The company taking apart derelict vessels in Union Bay, B.C., has been hit with a pollution abatement order from the province.
Deep Water Recovery is illegally allowing toxic effluent to run off into Baynes Sound and the marine environment off Vancouver Island's east coast, B.C.'s Ministry of Environment and Climate Change Strategy has found.
Discharges from the ship-breaking operations are collected in sump pits, which occasionally overflow with untreated effluent, the province says. Testing of that runoff confirmed high concentrations of pollutants, including copper, iron, zinc and cadmium.
"I am satisfied with reasonable grounds that a substance is causing pollution on or about lands occupied by Deep Water Recovery Ltd.," wrote Jennifer Mayberry, director of operations and compliance for the environment ministry.
The ministry has ordered Deep Water Recovery to immediately stop the release of pollution and take additional steps to monitor and report discharges from the site, which is around 80 kilometres northwest of Nanaimo. If not, the company could face penalties of up to $300,000 in fines and six months of jail time, according to the order issued on March 15.
Yeah fun. I worked in the marine industry directly for a decade. A lot of the runoff they're talking about is painted onto the bottoms of each and every boat on the ocean worldwide in the form of ablative antifouling paint. It's not great if it's in high localized concentration but it's also toxic as fuck to all sea life in general even when spread out across the ocean.
Boat yards are toxic chemical hot spots and should be managed accordingly. I'm not suggesting that leaking pits are a good things, but trying to point out that many of thousands of pounds of antifouling paint are deployed yearly into the ocean at large. Maybe even hundreds of thousands. I didn't read the article but I have a hunch they didn't touch on that fact.
It's virtually the same as painting plane hulls with agent orange in a way that it rubs off due to friction with the air and enters the environment that way. Imagine every plane doing that, and now understand that there are many thousands of ocean-going vessels to every airplane.