A coalition of Canadian and U.S. environmental groups have asked an international body to investigate allegations the federal government is allowing a Metro Vancouver sewage plant to regularly discharge toxic waste into Georgia Strait.
In a submission, nine groups ask the Commission for Environmental Cooperation of North America to document “the failure of the Canadian government to adequately enforce its environmental laws.”
Douglas Chapman, a spokesman for Fraser Riverkeeper, the lead environmental group in the action, said he hopes the CEC will investigate why the federal government took over and stayed a private prosecution of Metro Vancouver in 2006.
In that case Fraser Riverkeeper alleged the Iona waste water treatment plant was routinely discharging effluent that failed to meet toxicity standards.
Mr. Chapman said Metro Vancouver’s own records show that on 25 testing days between 2001 and 2009 the Iona plant “discharged primary treated sewage effluent that was acutely toxic to fish.”
But he said Metro Vancouver has never been charged with violating the Fisheries Act.
“The aim of this submission is to promote the enforcement of the Fisheries Act,” states the application to the CEC. “By preventing the charge against Metro Vancouver … the Canadian government has failed to enforce the Fisheries Act … A factual record of this failure could encourage the Canadian government to enforce its environmental laws and regulations, thus fostering the protection of the environment for present and future generations.”
The CEC was established in 1994 by Canada, Mexico and the U.S. through the North American Agreement on Environmental Cooperation. Its role is to promote the enforcement of environmental laws and to help prevent international conflict.
The Iona plant, one of five operated by Metro Vancouver, discharges primary treated sewage into Georgia Strait, near the mouth of the Fraser River, a salmon river of importance to both Canada and the U.S.
The coalition of environmental groups includes Waterkeeper Alliance, founded in 1999 by environmental attorney and activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the David Suzuki foundation and Georgia Strait Alliance.
Albert van Roodselaar, manager of utilities analysis and environmental management for Metro Vancouver, said the Iona plant does discharge waste that has failed lab tests for toxicity.
But Mr. van Roodselaar said supplemental tests have shown that when oxygen is added the samples lose their toxicity to fish.
He said the supplemental tests mimic the conditions that exist in the river, where the currents and large volume of moving water add oxygen.
“We have extensively monitored the oxygen in the zone around our discharge and there is no suppression of oxygen level there at all,” he said.
“Metro Vancouver also wants to protect salmon and other life in the Strait of Georgia. In that regard we have an extensive environmental monitoring program that we undertake and we’ve spent millions of dollars in the last decade to ensure that the waste water discharges are not having a negative effect on the Strait,” he said.
Mr. van Roodselaar also said Metro Vancouver expects to spend about $2-billion upgrading Iona, and a second treatment plant called Lions Gate, to meet new federal regulations.
He said Metro Vancouver has until 2020 to improve Lions Gate and 2030 to upgrade Iona.
“Those two upgrades ... could be as much as $2-billion … that’s a huge load in terms of taxpayer money,” he said in explaining why the upgrades aren’t being done faster.
In an e-mail, Tracy Lacroix-Wilson, a spokesperson for Environment Canada, said: “We take our enforcement role very seriously and action is taken if violations are found.”
