Sewage outflow closes swimming beach at Point Pleasant Park

Black Rock Beach in Point Pleasant Park is closed to swimming due to concerns about high bacteria levels following an outflow of sewage into Halifax Harbour that lasted more than one hour.

Brendan Elliott, senior communications advisor with the Halifax Regional Municipality, said the city took the precautionary step of closing the beach to swimming following news of a sewage outflow from Halifax Water.

Elliott said testing has now been done to determine whether bacteria levels are actually too high. The beach will likely be closed until Wednesday because it typically takes three days to get test results back, he said.

Lifeguards will remain on site in the interim to warn people against swimming.

Heavy rain caused overflow

James Campbell, spokesman for Halifax Water, said the sewage outflow occurred during a heavy burst of rain on Saturday evening and lasted 87 minutes.

Campbell said the utility alerted city staff in charge of the beaches at around 11 a.m. on Sunday. Elliott said he received word about the sewage outflow at approximately 10:50 a.m. Monday, and subsequently alerted the public.

Elliott said the weekend staff were in on Sunday, but were on the road just before the message was left, which is why there was a gap between the alert and the closure of the beach.

"There was definitely a lapse, a failure in communication on our part," he said. "I want to stress that we did follow all of our existing protocols over the weekend, but we also now recognize that we need to improve the monitoring of our after hours and weekend notifications."

Precautionary closure unusual

The sewage outflow occurred near Inglis and Barrington streets, which Elliott said is approximately one kilometre north of Black Rock Beach.

Elliott said it is unusual for the city to close a beach as a precautionary measure. It didn't happen at all in 2015 or 2014. It happened three times in 2013.

He said a precautionary closure would only ever involve Black Rock Beach or the Dingle Beach because "they're the only ones that would have a sewage outflow pipe in any area close to the beach."

Reassuring swimmers

Swimmers can feel confident about the quality of the water at Halifax's beaches, Elliott said.

"We take the quality of the water at our beaches very seriously," he said.

"Every single beach in the municipality that we're responsible for — that's upwards of two dozen beaches in the municipality — are tested on a weekly basis."

Elliott said the beach was open all day on Sunday and his statistics showed only four people were in the water yesterday at Black Rock Beach.

"Thankfully any potential for a problem was minimized by the lack of people that were in the water, but it doesn't excuse the fact that we should have known sometime on Sunday that the beach should be closed," he said.