About the Emissions Reporting Tool

The Emissions Reporting Tool was developed to bring a citizen perspective to the GTA Urban Emissions Project. Although we try to measure methane at a variety of sites around the GTA, there are areas we have missed, and we benefit greatly from the perspective of citizens familiar with these areas. No matter where in the GTA you live, we need your feedback and ideas about methane emissions in your area.

When you submit a report, the date, time, and smell severity you report will be added to our Emissions Reporting Tool Map. We will also save the details you provide, and if we notice something we want to observe or measure ourselves, we may visit the site on a future bike survey. This will improve our understanding of where methane emissions in the GTA are coming from, but it will not fix the smell or leak that you notice. We encourage you to call 311 or Enbridge's emergency hotline (1-866-763-5427) if you suspect a dangerous source of methane emissions.

How to Spot Methane

You can spot methane emissions without sensors or fancy equipment. Methane itself is colourless and odourless, but it is usually accompanied by other gases that smell. This could be due to the process by which it was emitted (through the sewer system, for example), or in the case of natural gas, other substances could be added by gas companies to make leaks easier to spot. If you smell rotten eggs on the street or in your house, you could be smelling methane emissions, and we want to know about it!

When to Submit a Cause Report

The emissions report questionnaire contains a question about possible causes of the emissions, but if you have an idea about what is causing emissions and you want to elaborate, please fill out our cause report questionnaire.
Some situations in which you might want to fill out a cause report:

• You have an idea about the source of a cluster on our Emissions Cluster Map.
• You notice a lot of emissions reports in a particular area on our Emissions Reporting Tool Map and you have an idea about the source.
• You think that we might be incorrect about the main source of emissions in an area, or that there is a source we have not considered.

What We Ask

The emissions report questionnaire asks you for information about when and where you noticed the emissions. It then asks you to describe what you observed, and you may also provide your thoughts on the cause of the emissions. We save the responses of individual surveys, but we do not record any of your personal information or information about your device, so we cannot trace a report back to a single person. We take individual privacy very seriously, so if you have any concerns about the questionnaire, please contact us.

The cause report questionnaire asks you where the source you want to report is and what you want to report. It also gives you the option to provide your email or other contact information so that we can reach you if we want to ask you any follow-up questions. You do not have to provide any contact information.