Ottawa politicians to break ground today on $232M sewage tunnel project

On a single day this year, after a heavy rainfall,a record-smashing 172,000 cubic metres of raw sewage overwhelmed the City of Ottawa's water system and spewed out the overflow pipes into the Ottawa River.

That same day,Aug.13,every city beach was closeddue to high fecal coliform counts. Ittook another seven days for all the beaches to reopen.

According to tracking by the City of Ottawa'soverflow activity log,that single daysentalmost as much sewage into the Ottawa River as the entire year's worth of overflow in 2015.

But Ottawa is about to take control of its raw sewage problemonce and for all. A new infrastructure project that featurestwo giant overflow storage tunnelswill prevent untreated sewage from flowing into the Ottawa River in the future.

Sewage tunnels expected to be in use by 2020

Later today, elected officials from all levels of government are expected to board a bus with journalists in tow for a long-awaited groundbreaking that will heraldthe beginning of a four-year construction project.

The Combined Sewage Storage Tunnel (CSST) is part of the Ottawa River Action Plan. The plan, which has a statedgoal to clean up the river, was approved by council in 2009and has already included a number of projects that have according to Mayor Jim Watson reduced the amount of raw sewage going into the river by 80 per cent.

TheCSSTproject will involve the building of two storage tunnels: an east-west tunnel through the downtown core and a north-south tunnel along Kent Street to the Supreme Court of Canada.

The project comes with ahefty $232.3-million price tagand involved years of lobbying for federal and provincial government funding.

It's expected to be complete by 2020, with the federal and provincial governments each contributing about$62millionand the rest fromthe City of Ottawa.The final federal component came through following the election in 2015.

Along with Watson, federal Environment Minister Catherine McKenna and Bob Chiarelli, Ontario's minister of infrastructure,are expected to take part in today's groundbreaking.

Rideau-Rockcliffe Ward Coun. Tobi Nussbaum is also planning to be there, since one of the giant tunnels travels directly through his ward, emptying at Stanley Park.

Nussbaum said that after a major rainfall, thetunnels are capable of storingmore than 40,000 cubic metres of water that will eventuallybe treated at the city's treatment plants.

"So it really is about ensuring the purity of the waterand ensuring we're doing the right thing, in terms of only putting back into the river water that's being treated at the plant," Nussbaum said.