Crofton’s Catalyst mill has been fined $25,500 by the province for two instances in which more than one million litres of waste water was discharged into the ocean in 2021.
According to a determination of administrative penalty by the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change Strategy, on July 23, 2021, Catalyst discharged up to one million litres of effluent, storm water and seawater into the ocean.
This discharge was due to a failed expansion joint associated with one of the pumps responsible for conveying the effluent from a bleach tank through a heat exchanger.
Catalyst submitted that it was not possible to have predicted the expansion joint failure, but the ministry found that prior to the discharge, Catalyst failed to regularly inspect the expansion joint and failed to maintain it in good working order.
On Aug. 7, 2021, Catalyst also discharged approximately 6,000 litres of effluent into the ocean due to a pump failure.
Catalyst submitted that it did not cause the discharge and said it was its tenant, Mosaic Forest Management, that caused the discharge and Catalyst should not be penalized for it.
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“I find that Catalyst has failed to provide any evidence to support these assertions and I attribute little weight to them,” the ministry’s report said.
“I find that Catalyst, and Catalyst alone, has all of the rights, obligations, and liabilities under its permit. At all material times, Mosaic did not have any rights, obligations, and liabilities under the permit. While Mosaic’s operations may have possibly contributed to the discharge, I find that Catalyst was ultimately responsible for meeting all permit requirements.”
The ministry added that both of Catalyst’s discharges were due to equipment failure, and are considered unauthorized since neither discharge was caused by the pumping system capacity being exceeded as a result of an extreme weather event.
The company tried to argue that in the case of both discharges, the environmental impact was only moderate and there were no signs of obvious harm to the marine environment, but the ministry disagreed, stating that the potential for much more serious environmental impacts was high.
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Catalyst could have faced a separate $40,000 penalty for each of the six failures to comply with its permit in the two discharges, to a maximum of $240,000, or consolidating them into one penalty, to a maximum of $40,000.
“Since this is the first administrative penalty for Catalyst regarding the permit, I have decided to exercise discretion in favour of Catalyst and consolidate all six failures to comply into one penalty, with a maximum of $40,000,” the ministry said.
Due to Catalyst’s fast efforts to deal with the first major discharge, and its efforts to prevent such an incident from happening again, the fine was set at $25,500.