An environmental mishap during the repair of a culvert in Burnaby has forced a federal ministry to step in.
Fisheries and Oceans Canada [DFO] has sent a letter under the Fisheries Act, directing the City of Burnaby to come up with a plan to remedy the damage to a tributary of Stoney Creek resulting from a washout on Oct. 31.
That was the day a construction mishap led to a series of events that eventually forced a large amount of sediment into the creek and put the fish habitat in the waterway at risk.
In the letter, the DFO has directed the city to provide a fall/winter site management plan to ensure no further impacts to fish and fish habitat occur. The federal agency also wants a restoration plan to restore identified fish habitat to previous conditions, an implementation schedule and a monitoring plan.
The city isn’t facing any charges but an email from the federal ministry to the NOW indicates the incident is still under investigation.
In response, city officials said they weren’t surprised to get the letter from the DFO and are already on the way to meeting the requirements.
James Lota, an assistant engineering director with the City of Burnaby, noted the municipality has met the first deadline to put in a site management plan, while consultants have been hired to work on the long-term restoration plan within the next 90 days.
“We had already engaged consultants to do exactly what DFO was asking us to do. It’s now just a notice from DFO to make sure we are doing it, and it was already in progress,” he said, adding the day after the washout, the city had already assessed the damage and the repairs.
Lota said the city is also hopeful it can complete the mitigation work during the next fish window by the end of summer 2016.
Local streamkeepers, who have been critical of the city’s handling of the project, are pleased the DFO is involved.
“It’s certainly nice to see them [DFO] going out and looking at the issues,” said Alan James, a member of the Stoney Creek Environment Committee.
He said the city has been open with the streamkeepers, and has met with the group several times since the incident, but he also suggested there is a lot to learn from the incident.
“It’s going to be a major restoration effort,” he said.
James said his group is waiting to see what the city proposes and hopes to provide comment when the draft plan is done.
According to a city report on the incident, during the rehabilitation of a culvert on a Stoney Creek tributary, an A.C. Paving employee who was maintaining a filter screen on a pump at the construction site got his boot sucked into the inlet hose of the pump.
The city report explained in absence of the bypass after the boot got stuck, the upstream drainage flows overtopped the cofferdam and water flowed through the construction area sending debris to the No. 2 bypass pump discharge hoses at the Ash Grove inlet. This caused the bypass pumps and storm sewer plug at the No. 2 bypass pump to be compromised. The report noted at this point, the construction area was taking on full drainage flows and caused the newly placed slope to fail with a rush of water which transported the sediment from the site downstream.
The city had undertaken the project in the first place after crews and Stoney Creek streamkeeper members noticed the beginning of some creek bank erosion near the outlet of the Stoney Creek Tributary 3A culvert under Gaglardi Way in the fall of 2014.
