TORONTO - Toxic raw sewage could be dumped into the Great Lakes for five more years due to a loophole in new federal regulations, environmental groups complain.

The rules, which apply to all watercraft on all Canadian bodies of water, state that newly launched boats must either have a sewage holding tank or sewage-treatment system on board.

However, older ships that only travel domestically have five years to comply with the regulation.

"Five years seems like an awful long time," says Tim Morris, water campaigner with the Sierra Club of Canada.

"The fact that this loophole exists for these older ships increases the risk to human health and fish contamination in the Great Lakes. It's obviously a concern for us."

According to a Transport Canada spokeswoman, her department was only given responsibility for the issue in May and the law has been coming down the legal pipeline for a few years.

"Before this regulation, there was no regulation in place to prevent the dumping of sewage," says Kirsten Goodnough.

"It's been a long time coming, it's a big success for this department and we definitely think it's going to clean up the waters."

The conservation group Environmental Defence said last week that increasing numbers of fish from the lakes are contaminated and unsafe to eat, and that it's time Canada caught up with the U.S. when it comes to cleanup efforts.

A report compiled by the group found that Ontario's fish consumption warnings were getting progressively worse.

"Knowing that contamination of the fish in the Great Lakes is getting worse and posing a threat to human health, we need to be taking a much stronger angle to pollution regulations and putting them into effect now," says Morris.

"Considering what we already know about the contamination of the fish, there's no time to waste."

Le Journal de Montreal recently reported that some ships are currently dumping their raw sewage directly into the St. Lawrence river.

The regulation won't affect cruise ships in the Toronto area, says Shey Clark of the Great Lakes Schooner company.

She says overboard dumping of sewage waste is already illegal in Toronto, so all cruise ships over 5.5 metres already have holding tanks for waste that are pumped out into the sewers when the boat docks.

However, environmental groups say watercraft sewage is not their primary concern when it comes to threats to the health of the Great Lakes.

According to Jode Roberts, communications director for the Sierra Legal Defence Fund, Toronto dumps more than nine billion litres of raw sewage into Lake Ontario every year.

"When it rains, the municipal sewage system combines the raw sewage with the storm water, which exceeds the capacity of the treatment plants so it just goes straight into the water," says Roberts.

"The city is not dealing with it because you need money to dig up the pipes and fix the antiquated systems. They don't have the cash to dig up all their old pipes and fix the situation."

The call for better infrastructure is one that the Ministry of the Environment is hearing loud and clear, says ministry spokeswoman Anne O'Hagan.

"What that comes down to is money," she says.

"Upgrading existing sewage treatment collection and infrastructure is the most important priority, but we don't have a lot of money. We are an enforcement ministry."

Despite this, she says the Canada-Ontario agreement, which deals specifically with restoring and sustaining the Great Lakes, will be renewed by the end of July.

"It's going to be announced, really imminently, that it will be renewed," she says.

"It might not be as much as other people want, but I think there's something in the order of $30 million to support restoring and sustaining the Great Lakes."

Roberts says that sewage waste is particularly disturbing because modern sewage is a "foul cocktail of human waste, disease-causing pathogens and hundreds of highly toxic chemicals."

Waste dumped from boats is on a different scale than that of municipal waste, he says.

"It seem like there's an easy remedy to change the new legislation so it's no longer voluntary," says Roberts, who says it seems like a relatively easy task to close the loophole.

"The scale of that problem seems less tough to deal with than dealing with billions of dollars of infrastructure."