Seriously — let’s talk about the sewers

An attempt at humour called “City where the sewers aren’t for water” has upset some readers. The post dealt with the City of Toronto’s decision to require homeowners to disconnect downspouts from the sewer system. To write seriously for a moment, we find the proposition that this would be a good thing for everybody to be, at the very least, not well demonstrated. The City has taken very little effort to explain to taxpayers a) why we have a sewer system which, even in the new parts, sometimes mixes raw sewage with rain, b) why homeowners personally should bear the cost of “too much rain” and c) what science underlies the need to force this action. Look, we are not in favour of polluting of the lake. But the City has often proven to be an unreliable master in determining what’s good for us. Toronto trucks its garbage to landfill sites in vehicles emitting filth going and coming. It prefers that to embracing the well established science of waste to energy incineration. You may recall the new Jerusalem of backyard composting. It turned out to be an exercise in breeding rats, as many had warned. The decision to force homeowners to disconnect their downspouts is arbitrary, intrusive and potentially costly. In a later post, we will remark on some of the unintended consequences which can occur when we try to make rainwater do as we tell it. Meantime, ordinary people deserve conclusive information that this is the only way to go.