Problems with discoloured drinking water in Kitchissippi have prompted a number of calls to Ottawa’s 311 service this year, according to analysis of 311 data released by the City.

Thirty-one calls were made to the service from the ward, which includes areas such as Westboro, Tunney’s Pasture and Mechanicsville, between January and October this year. That is almost twice the number of calls made from the ward in second place, Rideau-Rockcliffe, which includes New Edinburgh and Rockcliffe Park. Rideau-Rockcliffe recorded sixteen calls.

This graph shows the number of 311 calls received by every ward that was included in statistics released by the City of Ottawa. You can hover over each bar to see each number.

Drinking water in Ottawa is mainly sourced from the Ottawa River, although groundwater well systems are operated in rural areas. 290 million litres of drinking water is purified through the Britannia and Lemieux Island Water Purification Plants every day.

According to the City’s website, discoloured water is not caused by a problem in water purification. In fact, the presence of rusty or yellow-coloured water is often due to the sudden changes in water flow that occur when new water mains are being constructed, or fire hydrants are going through maintenance. This flow can pick up sediment from the bottom of older water mains, which enters the water. The reddish colour of the water comes from the iron in the sediment. It is perfectly safe to drink.

However, the City advises on their website that anybody experiencing visible sand or sediment particles in their drinking water should call 311. This problem is usually solved by hydrant flushing. People are also advised to call 311 if black particles are visible in their drinking water. Often, this is caused by small pieces of rubber from the tap fixture, but if the drinking water comes from a groundwater well, it could be a sign of a high presence of the element manganese in the well.

Hover over each of these circles to find out how many calls were made in each month. There were no calls made in the months that are missing.

In June of this year, the Rideau Shopping Centre in Ottawa, as well as other parts of Rideau Street, were issued with a boil water advisory. During the time the advisory was in force, businesses and residents had to boil their water for one minute before they were able to  consume it, brush their teeth with it, or use it to rinse their dishes after cleaning. The boil water advisory was lifted the next day.

This was followed in September by a boil water advisory for the whole of Gatineau, after a watermain broke on rue St-Louis. The boil water advisory also lasted for around a day, but the volume of available water and the water pressure in the town were reduced for some time afterwards.

Neither of these affected Kitchissippi ward.

The City of Ottawa publishes an annual report showing the results of several tests on the local water supply, including ones to analyse the microbiological, radiological and chemical contents of the water. The results for 2016 have not been published yet, but the 2015 report can be found here.

The lack of public washrooms in Ottawa’s ByWard Market may be putting the area’s workers at risk as they deal with violence and drug use in their stores’ washrooms.

The ByWard Market has one public washroom on ­­­55 ByWard Market Square, but it is not owned by the City of Ottawa and it has limited access depending on retail hours.

As a result, Nicole Johnston, an employee at Menchie’s Frozen Yogurt in the ByWard Market, sees many people coming into the store only to use their washroom. She says not all of these people are using the washroom for its intended purpose.

“They don’t come in here because they want ice cream, they come in here because they want to smoke crack in our bathroom,” says Johnston.

Johnston says there have been cases of people smoking cigarettes and other drugs, drinking alcohol and using needles in the store’s washroom.  She has had cleaned up crack pipes, discarded needles and blood out of their facilities.

“We have to be constantly wiping down the baby-change table because there’s drugs on it,” says Johnston.

Below, Johnston describes what happens when they tried to refuse access to a homeless woman who previously used drugs in their washroom.  After months of incidents, Ottawa Police gave the woman a no-trespassing order.

Johnston often arrives hours early for her shifts because she doesn’t want to leave her coworkers alone in the store. She says a public washroom in the ByWard Market would make her feel safer at work because it would reduce the amount of incidents in their store’s washroom.

Currently, all the washrooms in the area are owned by the retail establishments, according to Katherine Solomon, the marketing director for the ByWard Market BIA. She says it is the retail owner’s choice  to allow public access to their washroom.

Business Improvement Areas like the ByWard Market are not legally allowed to own property so they are unable to put in a public washroom.

“It’s a challenge, but hopefully things will change over time,” says Solomon.

In 2015 the City of Ottawa made public washroom data available to the public and developed a washroom-location app this year. However, there has been no mention by Council within the past year about building more public washrooms.

The map below shows the locations of these washrooms per ward from analysis of the public washroom and ward data via City of Ottawa Open Data. Click the arrow on the left-hand side to view the legend.

Other major cities are starting to make the push for more public washrooms. Edmonton councillor, Scott McKeen addressed the issue in a committee meeting on Oct. 17. He says public washrooms would help Edmonton’s “vulnerable population”  who are “often forced to endure the indignity of relieving themselves outside.”

In 2012 the City of Edmonton placed a public washroom on Whyte Avenue, a high traffic shopping district, which featured glass walls to increase the safety of its users. McKeen says in the meeting he is hoping to place washrooms like this in other areas of Edmonton.

As for Johnston, she has not approached the City of Ottawa about building a public washroom in the ByWard Market. She says it’s unlikely for washrooms to be put in the area because they would need constant monitoring and have the same issues their store’s washrooms have.

“It isn’t fair to us, but it’s what we have to deal with,” says Johnston.

What seems to be the perfect job can sometimes turn into a nightmare very quickly.

Isabelle Wolf recalls taking trips to Greece, drinking expensive bottles of wine and having great conversations. However, she also has memories of bruises, prank calls and financial insecurities.

Wolf, who previously lived in Ottawa but recently relocated in Montreal, started working as an independent prostitute about 15 years ago. She says there is a lot that has changed in the industry in the past years, but according to her, Bill C-36 didn’t change sex-workers’ life for best.

“Prostitution is becoming more and more hidden, which can be dangerous for us”, she says.

Bill C-36 made it illegal to purchase sexual services, but legal to sell them. One of the main goals was to protect sex workers instead of victimizing them.

Between 2009 and 2014, the number of police-reported prostitution offenses has fallen in all metropolitan of Canada and it keeps falling since the implementation of Bill C-36, according to a document released by Statistics Canada.

According to Sgt. Jeff LeBlanc of the Ottawa Police, a number of reasons could be linked to this immense decrease of reported prostitution offences. “Bill C-36 and other new projects in Ottawa help residents look for Johns (sex buyer) instead of prostitutes”, he says.

He also adds that the new law helps protect sex-workers, according to him. “We are trying to identify sex workers as victims and their safety comes first.”

Although having been through physical violence with some of her clients, Wolf said she would never report an incident to the police. “We should probably trust them, but when we talk to them about our job, they aren’t open”, she says. “They don’t want to deal with us, they want us to deal with our own mess.”

Wolf says that although sex-workers are often scared of reporting physical violence or “bad clients” in fear of ultimately loosing their only income, other resources are available for them to refer to if needed. The Daisy’s Drop-In Centre in Ottawa is one of them.

Running every Friday morning from 5 a.m. to 8 a.m., it provides women of all ages with a warm breakfast, clothing donations, clean needles, counselling and STI testing: a warm and cozy heaven for some of Ottawa’s sex-workers.

Counsellor Nikki Jalbert explains that if the women recently had a bad experience with a client, a bad date list report is offered to them where they can report the event and make other women aware of certain people.

Those resources are a must for the sex-workers to do their jobs safely, especially for the newer and younger sex-workers who, according to Wolf, “enter the job fully blind about the consequences that could happen to them.”

“The new generation starts this job much younger than we used to and there is an increase demand for younger girls”, says Wolf. “It’s really dangerous for them because they don’t have a clue what they are getting into.”

Not only the women and the girls don’t know what they are getting into, but Wolf also says that 75 per cent of her clients don’t know about Bill C-36. Seeing three to four clients a day for six days a week, she says that the only that has changed in the industry since the implementation is that those who know about it are trying to hide themselves and do it more “underground.”

Daycare coordinator Kathy Arsenault urges parents to educate their children about the danger of needles. Credit: Elise Schulzke.

Ottawa’s drug problem is “disconcerting” to a daycare provider who has found used syringes in her school’s yards.

At least 35 publically run daycares are located within 150 metres of where syringes have been found in the past few years, a number one care provider calls “startling”.

Many daycares in Ottawa are situated close to where used syringes have been found. Map created with data from the City of Ottawa Open Data Portal and Access to Information Requests. Credit: Elise Schulzke.

“I find it really disturbing,” said Kathy Arsenault, coordinator of the Vanier Cooperative School Age Program. She added that she has found about 6 needles on daycare property in the two decades she’s worked there.

Since 2011, the City of Ottawa and the syringe retrieval program “needle hunters” have collected about 60,000 improperly discarded sharps from public places. Of those, 80 per cent were found the in Rideau-Vanier area.

Used sharps often carry HIV and Hepatitis C, which are transmitted via the blood of an infected person. About 80 per cent of Ottawa’s regular drug users are suffering from one the two illnesses and the contaminate can live on a needle for two months after injection.

It is illegal to dispose of syringes and crack pipes in standard garbage, so the city provides over 70 needle drop boxes at various locations around the city. The black, mailbox-looking stands have been key in cleaning up the streets, said Craig Calder, an Ottawa Public Health safety leader.

“We try to publicize the use of the boxes,” he said. He continued that the city added 12 new boxes at the end of last year, which is encouraging proper disposal of used needles.

Despite the new boxes, the city reported that almost half of Ottawa’s 5,600 regular drug users inject in public spaces. It’s this statistic that has Arsenault concerned.

Created with data taken from the Problematic Substance Use 2016 report from the City of Ottawa. Credit: Elise Schulzke.

“We have to do sweeps and checks to ensure it’s safe to play,” she said, explaining the lengthy clean up the teachers conduct before letting the children outside. She said she realizes the daycare’s neighbourhood has a reputation for “salacious activity”.

Her daycare was advised by Ottawa Public Health to invest in proper needle disposal equipment -like leather gloves and metal tongs- which they did about a decade ago.

A study conducted in Montreal found that more than 270 children had been accidentally stabbed with used syringes between 1995 and 2006, though none contracted an infection. Ottawa has seen at least a dozen such incidents in the last several years.

But the risks aren’t panicking everyone. Alexandra Soto said she isn’t “too worried” about her three-year-old son, who goes to daycare in Orleans.

“It would make me concerned if they found syringes,” she said. “But it could also happen on anyone’s front lawn.”

Calder agrees that it is unlikely a child would find a needle. “We’ve never had any complaints from parents or daycares about syringes,” he said.

Arsenault’s hands-on experience tells her otherwise.

Ten years ago she took her daycare on a walk to the grocery store three blocks away. On their way home, a child saw a needle near the sidewalk and reached down to grab it. Arsenault said that close call is part of the reason she feels it’s important to educate children.

“You can’t get people to stop doing drugs, but you can teach your children,” she said firmly. Because of their precocious nature, parents and teachers should “tell them what it is and why not to touch it.”

There are no municipal or provincial licensing regulations regarding proximity of daycares to locations with known drug activity. “Each daycare provider is responsible for determining their location,” said Courtney Ferguson, a media relations spokesperson for the city. “The Ministry of Education is then responsible for licensing that location.”

The Ottawa Police were unable to comment if drug use in the city was increasing, though charges related to cocaine, heroin and crystal meth have all gone up in the last year.

“All we can do is educate our children” Arsenault repeated.

What seems to be the perfect job can sometimes turn into a nightmare very quickly.

Isabelle Wolf recalls taking trips to Greece, drinking expensive bottles of wine and having great conversations. However, she also has memories of bruises, prank calls and financial insecurities.

Wolf, who previously lived in Ottawa but recently relocated in Montreal, started working as an independent prostitute about 15 years ago. She says there is a lot that has changed in the industry in the past years, but according to her, Bill C-36 didn’t change sex-workers’ life for best.

“Prostitution is becoming more and more hidden, which can be dangerous for us”, she says.

Bill C-36 made it illegal to purchase sexual services, but legal to sell them. One of the main goals was to protect sex workers instead of victimizing them.

Between 2009 and 2014, the number of police-reported prostitution offences has fallen in all metropolitans of Canada and it keeps falling since the implementation of Bill C-36, according to a document released by Statistics Canada.

According to Sgt. Jeff LeBlanc of the Ottawa Police, a number of reasons could be linked to this immense decrease of reported prostitution offences. “Bill C-36 and other new projects in Ottawa help residents look for Johns (sex buyer) instead of prostitutes”, he says.

He also adds that the new law helps protect sex-workers, according to him. “We are trying to identify sex workers as victims and their safety comes first.”

PHOTO JEFF

Although having been through physical violence with some of her clients, Wolf said she would never report an incident to the police. “We should probably trust them, but when we talk to them about our job, they aren’t open”, she says. “They don’t want to deal with us, they want us to deal with our own mess.”

Wolf says that although sex-workers are often scared of reporting physical violence or “bad clients” in fear of ultimately loosing their only income, other resources are available for them to refer to if needed. The Daisy’s Drop-In Centre in Ottawa is one of them.

            Running every Friday morning from 5 a.m. to 8 a.m., it provides women of all ages with a warm breakfast, clothing donations, clean needles, counselling and STI testing: a warm and cozy heaven for some of Ottawa’s sex-workers.

PHOTO

Counsellor Nikki Jalbert explains that if the women recently had a bad experience with a client, a bad date list report is offered to them where they can report the event and make other women aware of certain people.

Those resources are a must for the sex-workers to do their jobs safely, especially for the newer and younger sex-workers who, according to Wolf, “enter the job fully blind about the consequences that could happen to them.”

“The new generation starts this job much younger than we used to and there is an increase demand for younger girls”, says Wolf. “It’s really dangerous for them because they don’t have a clue what they are getting into.”

Not only the women and the girls don’t know what they are getting into, but Wolf also says that 75 per cent of her clients don’t know about Bill C-36. Seeing three to four clients a day for six days a week, she says that the only that has changed in the industry since the implementation is that those who know about it are trying to hide themselves and do it more “underground.”