Canada's biggest pollutant of rivers is, disgustingly, raw sewage. In 2015, 205 billion litres of raw sewage was pumped into Canada's rivers, lakes and coastlines. That's enough to fill over 80,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools!
This completely preventable pollution is due to the wide-scale degradation and inadequacy of infrastructure and governmental apathy. With proper investments in municipal waste water treatment, this problem could be completely eliminated. However, the last federal government, under Stephen Harper, used austerity measures to slow infrastructure spending and what money they did allocate was not specifically for waste water treatment.
The new federal government, under Justin Trudeau, says they are committed to revamping Canada's infrastructure but has only allocated $2 billion for waste water treatment when the real bill is more like $18 billion. $2 billion is a good start but it is a drop in the bucket for what Canada needs to remove this needless and harmful pollutant from our lakes, rivers and coastlines.
Sign today to stand for clean waters all across Canada. By signing today you are sending a strong message that sewage has no place in clean water.
To Prime Minister Justin Trudeau,
As a person who cares deeply for Canada's waterways I am gravely concerned over recent findings that 205 billion litres of raw sewage are being pumped into Canada's rivers, lakes and coastlines.
This is a completely preventable pollution, yet it is the biggest polluter of Canada's rivers across the country.
Recently your government committed to investing $2 billion in waste water treatment facilities. However, this is insufficient to meet the needs of waste water treatment across the country. An estimated $18 billion is needed to be invested in waste water treatment and management systems in order to eliminate this problem.
I urge you to work with provinces and municipalities to create an $18 billion infrastructure plan that would completely stop the pumping of raw sewage into Canada's waterways.
[Your Comment Here]
Sincerely,
[Your Name]
