FortisBC violating environmental permit for more than a year
FortisBC pipeline project near Squamish dumped 365 million litres more effluent into a creek than its permit allowed
Last updated 10 hours ago
You can save this article by registering for free here. Or sign-in if you have an account.
A project by FortisBC to build a pipeline to supply natural gas to the Woodfibre LNG export facility near Squamish has been dumping effluent into a creek for over a year in violation of its environmental permit.
Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada.
- Unlimited online access to articles from across Canada with one account.
- Get exclusive access to the Vancouver Sun ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition that you can share, download and comment on.
- Enjoy insights and behind-the-scenes analysis from our award-winning journalists.
- Support local journalists and the next generation of journalists.
- Daily puzzles including the New York Times Crossword.
Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada.
- Unlimited online access to articles from across Canada with one account.
- Get exclusive access to the Vancouver Sun ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition that you can share, download and comment on.
- Enjoy insights and behind-the-scenes analysis from our award-winning journalists.
- Support local journalists and the next generation of journalists.
- Daily puzzles including the New York Times Crossword.
Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience.
- Access articles from across Canada with one account.
- Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments.
- Enjoy additional articles per month.
- Get email updates from your favourite authors.
Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience.
- Access articles from across Canada with one account
- Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments
- Enjoy additional articles per month
- Get email updates from your favourite authors
Sign In or Create an Account
A Postmedia analysis of weekly water quality reports published by Fortis showed the volume of wastewater discharged from a water treatment plant at a construction site associated with the project exceeded allowable amounts almost every single day from March 2025 to the end of March 2026.
On at least 35 of those days, more than twice the allowable amount of effluent was discharged into East Creek, on Howe Sound’s western shore, south of Squamish.
“Fortis has failed to comply with their permit since as early as September 2024, I believe, by dumping pollution loaded with heavy metals into the Átl’ka7tsem/Howe Sound biosphere, which is a fragile and recovering ecosystem,” said Tracey Saxby, executive-director of My Sea To Sky, an environmental non-profit.
Átl’ka7tsem is one of three Squamish Nation names for Howe Sound.
Between January 2025 and March 2026, Fortis dumped 365 million litres more effluent into a creek than its permit allowed.
In 2022, FortisBC received a permit from the B.C. Energy Regulator to discharge up to 1,500 cubic metres — or 1.5 million litres — of wastewater daily into East Creek. The company is drilling a nine-kilometre tunnel for the pipeline.
Within weeks after construction started, the amount of effluent discharged from the tunnel site started to exceed permitted levels, the records show.
When asked why so much more effluent was being released than the permit allowed, Brooke Rollinson, a communications adviser for Fortis, wrote in an email that “groundwater inflow has been higher than anticipated” during construction.
“We understand water quality and environmental protection are important. FortisBC takes these concerns seriously and remains committed to complying with applicable environmental legislation,” Rollinson said.
-
Advertisement 1Story continues belowThis advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.
“FortisBC has a comprehensive site water management system for the Eagle Mountain-Woodfibre Gas Pipeline Project.”
Saxby said her organization’s experts had warned that water inflows into the tunnel were underestimated and that FortisBC had “grossly underestimated” how much water would be collected in the tunnel.
“FortisBC needs to stop work on the tunnel until they upgrade the water treatment system to meet B.C. water quality guidelines,” she said.
The water contains more dissolved copper and aluminum than provincial water quality guidelines allow. Copper and aluminum accumulate in the environment without degrading and are toxic to aquatic life such as algae, invertebrates and fish.
“This continuous discharge of copper and aluminum, in particular, above acute B.C. water quality guidelines, has the potential to cause adverse effects in aquatic life in East Creek and downstream in Howe Sound,” said Vicki Marlatt, a professor of toxicology at SFU who contributed expert testimony for My Sea To Sky’s challenges to Fortis’s permit.
In December, the B.C. Energy Regulator issued a warning to Fortis about repeatedly exceeding permitted levels of copper found in the wastewater. At least 16 of the weekly water test results between November 2024 and October 2025 showed that levels of dissolved copper were higher than B.C.’s environmental regulations allow.
In its warning, the regulator said Fortis failed to comply with the conditions of their permit. No penalties or remediation were recommended and the letter made no mention of the daily violations in the volume of wastewater being discharged.
Despite the warning, weekly water test reports from January through March of this year show wastewater released from the site continued to exceed allowable levels of dissolved copper, typically at least two to four times the levels set by provincial guidelines.
On at least three days in the past year, the amount of dissolved copper was more than 10 times the permitted amount.
In an email, the B.C. Energy Regulator told Postmedia its staff were providing “rigorous oversight and ongoing inspections” and that the December warning letter “established a documented compliance record and provides a clear basis for escalating enforcement should non-compliance persist or increase.”
Halting construction on the project is not required, the regulator said, as the excess effluent levels pose “minimal to negligible risks” to the environment, according to assessments by experts.
“Continued wastewater discharge is required to prevent the tunnel from flooding and the destruction of tunnelling equipment,” it added.
The regulator also noted that Fortis had upgraded its onsite water-treatment facility as of March 31 and that it is “performing as intended to manage discharge quality and volumes and has eliminated the exceedances.”
A more-robust monitoring system would include examining water quality, sediment and biodiversity in East Creek as well as in the intertidal zone where the creek feeds into Howe Sound, Marlatt said.
“Continuous discharge of metals from sites will often cause harmful effects on growth, reproduction and survival in invertebrates, fish, plants and algae,” she said. “It’s possible this will impede the recovery of Howe Sound that has already been pummelled by numerous industrial activities.”
“They’re doing the very, very minimum in terms of monitoring,” Marlatt added.
In February, Fortis requested an amendment to its permit that would allow it to quadruple the volume of wastewater it releases. The amendments would also allow the wastewater to contain nearly twice the approved level of dissolved copper. In its notice of amendment, the company argued that it needed the increase because reference samples from the site already contained “elevated concentrations” of the metal.
The B.C. Energy Regulator said the amendment application is undergoing review by subject matter experts and in consultation with First Nations.
Marlatt questioned the reference samples used by Fortis, noting that the location where the samples were taken is a designated brownfield industrial site and could be contaminated from the pulp mill that operated on the site for decades.
“They need to go much higher up in the watershed to obtain a site that you would call a true reference site that has not been impacted,” she said.
The construction site is across the water from the former Britannia Mine, once considered one of the worst industrial pollution sites in North America. Water draining from the mine carried so much copper and zinc that the Howe Sound shoreline was sterilized for decades.
A quarter-of-a-million kilograms of contaminants are now removed from mine runoff every year by a treatment plant, and the environment is beginning a slow recovery.
Howe Sound has been designated a UNESCO biosphere region, the third in Canada. It is home to rare glass sponges that are unique to the Pacific Northwest and were thought to have gone extinct. Sponges are particularly vulnerable to waterborne metals because they process large amounts of water.
“They’re incredibly rare, and they’re incredibly fragile, and they are a unique ecosystem that was only recently discovered to still exist,” Saxby said.
Saxby called the B.C. Energy Regulator “a failed regulator” pointing to what she called the “repeated and systematic exceedances of permits by companies like FortisBC, with no real consequences.”
“This just shows how much of a mockery this process is,” she said of the regulatory process.
