Rexdale Fire Runoff

[crs1026]

(I went looking for the right place to post this, and couldn’t find a logical spot - so I created a thread and leave it to the Mods to put this where it belongs)

Here is a shot of the Mimico Creek taken just now (11 Am Monday) from the bridge on Bloor Street. This is several miles downstream from the scene of the recent 6-alarm fire in Rexdale.

You can see the serious collection of brown sludge that is runoff from that fire. The collection of waterfowl that one normally sees here have vanished.

There is a boom across the creek just south of this scene - it’s barely visible in the background. And this is not that far north of the creek mouth at Humber Bay.

My point is simply - this incident was pretty bad, possibly even more serious than the media has indicated to date. Call me alarmist, but this runoff has flowed through much of Central Etobicoke. I don’t think it’s all that hyperbolic to say that this is the worst environmental disaster Etobicoke has seen since hurricane Hazel.

- Paul

 

[Northern Light]

This (the fire site) is nowhere near Etobicoke Creek (just over 1.4km away).

There is no adjacent natural area.

That indicates to me that the run-off went into the combined sewer system and overflowed into the creek.

Unacceptable.

We need to change procedures here.

While in the longer term, we need to completely eliminate combined sewer overflow, in the short term we have to have a different way of coping w/these types of disasters.

There are two possible points of entry here, one is through drains within the factory site, the other is runoff to storm sewers on road.

Hazmat should immediately cover the latter in this type of scenario and place booms right in front of where firefighters are to contain run-off on-site.

The second control item is those, in-factory drains, there should (but may not be) a valve that can be closed where the site drains enter the sewer system.

This should be mandatory in all industrial/hazmat locations.

Finally, there is the option of trying to block flow into the creek itself at the the end-of-pipe.

This is problematic, as overflows are designed into the system to avoid either explosive pressure or massive backflows when the pipes reach capacity.

But it should be possible with today's software to pin point a probable overflow location, dispatch Hazmat there forthwith, and try to set up some time of containment for the out flow.

To be clear, that would be very, very challenging at these types of flow rates, its not like the flow would fill a tanker trunk an hour, it might fill one every few minutes, but we certainly need better spill prevention/containment than this....

 

[crs1026]

Cleanup of chemical runoff in Etobicoke creeks to last until October, ministry says​

- Paul