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A Quebec company that operated a chemical manufacturing plant in eastern Gatineau, Que., has been fined $1.35 million for discharging a harmful substance into the Li\u00e8vre River in 2019.<\/p>\n
Superior General Partner Inc., which owned and operated the Erco Mondial chemical manufacturing plant, pleaded guilty in Quebec court to 12 counts of discharging sodium chlorite into the water in violation of the Fisheries Act.<\/p>\n
Environment Canada announced the guilty plea and the fines in a statement Thursday.<\/p>\n
Their investigation found that the chemical \u2014 mainly used as a textile-bleaching agent and disinfectant, according to Health Canada, and considered “deleterious” to fish under the act \u2014 was spilled into the river 12 times between June 27 and July 19, 2019. <\/p>\n
Environment Canada said that Superior General Partner Inc. took five days to notify them of the leak.<\/p>\n
The company said the discharges into the river were the result of equipment failure. <\/p>\n
The company and the plant’s technical director at the time of the offences, Jean-Fran\u00e7ois Roux, had also pleaded guilty to a charge of failing to inform federal authorities of the spills. Roux was fined $15,000. <\/p>\n
Thousands of fish found dead in 2019<\/p>\n
Laura Reinsborough, CEO of the non-profit\u00a0Ottawa Riverkeeper, said she applauds the federal government for completing an investigation and issuing the fine. <\/p>\n
“It’s a significant size of a fine as well. That’s very promising. It’s reassuring,” she said.<\/p>\n
The Li\u00e8vre River flows into the Ottawa River and is home to several species of fish, including smallmouth bass, brook trout, walleye and muskellunge.<\/p>\n
In the summer of 2019, thousands of\u00a0dead fish\u00a0were discovered\u00a0in both of those rivers. <\/p>\n
Environment Canada did not link the sodium chlorite spills from the Erco Mondial chemical manufacturing plant with the fish deaths, however. <\/p>\n
At the time, Quebec’s environment ministry\u00a0investigated a hydroelectric plant on the river and ultimately concluded that it was to blame.<\/a> Ottawa Riverkeeper later expressed skepticism to the Canadian Press<\/a> about those conclusions.<\/p>\n CBC has reached out to Environment Canada for more information.<\/p>\n Reinsborough said she hopes either the federal government or the Quebec government can shed more light on what happened seven years ago that led to the massive fish kill.<\/p>\n “We have questions for both the Quebec authorities and … the federal government,” she said.<\/p>\n Environment Canada said Superior General Partner Inc. will be added to the environmental offenders registry, which lists corporations that broke certain federal environmental laws. <\/p>\n Money from the fine will go to the government’s environmental damages fund, Environment Canada added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Listen to this article Estimated 3 minutes The audio version of this article is generated by AI-based technology.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":401336,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[49,48,295,66],"class_list":{"0":"post-401335","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-environment","11":"tag-science"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/401335","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=401335"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/401335\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/401336"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=401335"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=401335"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=401335"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}