Premier Dalton McGuinty says he's open to the idea of helping the City of Ottawa with its $140-million plan to dramatically reduce the amount of untreated sewage spilling into the Ottawa River.

Mayor Jim Watson was in Toronto to ask McGuinty about several local issues Tuesday, including provincial funding for sewage treatment.

Currently, the amount of raw sewage that spills into the Ottawa River violates provincial guidelines. Last month alone, the overflow of sewage into the Ottawa River totalled more than 200 million litres.

The city now wants to move forward with a multi-million dollar plan to build giant underground storage tanks and a series of three-metre-wide tunnels to store the untreated overflow until the system has space to handle the waste.

The plan is designed to keep up to 80 per cent of raw sewage out of the Ottawa River.

Overflow into the river has almost been cut in half over the last two years, and Watson says the underground tanks would complete the fix.

With a report from CTV Ottawa's Michael O'Byrne