Stoney Creek spill alarms streamkeeper

The latest Stoney Creek spill underscores the need for greater leadership, according to a local streamkeeper.

Earlier this week, a contractor doing excavation work sent dirty runoff from their site into a catch basin. The spill ended up in Stoney Creek on Wednesday morning, turning a portion of the water slate grey.

There was no indication of any harm to wildlife, according to Coquitlam environmental manager Caresse Selk.

The city advised the contractor to stop work. The municipality will also take enforcement action against the contractor, Selk added.

However, the timing of the spill is worrying, wrote streamkeeper George Kovacic.

“The salmon are to return to spawn in several weeks, action must be taken now,” he wrote.

Following a series of spills as well as a fish kill in the creek in recent years, Coquitlam started requiring real-time construction water quality monitoring for all major developments in the area. The bylaw doesn’t apply to the construction of duplexes and multiplexes, or to demolition. 

The process, which requires water at construction be tested for turbidity and pH levels before going down the drain, has prevented more than 2,300 spills and diverted millions of gallons of non-compliant wastewater, according to the city.

While there have been fewer spills, Kovacic said he regularly spots contamination in the waterway that could affect coho and chum.

Without additional monitoring, closer scrutiny of construction sites and collaboration between cities and the province, the future of the creek could be in jeopardy, according to Kovacic.

“I am hoping our officials will finally show leadership and stop this ongoing pollution and destruction of the environment and wildlife including endangered nooksack dace,” Kovacic wrote. “I am very worried that Stoney Creek will not survive the next several years and will be another dead creek.”