Customer Alert: Toronto Water conducts smoke and dye testing on the sewer system to identify line defects. Residents will never be asked to provide personal information and staff will not need to enter your home to conduct this work.
Smoke Testing will be undertaken to help the City of Toronto rehabilitate existing infrastructure in neighbourhoods throughout Toronto. The testing of the sewer system (weather permitting) will help to identify sanitary sewer line defects where unwanted rain, ground, and snowmelt water can enter the sanitary sewer system which was designed to carry wastewater. The reduction of sources of rainwater inflow to the sanitary sewers will help to prevent surcharging of sewers, basement flooding, and excess treatment of rainwater. Residents will receive notification flyers door to door prior to this testing. Please visit the website for further details. Please note that no one from Thompson Flow Investigations Inc., or Toronto Water will call asking for personal information or access to your home.
The City of Toronto, Toronto Water in collaboration with the contractor Pipetek is performing routine cleaning activities on the sewers throughout the City. Customers that may be affected will receive maintenance notices prior to the work commencing. The work may take from a few hours to a few shifts over a few days, multiple visits may be required. Customers should be alerted to potential disruption to their toilets since a common complaint is the water in the toilet bowl splashing, this is limited to single houses, and duplex buildings along the sewers. Condos, apartment buildings, and commercial buildings are typically excluded from this occurrence. Customers may also experience noise, especially at night.
Storm sewers are designed to only capture rainwater and snowmelt from residential and commercial properties via the square grates located on edge of most roads (i.e. catch basins). The water flows untreated directly into the nearest stream or river and eventually Lake Ontario.
Section 2 of the Sewers By-law (Chapter 681) contains sanitary/combined sewer by-law limits, where certain pollutants can be discharged under those limits as they are then treated at the wastewater treatment plant.
Generally, the plumbing connections inside houses connect to the sanitary sewer where the wastewater flows to the City's Wastewater Treatment Plant for treatment before discharging out to the lake. Waste deposited into the sanitary drains (within the home) goes directly into the wastewater (sewage) treatment plant and is treated before being released into Lake Ontario. Also, some soaps have ingredients harmful to fish that disrupt their reproduction.
Section 4 of the Sewers By-law (Chapter 681) contains storm sewer by-law limits that are stringent allowing limited pollutants at very low concentrations to be discharged as they flow into the natural environment via a nearby waterway.
In many cities, including Toronto, stormwater and sanitary sewers are combined into a single pipe - the combined sewer. In Toronto, many areas that were built before the 1950s are serviced by this type of sewer.
Combined sewers carry both stormwater and sanitary sewage to the treatment plants. During wet weather, the volume of stormwater may exceed the sewer system's capacity and the sewer may overflow, which can cause basement flooding and release untreated sewage into our rivers and lakes.
Part of the City of Toronto's original sewer system was a combined sewer system that carried storm runoff and sanitary sewage in a single pipe system. Combined trunk sewers collect discharges from local combined sewers which carry both sanitary sewage and storm runoff. A portion of flows in combined trunks are then intercepted and sent to the sewage treatment plant, while flows exceeding the interception capacity can be either diverted to another trunk sewer or to the receiving waters. Combined sewer overflow (CSO) is flow originating from a combined sewer that exceeds the interceptor capacity and is discharged to receiving waters.
For more information, please visit the City of Toronto website.