A local politician is looking for answers following multiple black water discharges into the Niagara River.
Tourists on both sides of the border expressed alarm after black smelly water surrounded the Maid of the Mist docks on the American side on July 29th.
The Niagara Falls New York Water Board originally said the discharge was due to routine maintenance of one of its wastewater basins, but have since said human error is to blame.
Niagara Falls MPP Wayne Gates joined CKTB's Larry Fedoruk and says he is skeptical of that explanation.
"I can tell you from day one I never bought it, just because this didn't just happen in August. This has been going on now for probably a better part of a year they've been dumping sewage in there ... It's easy to always blame the workers, in a situation like this where it's happening over and over again, we felt there were other problems in this facility. The governor felt there were other problems in this."
Another discharge occurred August 15th and was blamed on heavy rains.
According to Gates, these discharges aren't the first of their kind from the NFNY Water Board - he says they have also discharged mercury into the water.
"They've been fined before, for quite frankly - and a lot of people don't know this - they were dumping mercury into the river and they were fined for that. So this has gone over a long period of time, for them to come out in a very public press conference that was shown right across western New York, blaming the worker. We're almost going to celebrate Labour Day. It was too bad that that's the avenue chose to take knowing full well it wasn't accurate."
An investigation by the US Department of Environmental Conservation is currently underway.
Gates says he has been in correspondence with Minister of Environment Chris Ballard to determine how the Ontario government should handle the situation.
If the the issue is not fixed, the Water Board could face fines of US $35,000 per day, per occurrence.