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It’s 30 kilometres long, slightly narrower than a métro tunnel, and full of water and other things that go down your toilet and sink and the sewers on your street.

The city’s plan to shut it down for a week for repairs, maintenance and upgrades has caused a storm because it would involve dumping 8 billion litres of raw sewage into the St. Lawrence River.

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With a federal ban on the dumping in place until Nov. 9, here’s an in-depth look at the southeast interceptor, Montreal’s most famous sewer.

Three projects

If the shutdown goes ahead, 12,000 litres of wastewater per second will flow into the St. Lawrence, via 24 submerged outfall pipes. Twenty-two of them will discharge waste 30 to 50 metres from the shore, with the remaining two dumping within a few metres of land. The city refused to tell the Montreal Gazette which pipes are close to the shore.

Teams of workers will be on the job around the clock, inspecting and cleaning various sections of the interceptor and tackling three projects, all of which requires the interceptor to be dry.