I Finally got my camera and lens back in working order. Well, more or less. There are still a couple of minor problems, but at least it still takes pictures which is more than I thought it would ever do after it fell in the water. This was taken last night inside an inspection shaft for the island of Montreal’s interceptor network. The sewer at the bottom is roughly six storeys below grade and runs directly into the island’s wastewater treatment plant. Put another way: it’s nothing we’d ever dare try and wade through. Besides, these shafts are probably the most interesting thing about the system.

Oh yeah, and a proper update’s coming soon.

Grit removal tanks of Montreal's wastewater treatment plant.

Montreal’s wastewater treatment plant can be found at the far east end of the island in Pointe Aux Trembles. It’s the largest in North America and ranks the third largest in the world- capable of handling 32 cubic metres of water a second.  Raw sewage (usually) ends up here via a network of deep-level tunnels referred to as interceptors. These interceptors form a ring around the island, collecting and distributing wastewater to the plant before it has a chance to enter the surrounding rivers. To get a better sense of how the interceptors work, you can have a look at the entry I wrote  here.

Montreal's wastewater treatment plant as seen from Microsoft Live Maps.

While it’s an impressive system in terms of its scope and capacity, the treatment process itself leaves much to be desired. In fact, it’s actually one of the worst in Canada. A national “report card” issued by the Sierra Club in 2004 gave the city’s treatment process a grade of F-. The only other city to receive a grade worse than Montreal was Victoria, a place which doesn’t even have a treatment process in place yet.

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A typical interceptor manhole cover.

If there’s one thing that strikes fear into the hearts and minds of Montreal drainers (all three of us), it’s the island’s deep-level network of interceptor sewers. They are big concrete tunnels (up to 14.5 meters in diameter), often running at 100 feet below grade and with a ferocious amount of raw sewage coursing through them. All the wastewater of Montreal eventually drops down into one of these three tunnels. Our biggest fear is that we’d somehow end up going straight down there with it.

Because of this, we tend to keep our distance from anything marked “Intercepteur” and avoid passing through sections of sewers that come close to emptying into them.

Fortunately, there are  still ways to have a look at the network from a safe distance.

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