Environment Minister Peter Kent plans to crack down on the 150 billion liters of raw sewage pumped into Canada's waterways every year, a spokesman announced last week. The government has repeatedly pushed back on planned regulations to improve municipalities' treatment systems, which have been drafted since 2010. However, Kent stressed the importance of creating new standards that will allow Canada's water quality levels to be on par with those of the European Union and the United States, which has required secondary wastewater treatment since the 1970s. Stakeholders disagree about who will share the high costs of updating water infrastructure. A 2006 estimate indicated that cities would need to spend up to $20 billion over 20 years to bring water systems up to standards, a cost that caused the former New Brunswick minister of local government to write a letter saying that "these communities will not be able to sustain themselves." However, the federal government has indicated that it will give cities at high risk up to ten years to meet the requirements, and lower risk cities 20 to 30 years. John Morgan, mayor of the Cape Breton regional municipality in Nova Scotia, said that it was important for cities to improve systems, acknowledging that his own region is still dumping sewage into the Atlantic Ocean. "It is not an acceptable circumstance in this day and age to be putting untreated or even improperly treated materials into the oceans," said Morgan. "We need to deal with that situation, and we need to deal with it properly." For the full story, see http://www.vancouversun.com/technology/Peter+Kent+crack+down+third+world+sewage+practices/6912791/story.html.