One of the worst offending (and ugliest) outfalls on Taylor-Massey Creek
Tell me something I don't know. A headline in the Globe and Mail today says "Toronto toilets dumping sewage into creek". Really! As if we didn't already know. Here's how it goes. People like you and I realize there's a problem. We try to get the city to notice. "Yawn, we don't care." OK, so we talk to councillors until one of them gets angry enough to spur city staff to do something. OK, staff agrees to start a study. Lo and behold, look it's a BIG problem. They start writing all sorts of reports and action plans saying basically, "See, look at all the good things we are doing". Of course the media ignore these local issues until you start throwing around some big numbers such as "polluted to 20,000 times the legal limit". Now that's a headline!
Of course we've known about the problems with Taylor-Massey Creek for years. Homes and businesses have been flushing their toilets directly into the creek and its taken at least 40 years to get action. Since TMC flows through the former boroughs of Scarborough and East York, it's likely lax enforcement of building regulations than culpable negligence.
During a recent study, the city identified 252 outfalls flowing into the creek. This turned out to be a surprise for the city because many of them weren't even in their own records.
The upside of all this is that in the end we will end up with a cleaner river and lake. Which is the good news .
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