From the “McKenna in, sewage out” department comes this just unbelievably stupid claim from Canadian Environment Minister Catherine McKenna via CBC. At issue is old infrastructure, not climate change. h/t to WUWT reader “Cam_S”.

The issue as reported by CBC:

Data provided to The Canadian Press recently showed over one trillion litres of raw sewage leaked into Canadian waterways between 2013 and 2017, including 215 billion litres in 2017 alone — a 10 per cent increase over 2013.

Environment officials attribute most the increase to more systems complying with reporting requirements. However Krystyn Tully, vice-president of the water advocacy organization Swim Drink Fish Canada, says only 159 of the 269 municipal systems that are required to report actually did in 2017.

“The compliance is so bad,” said Tully.

She says the actual amount of leaking raw sewage is probably much higher than what has been reported, given that 110 systems were unaccounted for in the 2017 data alone.

Tully said governments are hard pressed to prioritize the problem if they don’t know how much is actually leaking out of their systems.

But wait! There’s climate change to blame! Never let an opportunity go to waste!

Environment Minister Catherine McKenna says the government isn’t specifically looking at ways to improve reporting rates of municipalities but, if there is more to do, the federal government would consider it.

McKenna said Tuesday that climate change is expected to bring about more frequent storms, like the flash flood rainfall in Toronto a week ago that left the harbourfront waters covered in debris from the toilets of millions of Toronto residents.

“This is a real problem,” McKenna said.

Gosh, yes that’s it, climate change! Let’s issue a carbon tax to make the sewage system compliant. Yeah, that’s the ticket!

So you’d think a modern city like Toronto would have completely separate sewage and storm drain systems. Sadly, no, and this news article from last week reports:

Some of the debris Thursday came from downtown Toronto’s old plumbing system, which carries household waste and whatever gets swept through storm drains in the same pipes — pipes that overflowed Tuesday. Modern cities, and some of Toronto’s younger suburbs, are outfitted with separate sewer systems which segregate human waste and storm water, a setup which became standard in the 1950s and ’60s.

But wait! There’s more….MODELS can help gauge the climate change impact!

Most cities only report calculated data based on computer models of how much sewage is expected to leak when a certain amount of rain falls. Kingston, Ont., is the only city Tully is aware of that has monitors in pipes to measure exactly how much leaks and reports that data publicly immediately.

Oh, the uncertainty!