Company issued $1.35 M fine for depositing sodium chlorite in Gatineau-area river

Snow along the Ottawa River. (CTV News Ottawa)

The Court of Quebec has issued a $1,350,000 fine to the owners of a chemical manufacturing plant in Gatineau for depositing chemicals in the Lièvre River, in violation of the Fisheries Act.

Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC) says Superior General Partner Inc. pleaded guilty to 13 counts of violating the Fisheries Act in 2019 and was ordered to pay a $1,350,000 fine.

The company was the owner and operator of the Erco Mondial chemical manufacturing plant in Gatineau and the plant’s technical and environmental director at the time of the violations, Jean-François Roux, was also issued a fine of $15,000.

According to ECCC, on July 24, 2019, a representative of the plant told Environment and Climate Change Canada that sodium chlorite had been deposited in the Lièvre River due to an equipment failure. ECCC says sodium chlorite is a “substance deleterious to fish under the Fisheries Act.”

ECCC investigators found the chemical had been deposited from the plant into the river 12 times between June 27 and July 19, 2019, and that employees had been slow to identify a leak and notify ECCC about the incidents.

The Lièvre River is located approximately 30 kilometres northeast of downtown Ottawa, and runs through Masson-Angers into the Ottawa River. ECCC says the river is “home to several species of fish, including smallmouth bass, brook trout, walleye, and muskellunge.”

In July 2019, hundreds of dead fish were discovered in the Ottawa River and the Lièvre River.

ECCC launched an investigation in response to the incident, and say they did not find a link between the fish deaths and the sodium chlorite emitted by the company.

“In response to the 2019 fishkill episodes in the Rivière du Lièvre, ECCC has conducted multiple enforcement activities in the surrounding area in an attempt to identify the cause of the fishkills,” ECCC wrote. “The evidence collected by ECCC did not link the fish kills to the sodium chlorite deposits from the chemical plant owned, at the time, by Superior General Partner Inc.”

According to ECCC, Superior General Partner Inc. pleaded guilty to 12 counts of depositing sodium chlorite into water frequented by fish between June 27 and July 19, 2019. Superior General Partner Inc. and Roux each pleaded guilty to failing to immediately notify authorities about the chemical deposits.

The total fine will be directed to the Government of Canada’s Environmental Damages Fund and Superior General Partner Inc. has been added to the Environmental Offenders Registry.

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