The decision to temporarily direct flows to the Squamish estuary was District’s only option, a District official says. In a response to a letter by a local citizen, the District engineer, Devin Kiyonaga, says the waste water discharge in the estuary was a high pressure situation.
“We had worked to avoid this by planning a nighttime emergency repair (scheduled for that Saturday night), which would have involved transporting wastewater via vacuum trucks at night when flows are lowest. Unfortunately, the early morning lift station failure created an emergency situation,” Kiyonga said in a response to a local resident.
“Vacuum trucks were unable to get there quickly enough nor could they keep up with daytime wastewater volumes and so discharging some of the wastewater to the estuary was the ‘only option’ to avoid sewer backups flooding residences and businesses,” Kiyonga said. “This was the hardest decision we had to make and we delayed implementing it until the last possible moment. After the event, District monitored the discharge into estuary for three weeks.”
According to a report to council, the samples were taken and analyzed until the results met the recommended provincial and federal water quality guidelines. District did not provide specific details on water sampling in the report, and only noted the final Water Quality Monitoring Report by Coast Range Environmental was submitted by the District to the Ministry on February 28.
