Claims from some Souris fishermen that effluent from the now-dormant Ocean Choice plant hurt lobster landings may have merit because government regulations for effluent from all fish plants do not prevent the release of potentially harmful organic material or chemicals into the water.
“They could well be right,” UPEI marine biologist Dr Irene Novaczek said. “Lobsters are very, very sensitive to chemicals in the water, (which) interfere with their own communication and reproductive activities.”
The federal government, including the Department of Fisheries and Oceans and Environment Canada, hasn’t done nearly enough research on what is coming out of those pipes, Dr Novaczek said.
“Even when you’re following the regulations you can kill stuff,” Dr Novaczek said.
The effects of effluent have the potential to be positive or negative depending on the effluent or the ecosystem. But without knowing what’s coming out of the pipes it’s not possible to say, she said.
“We absolutely need more information and the fishermen have been asking for a study up there for years and they’ve gotten nowhere. And it’s not that DFO doesn’t care, their resources are so thin.”
In addition to the lack of testing the regulations themselves are lacking, she said.
Fish processing plants are required to self-monitor and self-report but they tend to not comply if they aren’t monitored, she said. Plants must also promise to provide an alternate fish habitat but that almost never happens, she said.
The effects of effluent have the potential to be positive or negative depending on the effluent or the ecosystem. But without knowing what’s coming out of the pipes it’s not possible to say, she said.
“We absolutely need more information and the fishermen have been asking for a study up there for years and they’ve gotten nowhere. And it’s not that DFO doesn’t care, their resources are so thin.”
In addition to the lack of testing the regulations themselves are lacking, she said.
Fish processing plants are required to self-monitor and self-report but they tend to not comply if they aren’t monitored, she said. Plants must also promise to provide an alternate fish habitat but that almost never happens, she said.
“In most cases, what (government) is really interested in is the jobs. They let the industry monitor themselves and self report and they don’t have the capacity to send inspectors out there and police it.”
Also, the amount of effluent they can produce isn’t related to the volume of the receiving water but the amount of product they process.
“You’re working under the same rules in an enclosed harbour as if you had a pipe going 500 miles out to sea ... It has nothing to do with the capacity of the receiving environments, that’s the big flaw in the regulations.”
And not only are regulations lacking but it’s easy for plants to bypass them entirely, she said. While sections 35 and 36 of the Fisheries Act prohibit the release of harmful substances, plants can get permits to let them do just that.
Meanwhile, corporations come out with new cleaning chemicals faster than they can be tested, which is a slow and expensive process, she said.
Dr Simon Courtenay, a research scientist with DFO, research professor at the University of New Brunswick and member of the Canadian Rivers Institute, supervised some studies in the past decade looking at the effects of plant effluent.
In 2007 they found the effluent from a plant in New Brunswick had no negative effects on nearby mummichog and Atlantic silverside populations and may have even provided a source of food. However, Dr Courtneay said that study isn’t applicable to other plants as what the plant processes, the size of the plant and the characteristics of the receiving environment are all important factors.
But as far as he is aware there hasn’t been this level of research at other processing plants, he said.
“I don’t know of any other studies like the one we did.”
There hasn’t been as much research on the immediate connection between human activity on land and its effects on water, he said. Environment Canada, DFO, provinces and pulp and paper mills have been doing some research themselves, “but what we haven’t done is try to being it all together and seat everyone at one table, which is the only way I think you can adress cumulative effects.”
With a new groups such as the Community Aquatic Monitoring Program he said progress is being made.
“You know what a scientist will always say, there are never enough resources,” he said. But working with the university as well as DFO has allowed him and other researchers access to more resources, he said.
Ocean Choice owner Blaine Sullivan said the plant followed all required regulations regarding the chemicals used and how the effluent is disposed. And there has been no enforcement action against the Souris facility from Environment Canada, an Environment Canada spokesperson said in an email.
However even while meeting the guidelines the plant would expel organic material and chemicals into the water. An Ocean Choice spokesperson declined to disclose the exact make up of the effluent.
The plant, like any facility, has a mesh screening to catch some solid particles but the smallest would still make it through, Morley Foy, approvals and compliance engineer with the Department of Environment, Energy and Forestry, said. He also said that physical filter doesn’t affect chemicals such as cleaners that are generally used at all plants.
“There would certainly be some component of it. Any processing facilities would have to use cleaning agents to ensure public health and safety hygiene within the facility.”
Spokespersons from the PEI Department of Environment and the Department of Fisheries and Oceans also said testing and monitoring of plant effluent was Environment Canada’s responsibility.
Environment Canada fisheries inspectors have the power to carry out inspections and administer tests or take samples, however a spokesperson said the department is only involved in enforcing the Fisheries Act if there are complaints rather than regular monitoring or testing.
Graham Gagnon, who holds a Ph.D in Engineering at Dalhousie University, worked on a 2010 study in the Canadian Journal of Civic Engineering which looked at different ways of treating plant effluent.
He said effluent can be a major environmental and health problem, though he wasn’t familiar with the Ocean Choice plant specifically.
“The argument we’ve heard from other fish processors is, they’re taking something from the sea that would die, but the difference is that you’re concentrating it. So instead of having one fish that dies on its own in the ocean, you’ve got a concentration of many fish, it’s chopped up into the bits and highly concentrated.
“So what will happen is the highly concentrated stream of waste will go out to the marine environment, then all the bacteria will see that as a food source because it’s all pulverized.”
Then the bacteria could eat the food and consume all the oxygen in the area, suffocating the other aquatic species. More than that, other types of bacteria could thrive and produce toxins.
“So the fact you’ve got now this rapid bacteria population growing, you not only have benign bacteria population, you have infectious bacteria populations. And you would have really no way of controlling (that).”
The issue of cleaning chemicals in the effluent is very complicated, he said. While cleaners have to be approved by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency - and they were at Ocean Choice, Mr Sullivan said - the CFIA cares that they make the food safe, not that they don’t hurt the environment.
“The consequence is, oftentimes these things really aren’t metered or monitored in any real way, so we found them to be toxic when they are discharged. Not all of them, but some of them. It will really depend on the fish processor and what they’re doing.”
“It’s an interesting file, it’s important file, from a standpoint of working on seafood processing waste,” Dr Gagnon said. “It’s an important economic driver for the region but it is a pretty aggressive pollutant.”
In the short term, Dr Novaczek thinks the regulations need to change and government should respond to fishermen’s calls for testing. But the long term requires short term investment for long term benefit, she said.
“In my best of possible worlds, all these plants would be zero discharge,” she said. “They would be working on a closed loop system, they would have their own treatment facilities including an engineered wetland, and no water would come out that wasn’t drinking water quality and no solids would come out, they would be composted and returned to the land.”
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