Fraser River Protection: An Initial Assessment of the Legal Failure for Cumulative Impacts

REPORT SUMMARY: Review of Permitted Effluent Discharge into the Fraser River Watershed

The Fraser River is the ecological, cultural and economic heart of British Columbia and is vital to the many Indigenous Nations that have always relied upon its salmon and flows. Remarkably, however, there is no comprehensive program to monitor and evaluate the health of the Fraser River, and the last “State of the Fraser” assessment occurred over 30 years ago. At the request of Bev Sellars and in support of an Indigenous-led Fraser River protection initiative, the Environmental Law Centre undertook a review of effluent discharge into the Fraser River watershed permitted under provincial law as a first step in understanding the volume of effluent flowing into the Fraser River.

Although total effluent permitted to be discharged into the Fraser River watershed from all activities is unknown, the preliminary results show that, at minimum, billions of litres of effluent from mines, forestry facilities, municipal wastewater, and other sources enter the Fraser River each day. Most of this effluent discharge is permitted irrespective of the volume of water at the point of discharge as the River’s flow fluctuates throughout the year. Given these diverse and persistent sources, coordination is needed by all levels of government and industry to collaboratively monitor the health of the Fraser River.

This review is only a preliminary examination of select provincial permits that allow effluent discharge from facilities across the Fraser River watershed. There are significant gaps in understanding total effluent load, and no aggregated data on actual discharge. The methodology standardizes estimates of daily discharge (i.e., litres per day or lpd) of wastewater discharged as effluent. The limited scope of provincial permitting does not ascertain volumes of non-point sources, such as discharge from agriculture, or other smaller scale industries. These are all important limitations to the findings, which represent a preliminary step towards a more systematic methodological approach, as these results likely underestimate the total effluent load on the River.

Reviews of liquid waste management plans show that Metro Vancouver treats between 1 and 2 billion lpd of wastewater from four treatment facilities along the Fraser River. A small portion of that represents an amount of untreated sewage from combined sewer overflows during periods of intense rainfall. Approximately 452 million lpd of urban runoff downstream of Kanaka Creek in the Fraser River canyon represents additional volume and accounts for an estimated 18% of all wastewater entering the River. This estimate comes from a 1987 report that does not consider urban runoff from upstream urban centers like the cities of Prince George and Kamloops. The area of urbanization has grown dramatically in the past 40 years and this assessment does not address the amount of municipal wastewater from all treatment facilities along the River.

Effluent discharge permits across the Fraser River watershed from 11 mines – six of which are active and five that are closed or under care and maintenance – reveal both direct discharge into the Fraser River and its tributaries as well as discharge to containment facilities for solid mine waste. Approximately 140.66 million lpd of effluent from the 11 mines is permitted directly into streams. Taseko’s Gibraltar mine and Imperial Metal’s Mount Polley mine account for around 60% (approximately 83.45 million lpd) of this total. An additional 1.2 billion lpd of effluent discharge is permitted into tailings ponds and other containment facilities combined with unspecified amounts discharged directly to ground or permitted as seepage. Due to the lack of available data, this assessment does not consider the legacy impact of historic mine sites, which is an important component to overall mine pollution in the Fraser River.

Forestry facilities are the dominant source of permitted effluent discharge into the Fraser River, which include bleached kraft pulp and paper facilities, logging camps, sawmills, wood processing plants, municipal sanitary sewage systems, and even a petrochemical refinery. The permits amount to approximately 846 million lpd of cumulative daily discharge of effluent. While federal regulations require environmental effects monitoring programs, a recent report stated that effluent from 70% of the pulp and paper mills in Canada are impacting fish and/or fish habitat (see: https://www.canada.ca/en/environment-climate-change/services/managing-pollution/sources-industry/pulp-paper-effluent/modernization-proposal.html).

There is no public data on the amount of point and non-point discharge permitted in the Fraser River watershed. Application of nutrients to agricultural lands and concentrations of livestock and poultry have setback requirements to protect drinking water sources and watercourses, and authorizations are typically not required for pesticide application on agricultural lands but instead are directed by a code of practice. Additional point and non-point sources, such as cement and concrete plants, fish processing, shipping and bulk storage, greywater, and other forms of commercial and industrial development add to the cumulative amount of total effluent, however aggregating the many smaller permitted sources of effluent is beyond the scope of this report. The combined estimate of permitted effluent discharge into the Fraser River amounts to more than 4.6 billion lpd. Given the continued urbanization in the watershed, extreme fluctuations in River flow volumes from low snowpack or drought due to climate change, and the escalating impacts of disasters on the River such as the Mount Polley tailings pond breach or landslide on the Chilcotin River, aggregation of effluent discharge and collaborative cumulative effects monitoring is imperative to better understand and manage risks to the River. Meaningful and effective collaboration can recognize the values and concerns held by different communities and can assist Indigenous Nations to work with the provincial and federal governments to restore the Fraser River that for many is the core of their ancestral lands and waters.