Twin Rivers Paper Company Inc. was fined $320,000 on December 18, 2015 in New Brunswick Provincial court after pleading guilty to offences under the Fisheries Act related to the deposit of deleterious substances into water frequented by fish.
According to Environment and Climate Change Canada, on September 6, 2013, Twin Rivers Paper Company Inc. notified the ministry of a spill of evaporator condensate into the Madawaska River. Evaporator condensate is a byproduct of the mill process and is acutely lethal to fish and invertebrates .
During the investigation, the mill reported two more deposits on March 3 and March 10, 2014, of effluent acutely lethal to fish into the Saint John River in contravention of the Pulp and Paper Effluent Regulations and the Fisheries Act.
The Saint John River Basin, which includes the Madawaska River, contains 53 species of fish.
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The investigation determined that in 2013, the overflow tank of evaporator condensate was blocked in order to prepare for the mill’s annual shutdown. This contributed to the spill into the Madawaska River. The deposits in 2014 occurred during dredging activities at the mill’s secondary effluent treatment lagoon located in Saint-Basile, New Brunswick.
According to Dr. van den Heuvel, director of the Canadian River Institute, pulp mill effluent treatment has improved by 300% since the 1980s when there was almost no treatment whatsoever. However, mills tend to have a problem in dealing with spills and human error events where the treatment system is interrupted.
Overall, Canadian water bodies downstream of pulp mills have seen a huge improvement in quality in the past 30 years said Dr. van den Heuvel, especially in the eastern parts of Canada where mills were older and discharged effluent directly. These improvements can actually be seen in such things as water colour and the absence of foam.
