EDMONTON — A city construction company was penalized $285,000 Thursday for a chlorine spill into the North Saskatchewan River described as the largest in Canada.
Clark Builders was fined $15,000 and ordered to pay $270,000 to Environment Canada’s Environmental Damages Fund after pleading guilty in provincial court to a charge under the Fisheries Act of depositing a deleterious substance in water frequented by fish.
Federal prosecutor Erin Eacott told court the July 20, 2009, spill of an estimated eight to 12 million litres of chlorinated tap water into the North Saskatchewan River happened during construction of an indoor swimming pool.
Eacott told court it is the “largest spill in Canada of a substance deleterious to fish” and said that such a concentration of chlorine -- described as 3,900 times greater than the Canadian Water Quality Guideline -- is “lethal to fish.”
She said it is not known how many fish died as a result of the spill, but noted such an amount of chlorinated water would have formed a “toxic plume” that would have persisted at lethal concentrations for “significant” distances.
Eacott told court the spill was “not intentional;” however, she said that the actions by Clark Builders were “grossly negligent” and the incident was “preventable.”
According to agreed facts, the swimming pool construction involved the relocation of an EPCOR water main, however a mechanical site plan used in the relocation design did not show a below grade water storage tank.
As a result, when a worker later drilled holes into the ground to install concrete pilings for the pool’s foundation, the relocated water main was punctured.
That then led to approximately 3,000 litres of chlorinated water to exit the water main per second from the start of the break at 11:30 a.m until EPCOR was able to shut off the water main about two hours later.
The chlorinated water flowed across a parking lot and roadway into the North Saskatchewan River, 200 metres away.
The North Saskatchewan River has the highest diversity of fish species of any Alberta river. In the Edmonton area, that includes burbot, mountain whitefish, walleye, sauger, northern pike, goldeye, mooneye and lake sturgeon.
Clark Builders president and CEO Paul Verhesen said the spill was an “unfortunate incident,” but noted the construction company has an excellent safety record.
“We are obviously disappointed that it happened, but unfortunately accidents do happen,” said Verhesen.
Court heard that Environment Canada’s Environmental Damages Fund was created in 1995 and Eacott said it has funded 136 projects across the country after receiving more than $4 million from 122 monetary awards.
