Item - 2020.IE15.3

The Infrastructure and Environment Committee received the report (August 12, 2020) from the General Manager, Toronto Water for information.

This report provides a summary of the activities performed in 2019 by Toronto Water's Environmental Monitoring and Protection Unit, which is responsible for administrative compliance and enforcement of the City of Toronto's Municipal Code Chapter 681 ("Sewers By-Law") and Municipal Code Chapter 851 ("Water Supply By-Law).

In 2019, Environmental Monitoring and Protection Unit performed 2,860 tasks, such as company inspections, dye tests, meetings with businesses, storm sewer outfall inspections under the Sewers By-law and 658 inspections and 201 site visits under the Water Supply By-law. The staff performed 5562 sampling events, which resulted in 27,564 laboratory analyses. A total of 654 Notices of Violation were issued for non-compliance under the Sewers By-law and 14 issued for non-compliance under the Water Supply By-law.

In 2019, cases involving 31 companies moved forward to prosecution for both the Sewers and Water Supply By-laws. Under the Sewers By-law, there were 28 convictions resulting in $187,250 in fines and under the Water Supply By-law, 5 convictions resulting in $24,500 in fines, totalling 33 convictions with $211,750 in fines for 2019 (convictions may include prosecution files started in previous years). This total does not include the Victim Fine Surcharge (which is collected and retained by the Ontario Provincial Government for victims of crime – for fines over $1,000; the surcharge is 25 percent of the fine). The remaining prosecution files are still before the courts.

The number of Industrial Waste Surcharge Agreements entered into with businesses increased in 2019 and the total cost recovery for Toronto Water under this program was $9.9 million. Similarly, the total number of Sanitary Discharge Agreements increased, and there was a total cost recovery of $8.0 million.

In 2019, the Outfall Monitoring Program identified 15 new cross connections (arising from sanitary wastewater misdirected to a storm sewer) and verified the correction of 13 cross connections (some were carried over from previous years). Six (6) Priority Outfalls within Toronto's watersheds were delisted, thereby seeing an improvement in water quality at those outfalls and receiving waters.