Abbotsford mushroom farms fined $650K for dumping in local creeks

H.Q. Mushroom Farm is seen in this file photo from 2016. (CTV)

A pair of mushroom farms in Abbotsford have been fined more than half a million dollars as a result of Fisheries Act violations involving "effluent" being dumped into local waterways.

H.Q. Mushroom Farm Ltd. was ordered to pay $385,000 and Delfresh Mushroom Farm Ltd. was ordered to pay $265,000, according to a news release from Environment and Climate Change Canada.

Both mushroom farms have the same owner, and both pleaded guilty to the offences on Nov. 22. The fines were issued in Abbotsford provincial court earlier this week.

It's not the first time H.Q. and Delfresh have faced fines related to waste ending up in local creeks.

In 2016, the City of Abbotsford fined the owner of the two farms $1,500 for three separate infractions on their properties on 58th Avenue. The infractions included waste materials leaching into a ditch that led to Bradner Creek and an uncovered storage area with runoff leading to Beaver Creek.

H.Q. also faced a $10,000 fine for federal fisheries offences in 2008.

The latest fines stem from investigations that began in 2015 at H.Q. and in 2018 at Delfresh.

In October 2015, environmental enforcement officers from Environment Canada inspected H.Q. and found that "effluent from the farm was entering waters frequented by fish," the federal agency said in its release.

Lab analysis showed that the effluent was "a deleterious substance and acutely lethal to fish," prompting the inspectors to issue a Fisheries Act citation ordering the farm to stop the substance from entering the water and implement a plan for preventing it from happening again.

When inspectors returned in April 2016, according to Environment Canada, they found that samples again showed contamination levels that would be "acutely lethal" to fish.

At Delfresh, Environment Canada described a similar pattern. Officers inspected the facility and collected samples in August 2018, finding "deleterious" deposits of effluent and ordering the farm to stop them and make a plan to prevent them in the future.

In November of that same year, inspectors returned and "observed brown effluent being deposited in a creek."

Charges were laid against both farms under the Fisheries Act in September 2020.

In addition to the $650,000 in total fines it issued to the two farms, the court ordered Delfresh to provide a report to Environment Canada "itemizing the steps it has taken to prevent deleterious deposits from entering waters frequented by fish," according to the federal agency.

Environment Canada said the fines collected would be directed to the federal government's Environmental Damages Fund and the two companies would be added to the Environmental Offenders Registry.