Streamkeeper John Preissl was on the site Monday morning when the rains hit.
“It was a mess from the get-go,” Preissl said. “At the bottom here it was full of silt rushing out from the construction site. … Cars actually had to drive around the mess here, the silty mess.”
The silty water ran into the street and down the closest storm drain, which empties into Silver Creek.
Preissl has been keeping an eye on the Eastlake Drive construction site for more than two years and first complained of runoff in 2014. Silver Creek is considered sensitive fish habitat, and silt can cause breathing problems for fish or smother their eggs.
Construction supervisor Chris O’Keeffe gave the NOW a tour of the site and explained how the rain caused a breach Monday morning.
“There was a massive water surge; it overcame everything,” he said, adding things got out of control in a matter of minutes. “None of the silt got into the creek. Our silt fence stood up, but barely. It ran down the road.”
However, the NOW confirmed the storm drain closest to the site empties into Silver Creek, which runs underground until it daylights near Government Street and Brighton Avenue.
O’Keeffe said Adera is working on a number of measures to control the erosion and stop the silty runoff, but those measures aren’t all in place yet, as it’s been too rainy to finish the work.
“We’re in a Catch-22 right now,” he said.
O’Keeffe grew up in Burnaby and played in the creeks as a child and said he cares about them. He also said in his 20 years of construction work, the Eastlake site is the most challenging site he’s worked on as it’s constantly changing.
Adera is a family-run Vancouver development company. The Eastlake project includes six large office buildings, four of which are already built.
Over the years, streamkeepers and local school children have released hundreds of thousands of tiny salmon into Burnaby’s waterways, trying to boost their numbers.
The NOW contacted Fisheries and Oceans Canada for an update, as the federal agency was "assessing" the situation last week, but we did not hear back. The NOW also contacted the City of Burnaby for comment and did not hear back.
