Wastewater testing for drugs forwarded to Ottawa Board of Health by council

Wastewater testing for COVID-19 was shut down by the Province of Ontario in July 2024, but Ottawa took over the program, which is still used to monitor for signs of respiratory viruses and Mpox. Photo by JULIE OLIVER /POSTMEDIA

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City council has approved a motion to test wastewater for toxic drugs, but there’s a caveat: It will be up to the Ottawa Board of Health and the city’s water services department to decide where sampling will be done.

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Rideau-Vanier Coun. Stéphanie Plante had pitched wastewater surveillance to city council on May 13, arguing that wastewater testing would help identify drug-use trends in Ottawa.

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Plante argued that the local drug supply had become increasingly unpredictable and toxic. Wastewater surveillance should be adopted to provide early warnings of dangerous contaminants in the drug supply, and it’s both reliable and anonymous, she added.

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The testing can be hyper-local, but it can also show how drugs are moving around the city in real time, Plante contended.

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The amended motion passed on May 27 stipulates that the infrastructure and water services department will work with Ottawa Public Health “to examine the feasibility of identifying key geographic locations” for sampling, establish reporting protocols and develop rapid-notification mechanisms for front-line partners when dangerous substances or toxic batches are detected.

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Addressing Tammy Rose, the city’s general manager of infrastructure and water services, Board of Health chair Catherine Kitts said she understood there was “some concern from your team about giving researchers access to our pipes.”

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Rose said the department was happy to collaborate with partners looking to establish surveillance or monitoring, as the city did for COVID-19, and provide access to wastewater for sampling, but establishing a surveillance program and monitoring it would be up to Ottawa Public Health.

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