A B.C. community has been penalized nearly $9,000 for repeatedly discharging too much sewage into a nearby lake.
B.C.’s Ministry of Environment and Climate Change Strategy, which handed down the the $8,950 penalty to the Village of Fraser Lake on Dec. 20, 2023, cited multiple instances of non-compliance over a two-year period.
The roughly 1,000-resident community lies in the province’s Bulkley-Nechako region about 60 kilometres west of Vanderhoof. Since 1967, it has treated its municipal effluent before discharging it into nearby Fraser Lake.
But for 18 days in the spring of 2021, the effluent discharge rate exceeded what the province authorized, according to the recent decision. It spiked even higher that summer, and at one point in 2022, the discharge of human effluent exceeded the provincial limit by 77 per cent.
The municipal government hired an expert to try and fix the system, but the non-compliance continued, according to the ministry’s compliance and environmental enforcement branch.
In his decision, Environmental Management Act director Michael Lapham wrote the village failed to have a quality assurance program and failed to report incidents of non-compliance.
The Village of Fraser Lake disagreed with the province, stating the penalty was “not necessary or warranted” because it had taken responsible actions to improve the management of effluent, the report says.
“The Village submitted that factors out of their control such as financial capacity, extreme weather conditions, COVID, and staffing shortages, impacted their ability to address the failures and that it took more time then anticipated to build an attenuation lagoon,” noted Lapham in his decision.
In addition to building the lagoon to improve effluent quality, the village is in the process of creating a compliant quality assurance program. In his decision, Lapham described the contraventions as “moderate” and that the village tried to address its non-compliance.
At certain periods of time, however, the village “failed to prevent potential adverse effects to the aquatic environment of Fraser Lake,” he added.
The village has until Jan. 30, 2024, to pay its administrative penalty, and has the option of appealing the decision.
Glacier Media reached out to staff at Fraser Lake but nobody was made available to comment by the time of publication.
