Expansion of online reporting for municipal sewage bypasses and overflows

Ontario is putting processes in place to make it faster and simpler for municipalities to report bypass and overflow instances so that system operators can focus more resources on preventing bypasses and overflows from occurring in the first place.

Background

Currently, municipalities report bypass and overflow events to the ministry via phone to the Spills Action Centre. This includes the initial call and any updates.

We conducted a pilot with a test group of municipalities of a new online tool to report bypass and overflow events from municipal and wastewater works, that will result in stronger environmental oversight. Following the success of the pilot to date, we are now expanding this voluntary pilot to all remaining municipalities.

The reporting tool provides flexibility to report more than one bypass or overflow event at a time and for different locations, easier downloading and sharing of data entered into the system, and internal features that remove reports made in error. The use of the tool is voluntary and municipalities can also choose to use the existing process for reporting incidents.

This tool allows municipal staff to edit and update information on an event quickly so that they can focus on the response and mitigation measures, as opposed to administrative reporting tasks.