wastewater testing for drugs forwarded to ottawa board of health by council
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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.
julie oliver
/
postmedia
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.
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.
ottawa’s groundbreaking wastewater surveillance program offered an early warning for incoming waves of covid-19 during the pandemic. but testing for covid was shut down by the province of ontario in july 2024. the city of ottawa took over the program, which is still used to monitor for signs of respiratory viruses and mpox in wastewater.
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.
the testing can be hyper-local, but it can also show how drugs are moving around the city in real time, plante contended.
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.
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.”
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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“at this time, we don’t have a lot of specifics to go on, and so i think we need to have more information to confirm,” rose said. “but there might be limitations, for sure.”
college coun. laine johnson said the city should be “thoughtful” when aggregating and disaggregating data related to public health outcomes.
“i wouldn’t want this type of result to further stigmatize or create inequities amongst different populations within the city of ottawa,” johnson said. “so i’ll support this today, but i’ll look forward to that discussion at ottawa public health because i do think there are some concerns there in terms of how we use the data.”
ottawa public health tracks overdose trends, community impacts, and discarded drug equipment through several existing publicly available reporting tools, kitts said. the overdose prevention and response task force enables real-time information sharing from front-line partners. alerts are issued when the task force becomes aware of issues related to toxic drugs circulating in the community.
however, ottawa is losing another tool for drug testing as consumption and treatment service sites prepare to close in june, she said.
“these drug-checking services currently provide some of the clearest information we have about the local toxic drug supply, and have historically served as an important early-warning system for individuals in the broader community. they have provided some of the earliest intelligence we have about changes in the local drug supply,” she said.
“as these services close, ottawa is losing that key source of information about emerging overdose risks and changes in the drug supply.”
ottawa public health has been exploring using wastewater surveillance as a potential complementary tool since 2025, kitts said.
discussions are ongoing with researchers, health canada, community partners and the infrastructure and water services department, but wastewater surveillance can’t replace direct drug-checking or the expertise of front-line organizations, she said.
“it does remain an emerging area of research, particularly as it related to toxic drugs.”
the wastewater surveillance matter will be before the board of health on june 15.
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