Between 2013 and 2023, the city dumped 115 billion litres of sewage into its river system, according to a Narwhal and Winnipeg Free Press analysis of publicly available sewer monitoring data. That’s enough to fill nearly 46,000 Olympic swimming pools.

Reworking sewer infrastructure is expensive. The city believes it will take until 2095 — 70 years — to stop the leaks. In the meantime, it argues in documents the impact of these combined sewer overflows are relatively minimal: they’re an eyesore, they’re unpleasant, more often than not they breach water quality regulations — but the city says they have little impact on human or aquatic ecosystem health.

In a 1992 letter to the editor published in the Winnipeg Free Press, he wrote:

“Our rivers are putrid and include 10 pathogenic organisms which are responsible for the following diseases: salmonella, dysentery, ear infection, dermatitis, respiratory infections, gastroenteritis and polio.”