brooklyn Creek isn’t the only waterway within the Town of Comox that has been affected by high pollution levels.

The last measurement made by a homeowner of E. Coli in Golf Creek, which runs through downtown Comox (mostly channeled underground) was taken on Aug. 7, 2021 and showed 11,000 coliform units per 100 ml. The single sample threshold for closing a public beach is 400 cfu/100 ml.

That means the E. Coli measured in Golf Creek may be nearly 30 times the government guideline considered safe for human contact. On Aug. 19, 2020 E. Coli was measured at 16000 cfu/100 ml, or 40 times the safe limit.

There is a BC Supreme Court lawsuit pending over water quality in Golf Creek.

All of Comox Bay is under an ongoing shellfish harvesting ban.

 

COUNCIL KEPT IN THE DARK?

The news release also revealed that the mayor and Town Council had not been made aware of the issue until that day, which was 22 days after the leak was discovered and remediation action was taken. Mayor Arnott confirmed that delay in an email to a concerned citizen.

“Myself and council were briefed on this today,” Arnott wrote on Sept. 25 to a Decafnation reader.

Decafnation asked Mayor Arnott Tuesday morning via email whether he was concerned about this lack of communication, and whether the council might pursue disciplinary action.

“The issue is being dealt with internally,” he said.

This article has been updated to correct tonnage from imperial tons to metric tonnes

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

COMOX TOWN COUNCIL

 

Russ Arnott, Mayor
rarnott@comox.ca

 

Alex Bissinger
abissinger@comox.ca

 

Nicole Minions
nminions@comox.ca

 

Ken Grant
kgrant@comox.ca

 

Maureen Swift
mswift@comox.ca

 

Stephanie McGowan
smcgowan@comox.ca

 

 

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