The Ontario Clean Water Agency (OCWA) is a Crown agency of the Government of Ontario that provides operation, maintenance and management services for more than 450 water and wastewater treatment facilities in the province.
OCWA was created in 1993 by the NDP government of Premier Bob Rae under the Ontario Capital Investment Plan Act[1] and initially took over provincial ownership of 153 water-treatment plants and 77 sewage-treatment facilities. It also operated 116 municipally owned water and sewage facilities.[2]
By 1996, it had 800 employees and held contracts to operate 429 facilities in the province, comprising 25 per cent of Ontario's water-treatment plants and 57 per cent of the wastewater-treatment plants.[3] In October of that year, the Progressive Conservative government under Premier Mike Harris, which came to power in 1995, announced its plans to turn ownership of the facilities over to the municipalities and privatize OCWA as an environmental consulting firm.[4]
Ownership of the facilities was transferred to the municipalities, but OCWA was not sold. It was transformed into a management services organization and in 1998 won what was then Canada's largest water and wastewater operations and maintenance contract—a 10-year, $213 million deal to operate the South Peel system.[5] By 2000, OCWA operated and maintained more than 300 municipally-owned water and sewage treatment facilities on behalf of about 200 Ontario municipalities.[6]
In May 2000, an outbreak of E. coli contamination occurred in the water system of Walkerton, Ontario. In the aftermath of the disaster and the ensuing reforms to water treatment, the OCWA was put in charge of the cleanup of the water supply system of the town. This included a complete flushing of all the pipes in Walkerton, including those located in every building in the town.[7]
The Regional Municipality of Peel is a regional municipality in the Greater Toronto Area, Southern Ontario, Canada. It consists of three municipalities to the west and northwest of the city of Toronto: the cities of Mississauga and Brampton, and the town of Caledon, each of which spans its full east–west width. The regional seat is in Brampton. The entire Greater Toronto Area is the inner ring of the Golden Horseshoe.
A sanitary sewer is an underground pipe or tunnel system for transporting sewage from houses and commercial buildings to a sewage treatment plant or disposal. Sanitary sewers are a type of gravity sewer and are part of an overall system called a "sewage system" or sewerage. Sanitary sewers serving industrial areas may also carry industrial wastewater. In municipalities served by sanitary sewers, separate storm drains may convey surface runoff directly to surface waters. An advantage of sanitary sewer systems is that they avoid combined sewer overflows. Sanitary sewers are typically much smaller in diameter than combined sewers which also transport urban runoff. Backups of raw sewage can occur if excessive stormwater inflow or groundwater infiltration occurs due to leaking joints, defective pipes etc. in aging infrastructure.
Sewage disposal regulation and administration describes the governance of sewage treatment and disposal.
Onsite sewage facilities (OSSF), also called septic systems, are wastewater systems designed to treat and dispose of effluent on the same property that produces the wastewater, in areas not served by public sewage infrastructure.
Effluent is wastewater from sewers or industrial outfalls that flows directly into surface waters either untreated or after being treated at a facility. The term has slightly different meanings in certain contexts, and may contain various pollutants depending on the source. Treating wastewater efficiently is challenging, but improved technology allows for enhanced removal of specific materials, increased re-use of water, and energy production from waste.
Toronto Water is the municipal division of the City of Toronto under Infrastructure and Development Services responsible for the water supply network, and stormwater and wastewater management in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, as well as parts of Peel and York Regions.
The District of Columbia Water and Sewer Authority provides drinking water, sewage collection and sewage treatment for the District of Columbia, in the United States. The utility also provides wholesale wastewater treatment services to several adjoining municipalities in Maryland and Virginia, and maintains more than 9,000 public fire hydrants in the District of Columbia. DC Water was created in 1996 when the District Government and the U.S. federal government established it as an independent authority of the District government.
A combined sewer is a type of gravity sewer with a system of pipes, tunnels, pump stations etc. to transport sewage and urban runoff together to a sewage treatment plant or disposal site. This means that during rain events, the sewage gets diluted, resulting in higher flowrates at the treatment site. Uncontaminated stormwater simply dilutes sewage, but runoff may dissolve or suspend virtually anything it contacts on roofs, streets, and storage yards. As rainfall travels over roofs and the ground, it may pick up various contaminants including soil particles and other sediment, heavy metals, organic compounds, animal waste, and oil and grease. Combined sewers may also receive dry weather drainage from landscape irrigation, construction dewatering, and washing buildings and sidewalks.
Water supply and sanitation in Indonesia is characterized by poor levels of access and service quality. Almost 30 million people lack access to an improved water source and more than 70 million of the country's 264 million population has no access to improved sanitation. Only about 2% of people have access to sewerage in urban areas; this is one of the lowest in the world among middle-income countries. Water pollution is widespread on Bali and Java. Women in Jakarta report spending US$11 per month on boiling water, implying a significant burden for the poor.
Clean Water Services is the water resources management utility for more than 600,000 residents in urban Washington County, Oregon and small portions of Multnomah County, Oregon and Clackamas County, Oregon, in the United States. Clean Water Services operates four wastewater treatment facilities, constructs and maintains flood management and water quality projects, and manages flow into the Tualatin River to improve water quality and protect fish habitat. They are headquartered in Hillsboro.
Water testing is a broad description for various procedures used to analyze water quality. Millions of water quality tests are carried out daily to fulfill regulatory requirements and to maintain safety.
Water supply and sanitation in Canada is nearly universal and generally of good quality, but a lack of clean drinking water in many First Nations communities remains a problem. Water use in Canada is high compared to Europe, since water tariffs are low and 44% of users are not metered.
Sewage treatment is a type of wastewater treatment which aims to remove contaminants from sewage to produce an effluent that is suitable to discharge to the surrounding environment or an intended reuse application, thereby preventing water pollution from raw sewage discharges. Sewage contains wastewater from households and businesses and possibly pre-treated industrial wastewater. There are a high number of sewage treatment processes to choose from. These can range from decentralized systems to large centralized systems involving a network of pipes and pump stations which convey the sewage to a treatment plant. For cities that have a combined sewer, the sewers will also carry urban runoff (stormwater) to the sewage treatment plant. Sewage treatment often involves two main stages, called primary and secondary treatment, while advanced treatment also incorporates a tertiary treatment stage with polishing processes and nutrient removal. Secondary treatment can reduce organic matter from sewage, using aerobic or anaerobic biological processes.
Water supply and sanitation in Iran has witnessed some important improvements, especially in terms of increased access to urban water supply, while important challenges remain, particularly concerning sanitation and service provision in rural areas. Institutionally, the Ministry of Energy is in charge of policy and provincial companies are in charge of service provision.
Drinking water supply and sanitation in Egypt is characterized by both achievements and challenges. Among the achievements are an increase of piped water supply between 1998 and 2006 from 89% to 100% in urban areas and from 39% to 93% in rural areas despite rapid population growth; the elimination of open defecation in rural areas during the same period; and in general a relatively high level of investment in infrastructure. Access to an at least basic water source in Egypt is now practically universal with a rate of 98%. On the institutional side, the regulation and service provision have been separated to some extensions through the creation of a national Holding Company for Water and Wastewater in 2004, and of an economic regulator, the Egyptian Water Regulatory Agency (EWRA), in 2006. , many challenges remain. Only about one half of the population is connected to sanitary sewers. Partly because of low sanitation coverage about 50,000 children die each year because of diarrhea. Another challenge is low cost recovery due to water tariffs that are among the lowest in the world. This in turn requires government subsidies even for operating costs, a situation that has been aggravated by salary increases without tariff increases after the Arab Spring. Poor operation of facilities, such as water and wastewater treatment plants, as well as limited government accountability and transparency, are also issues.
Water supply and sanitation in Turkey is characterized by achievements and challenges. Over the past decades access to drinking water has become almost universal and access to adequate sanitation has also increased substantially. Autonomous utilities have been created in the 16 metropolitan cities of Turkey and cost recovery has been increased, thus providing the basis for the sustainability of service provision. Intermittent supply, which was common in many cities, has become less frequent. In 2004, 61% of the wastewater collected through sewers was being treated. In 2020 77% of water was used by agriculture, 10% by households and the rest by industry.
Water supply and sanitation in Japan is characterized by numerous achievements and some challenges. The country has achieved universal access to water supply and sanitation; has one of the lowest levels of water distribution losses in the world; regularly exceeds its own strict standards for the quality of drinking water and treated waste water; uses an effective national system of performance benchmarking for water and sanitation utilities; makes extensive use of both advanced and appropriate technologies such as the jōkasō on-site sanitation system; and has pioneered the payment for ecosystem services before the term was even coined internationally. Some of the challenges are a decreasing population, declining investment, fiscal constraints, ageing facilities, an ageing workforce, a fragmentation of service provision among thousands of municipal utilities, and the vulnerability of parts of the country to droughts that are expected to become more frequent due to climate change.
Water supply and sanitation in Lebanon is characterized by a number of achievements and challenges. The achievements include the reconstruction of infrastructure after the 1975–90 Civil War and the 2006 war with Israel, as well as the reform of the water and sanitation sector through a water law passed in 2000. The law created four Regional Water Establishments to consolidate numerous smaller utilities.
Duffin Creek Water Pollution Control Plant is on the north shore of Lake Ontario in the City of Pickering. It operates as a partnership between The Regional Municipality of York and The Regional Municipality of Durham. The Plant is capable of treating 630 million litres of wastewater each day and serves the communities of York Region, the Town of Ajax and the City of Pickering in Durham Region. Holding ISO 14001 certification, the Plant operates to ensure the environmentally responsible treatment of wastewater.
Water pollution in Canada is generally local and regional in water-rich Canada, and most Canadians have "access to sufficient, affordable, and safe drinking water and adequate sanitation." Water pollution in Canada is caused by municipal sewage, urban runoff, industrial pollution and industrial waste, agricultural pollution, inadequate water infrastructure. This is a long-term threat in Canada due to "population growth, economic development, climate change, and scarce fresh water supplies in certain parts of the country."
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