No wastewater was released into Wascana Creek: City

The City of Regina is now saying no wastewater was released into Wascana Creek last week.

On Monday, the city held a news conference stating that 1.3 megalitres of wastewater was discharged into the creek on Sept. 13.

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On Wednesday, Carolyn Kalim, Regina’s director of water, waste and environment, explained that during the city’s storm response, it had received some “high alarms” indicating that a bypass was “imminent,” prompting some calculations for the duration of the alarm.

“Now that the system has calmed down and we’re able to go and actually look at all of our analytics that we have there and go through it – we can confirm that, in fact, there was capacity in our system, and so it wouldn’t have actually gone into the creek and it all actually stayed within the wastewater system as it’s designed to,” Kalim said.

“So we’ve already shared all this information with our downstream users. We try (to) get that information out in a really timely manner, so that’s been corrected, and then we wanted to let everyone here know as well.”

Kalim said the city was working with a newer system, NotifyNow, to push out the information.

“There was no error with the information or the way the system distributes the information. It was more so (about) working through and actually having the time to go through and confirm that there was capacity in the system that all of it did stay within,” Kalim said.

Kalim added there was no risk of direct contamination from this specific event.

The City of Regina announced no wastewater was released into Wascana Creek this past weekend, but today said that no wastewater entered the creek. (980 CJME file photo)

“Although flow rates reached high levels and the City’s warning alarms indicated a bypass may be imminent, the wastewater system maintained sufficient capacity for the full duration of the storm and subsequent system analysis over the last few days confirmed that all wastewater was contained,” read the statement from the city release earlier this week.

On Monday, CJME reported Kalim, explained that the city’s Garnet Street wastewater lift station became overwhelmed with rainwater entering the wastewater system.

At that time, the city said it discharged approximately 1.3 megalitres of wastewater into Wascana Creek; because of this, the city is actively conducting water quality testing.

“We take this situation very seriously, and the City of Regina cares about the residents and the environment and is investing in our infrastructure to reduce the possibility of these events from occurring in the future,” she said when speaking to media on Monday.

According to Kalim, the lift stations bring wastewater to the wastewater treatment plant through the McCarthy Boulevard Pumping Station.

Kalim said Regina received approximately two inches of rain on Saturday and the city responded by monitoring pumping stations, triaging problem flooding locations and closing roads.

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