Nasty surprise
Summerside utility cleans up hundreds of litres of oil that somehow got into sewer system
Summerside ratepayers are out thousands of dollars because a large quantity of oil recently found its way into the city’s wastewater treatment plant.
An employee working at the plant on Oct. 23 noticed pools of black oil starting to appear in the system and sounded the alarm. It was Wednesday by the time they had it all cleaned up. Sam Arsenault, wastewater supervisor for the city, estimates that they collected a total of about 500-litres of oil. He estimates the cleanup, which included the use of expensive absorbent pads, will end up costing the utility about $15,000. “This oil went down a drain somewhere it shouldn’t have,” said Arsenault.
“It could have been (done) deliberately by a person who didn’t understand that was not the right place to put oil, or it could have been accidentally. You could imagine a furnace oil tank breaking open in someone’s basement … and maybe somehow that got into their sewer line.”
The utility does not know exactly where the oil came from, but its follow up investigation showed it was from somewhere between Granville Street and Greenwood Drive.
Arsenault also said he doesn’t know exactly what kind of oil it is but its presence was concerning enough that staff treated it as a hazardous material.
“Assume the worst,” he said.
The wastewater plant does its work in multiple stages. The oil was caught in the first stage. However, further down the treatment line, microorganisms are used to treat the water before it’s pumped to its final destination, Bedeque Bay. The concern was not only that some of the oil might make its way into the environment, which was bad enough, but that it could have negatively affected the micro-organisms in the plant. That could have impacted the whole system’s ability to do its job and would likely have been a much more involved and costly cleanup.
The oil could have also rendered some of the biosolid fertilizer the facility produces unusable, which again would have cost the utility money.
Fortunately, none of that happened. But it goes to show just how bad it is when oil gets into the wastewater system, said Arsenault.
In the hopes of preventing something like this from happening again, Arsenault added that there are multiple places in the city where oil can be freely dropped off for proper disposal. They can be found online at www.uoma-atlantic.com.
The provincial government also has a phone number where oil spills can be reported. During the day it’s 1-866-368-5044, and evenings and weekends it’s 1-800-565-1633.