The Big Flush
A Moment of Infrastructural Visibility and Eventfulness
This research group takes a deep look at the event of The Big Flush of November 2015 where the Montreal Municipal government dumped 8 billion litres of raw sewage into the Saint Lawrence River in order to accommodate the renovation of the city’s sewage lines. The dump was supposed to be a mundane event, given that sewage dumps like this one are common infrastructural practice. However, as news of the dump circulated and it became a matter of intense public contention, the event became interesting for its infrastructural and environmental consequences, its display of “infrastructural visibility,” and its participation in a political theatre that pitted then-mayor Denis Coderre against various political actors.
When it turned into such a highly contested event, The Big Flush made visible different and unequal relationships to water and sewage infrastructure in Montreal. In order to untangle the intricacies of the event, this group asks two main questions. First, how did The Big Flush become a matter of political concern? Second, what does The Big Flush tell us about the potentials of infrastructural politics?
Peering over the guardrails, we look down on 4 vertiginously deep wells that collect the city’s wastewater. The windows at top are to allow pressure to evacuate in case of explosion.
One of the basins where the water is cleared of particles. Large particles settle at the bottom and are vacuumed out, then the rest attach to a flocculation agent and are slowly “raked” by moving bridges.
Inside the pumping station where all the city's collectors arrive. Each of the 17 pumps has a capacity of 6 cubic meters per second. More than 2/3 of the building is underground.
On our way out towards the basins.
“Had the Big Flush erupted into the scandal that, for a brief period, it seemed it might, Montreal might have found itself seriously reconsidering the way that it dealt with its waste, changing its politicians, its infrastructure, and its relation to the river that surrounds it.”
To answer these questions we explore the media coverage of the event, both the way in which the story circulated and how the coverage made visible the functioning of the infrastructure.
We also conducted interviews with various (overlapping) groups including activists, bureaucrats and civil servants, indigenous communities, politicians, and engineers and other experts. We hope to uncover what it was about this moment specifically that created such heated public debate. We also explored actions (or inactions) that took place around sewage infrastructure in Montreal since the event with an eye to what activists and politicians have pursued.
We explore opposing narratives that surround the event, such as the conflicting claims made by experts and politicians in terms of the environmental impact the sewage would have on the river and surrounding ecosystem, and consider whether the event was a failure or a success.
The Big Flush is part of the Montreal Waterways working group.