Company accused of killing dozens of fish in West Vancouver creek charged

Four years after an incident that killed 76 cutthroat trout in a West Vancouver stream, a contractor that was working for the Ministry of Transportation is facing charges under the Federal Fisheries Act.

Keller Foundations Ltd. has been charged with two counts of depositing a deleterious substance in connection to the April 30, 2018 fish deaths.

John Barker was president of West Vancouver Streamkeepers at the time, which helps develop and maintain best practices for protecting stream habitat. He said he was shocked to see the dead fish littering the banks of Larson Creek, near Gleneagles Golf Course.

"It was a crushing blow to us," said Barker on Tuesday. "It's hard to believe anything surviving the plume that went through."

He said even the worms in the creek were killed, and he had doubts the trout would be able to rebound from the devastation.

At the time, the Ministry of Transportation said the incident was the result of "a pressure test on some equipment using clean water and then disposing of the water within the project site."

"The water unexpectedly caused erosion which infiltrated the ground and caused turbid water to flow underneath the surface to a nearby culvert and then enter Larson Creek," said the ministry.

The charges against Keller Foundations Ltd. were sworn April 5 and filed in North Vancouver provincial court.

Barker, who has since given up the role of West Vancouver Streemkeepers president, continued to closely follow the case, checking in with the fisheries investigator assigned to the case nearly every month.

"We expected charges to be laid. It wasn't like there was a mystery where it might have happened," he said. "It's just a tragic thing that occurred."

With news of the charges, Barker says he's happy to know the incident "hasn't been brushed under the carpet."

"We're delighted to be where we are today, with some accountability," he said, adding that if the company is found guilty, he hopes any fines could go toward fish habitat rehabilitation work. 

As for the Larson Creek cutthroat trout, Barker says they've surprisingly managed to avoid total eradication and are now in the process of slowly recovering — he estimates the habitat and trout population are now at roughly 50 per cent of what they were before the incident.