Weekly newsletter: July 30, 2024

Fallowfield/Transitway signals

Hi everyone!

Hope you are enjoying the last days of July.

The Fallowfield/Transitway signals have finally been fixed…for real this time! New in-ground loops were installed last week, but a programming error meant the signals continued changing on their own over the weekend (weirdly, just in the morning and afternoon).

The signs were properly reprogrammed yesterday morning. I’ve kept the traffic camera open on my second monitor most of the day, and it seems like it’s been working fine, but please let me know otherwise!

Apologies for the inconvenience caused throughout last week.

Otherwise, please note next Monday August 5, is Colonel By Day (civic holiday). Many city services will be closed or operating on adjusted schedules. Most notably, garbage, blue bin, and green bin collection in Barrhaven East will be shifted to Wednesday next week.

Sprung structure shelters update

Update to sprung structure shelters, previously discussed in the July 9 and July 23, 2024 newsletters.

Over the last month, you may have been following the City’s plan to use temporary sprung structures to house asylum seekers upon their arrival until proper housing is found for them.

Parcels of municipally owned land across Ottawa were considered and evaluated for that use, which led staff to short-listing three potential locations, including one here in Barrhaven.

Since then, Councillor David Hill and I have voiced our opposition to that plan, considering better, more permanent options are achievable in the same federal funding stream under similar or better timelines and costs with better outcomes for the community, service providers, and asylum seekers.

We maintain the belief the city should continue and further scale up the great progress made in our housing strategy to seek out permanent solutions, including through building acquisition/retrofit and scaling up transitional housing programmes, both of which staff are already doing.

We reiterated our desire to see rapid construction permanent structures used instead of sprung structures, considering the industry options available at timelines similar or better than the city’s current operational timelines for the sprung structure.

All are wins for the city, the federal government, the community, asylum seekers, and taxpayers.

Yesterday, we had meetings with the Mayor and city staff to continue advancing our position. I believe it was a positive and productive meeting. Staff are now looking further into nuances of the funding stream, details of the projects, and the short list of locations.

The advocacy for federal properties and buildings continues, as Ottawa is uniquely positioned with many opportunities of that type, with the added consideration that immigration is a federal issue.

(It’s not that the federal government is leaving cities with no help in dealing with the issue—the funding stream and related supports is provided by the federal government. There’s just added opportunity in Ottawa due to the number of federal properties!)

Over the next week or two, we will engage in a series of follow-ups with staff. Updates will be shared by newsletter and social media, as always!

I’m grateful for the continued engagement by the Mayor’s office, staff, and you on this important issue.

Clarification – asylum seekers, refugees, newcomers

In previous newsletter issues discussing the topic (July 9 and July 23, 2024), I used the terms asylum seekers, refugees, and newcomers interchangeably. I want to clarify the sprung structure plan is intended to be temporary accommodations for asylum seekers until proper housing is found for them.

What’s the difference between an asylum seeker, a refugee, and a newcomer?

An asylum seeker is a person who has arrived to seek protection after fleeing their home country, making their declaration at the port of entry or online.

The Canada Border Services Agency or Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship Canada reviews the claim and accepts or deports the asylum seeker accordingly. If approved, the asylum seeker can stay until the federal government decides on their status as a refugee (or not).

Meanwhile, they may have access to social assistance, education, health services, emergency housing, and legal aid through federally funded programmes, including the Interim Housing Assistance Programme (IHAP), the funding stream relevant to the sprung structure discussion.

An asylee can become a refugee if the Immigration and Refugee Board agrees that the person has a well-founded fear of persecution based on ethnicity, belief, or other distinction, and/or a risk to life or to cruel and unusual treatment, like torture.

People recognised as refugees can stay in Canada and apply for permanent residency and eventually citizenship.

Newcomer is an umbrella term to refer to somebody new to Canada, usually less than five years.

E. coli levels at public beaches

Rideau Valley Conservation Authority (RVCA) investigating higher frequency of elevated E. coli levels this and last summer. This topic was inspired by a resident email.

Switching gears, residents who take advantage of public beaches in the Ottawa and Rideau rivers (especially Mooney’s Bay) may have noticed a higher number of closures related to elevated E. coli levels over the last two years.

Typically, swimming in public beaches is not recommended up to 48 hours after significant rainfall, as stormwater runoff can carry animal (especially geese and seagull) droppings and other contaminants on the ground via the stormwater network of catch basins and pipes or naturally through flow into our streams and rivers.

That being the cause of elevated E. coli levels is a longstanding assumption, supported by data captured regularly in bodies of water in Ottawa and across North America.

However, over the last two years, the frequency of elevated E. coli levels and the level of E. coli in each of those readings has increased, particularly in the Rideau River.

Accordingly, the RVCA is looking beyond those longstanding assumptions. Is it just the result of more frequent significant rainfalls, or are there contributing activities upstream, or both?

One of the methods being explored is microbial source tracking when there are high E. coli readings to understand the source of the bacteria, like birds, animals typically associated with farming, and even sewage.

The potential information would be valuable and allow the RVCA to focus their efforts, where possible, on mitigating E. coli from that source.

Staff at the RVCA are still in very early stages of determining what that type of DNA testing would look like.

What is E. coli?

E. coli is a type of bacteria. Most strains normally live in the intestines of healthy humans and animals to help the body break down and digest food.

However, some strains can cause illness like diarrhoea and vomiting, with younger children and older adults at greater risk of developing a life-threatening form of kidney failure.

People are usually exposed to infectious strains of E. coli through contaminated water or food, and the disease is contagious mostly through human and animal waste.

An outbreak of E. coli in Walkerton, Ontario, in May 2000 was the result of the contamination of the local drinking water supply due to improper water treatment. Over 2,000 people were sickened and seven people died.

Sunlight is the best way to kill or reduce E. coli.

What does the City do?

Unlike conservation authorities like the RVCA and the provincial Ministry of the Environment, Conservation, and Parks, who can take direct action for the health of our waterways, the City is limited to indirect, contributory actions, mostly encompassed in the Ottawa River Action Plan, made up of 17 projects at various states of progress.

Older areas of the city like Centretown, Old Ottawa East, and Manor Park were built at a time when standard practice was to channel sewage and stormwater together. Like modern stormwater networks, the combined wastewater infrastructure overflows during significant rainfall, discharging both storm runoff and sewage into the river.

Recognising those overflows are not good for the river and human health, the combined sewage storage tunnel was built downtown to store untreated wastewater during significant rainfalls until it can be treated and discharged. The tunnel became operational in 2020.

Smaller areas of combined infrastructure, like Old Ottawa East, Manor Park, and along Somerset and Wellington streets, will eventually be converted to separate sewer and stormwater networks.

At the community level, the city has a few different by-laws that require soft landscaping, restrict driveway widths, and prohibit site alterations. There are also regular communications campaigns reminding residents to pick up their pet droppings and to not use storm drains to dump potentially contaminated materials.

Rain Ready Ottawa is also a programme that was recently expanded to more pre-1990s parts of the city inside of the Greenbelt to promote “spongier” properties, while all new subdivisions planned since the late-1990s include stormwater management areas.

Additionally, the new Zoning By-law (currently in draft) will include on-site stormwater management, mostly aimed at infill development in older urban areas.

All that ensures as much stormwater as possible is diverted from stormwater infrastructure, mostly through ground absorption.

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These were two odd topics to share a newsletter, but that’s just how it worked out. Thanks for reading, and we’ll chat again next week!

-Wilson