TRAVELLERS REST, P.E.I. — A potato wash plant in Travellers Rest is cleaning up its act, and the pressure is on after the province issued a directive letter in mid-January.
P.E.I. Potato Solutions is getting ready to open a new, larger facility next month, said co-owner Austin Roberts.
Neighbours have made numerous complaints to the provincial Department of Environment as well as Environment Canada regarding the plant’s practices over the years.
On Dec. 26, a heavy rainfall, combined with other factors, caused a holding pond containing organic waste from the plant to discharge into the environment.
Chris Wall, a downstream resident, was the one to make the most recent complaint after he found smelly grey material in a stream on his property near the Barbara West River on Dec. 27.
Five teams from the provincial government became involved in the subsequent investigation including the environmental emergency response team, the wastewater group, the agricultural enforcement branch, the environmental assessment group and the water and air quality section.
In all, seven staff worked for around three weeks to clean up and investigate the incident.
“We’re serious about compliance,” said Greg Wilson, a manager with environmental land management at the Department of Environment, Energy and Climate Action.
The wash plant opened in 2014 and was soon a bustling business. There have been growing pains over the year as the plant tries to manage its waste and the accompanying odour. This past summer, as the company built a new facility in a dry windy summer, dust was a frequent annoyance to neighbours.
“There’s been a number of ongoing complaints over that time, around 15 over the last seven years,” said Wilson. “All of those were investigated by the department, and we contacted the company to deal with it. Unfortunately, there’s been times where the company – they really didn’t fully address certain issues to make sure they didn’t repeat themselves – and that’s frustrated a lot of local residents.”
A spate of calls after the latest wastewater spill prompted his department to send out a letter asking the company to address four key areas of concern: wastewater discharge; odour; smoke and dust.
Roberts said they continue to work to do better and have accepted the $1,000 fine after the December discharge.
“We obviously didn’t want any water to be released off the property because we know that’s not what environment, or anybody, would want to see flow down their ditch and into a stream,” he said. “I wasn’t surprised that we got charged, and rightfully so. We’re grateful that they didn’t see any real impact as far as fish kills. Obviously, there would be higher concentration of nitrates, phosphates – anything that’s in soil that grows potatoes.”
Roberts said he and his team are working with the provincial department of environment and a newly appointed community liaison to stay on track until the new facility is opened, which Roberts hopes will be mid-March.
“Not that I wasn’t motivated before, I was always motivated to fix it, but to say that I’m on a different level of motivation right now would be an understatement,” said Roberts. “I’ll do everything and more than what we need it to do to make these issues go away, that’s how confident I am.”
Wilson said the “proof is in the pudding.”
“They said they're going to take care of all these problems, they really have to come through this time … and we have to be part of that by holding them to that, as the regulator.”
A minimal negative effect
Whenever there’s a discharge like the one on Dec. 26, Wilson said his department looks for several parameters, including biological oxygen demand or BOD.
“In the water in each stream there’s a small component of dissolved oxygen. So, when you have organic matter enter a stream, bacteria and other microorganisms use that dissolved oxygen to break the organic matter down. That’s a natural, ongoing process that happens all the time in a healthy ecosystem, but if you get abnormal high levels of organic matter entering a stream, the bacteria and microorganisms will use up all the dissolved oxygen to try and break it down, and when they use it all up, then it’s not available for fish or aquatic insects or other life in the stream. So, you’re going to have a negative effect.”
Some of the samples had more than 1,000 times the BOD they should have, said Wilson.
However, Wilson and his staff didn’t find any signs that there would be long-lasting effects from the discharge.
“We didn’t see any dead fish, we didn’t see anything in those rivers or streams that would alarm us. Basically, we think the material got diluted enough by the time it hit the river that it didn’t have a negative effect. Well, it had some negative effect, but it was minimal, we hope.”
Alison Jenkins is a Local Journalism Initiative Reporter [email protected] @PEIGuardian
