In the wake of its ranking of wastewater spills in Quebec municipalities (see CentrEau's brief on this subject »), the Fondation Rivières is urging municipalities to adopt a global objective to reduce this risk. The newspaper La Tribune asked the city of Sherbrooke about its intentions in this regard.
"What we are doing is prioritizing the Magog River, said Patrice Grondin, engineering division chief at the City of Sherbrooke's urban infrastructure department. The big advantage is that out of 180 km [of combined sewer system], we have about 10% of combined sewer system on the Magog River. Every time we do a project where there's a risk of spills on the Magog River, we do systematic separation [of combined sewers]."
Thus, not everything is systematically sent to the river. However, this is only a "guideline", not a "global objective".
The Fondation Rivières would like the Quebec government to have an ambitious objective, because for the moment, it is limited to asking municipalities not to increase their discharges... by 2030.
The article in question is available here » [in French]
