The owners of the idled Terrace Bay pulp mill were slapped with $656,250 in provincial fines and fees for instances where industrial effluent and airborne emissions violated the Environmental Protection Act.
AV Terrace Bay was convicted last March 14 in a Thunder Bay courtroom on two violations under the act, fined $525,000, plus a $131,250 victim surcharge fee. The provincial government released the news on July 14. The company was given 12 months to pay.
The offences occurred on various dates in May 2023.
AV Terrace Bay owns a shuttered pulp mill in the community of Terrace Bay in northwestern Ontario. Operations were halted in January 2024 due to financial constraints and market conditions. The plant sits on care and maintenance.
In one incident, the company was charged with failing to control the quality of discharged effluent from its on-site industrial sewage works. All mill-generated effluent is treated before it's discharged into a creek.
The sewage works is authorized to work in such a way that no more than 50 per cent of rainbow trout test organisms die in the required monthly acute toxicity tests. On May 1, 2023, 100 per cent of the trout died during the test performed on a grab sample of the mill’s final effluent.
AV Terrace Bay reported the incident to the ministry and provided written confirmation of the test result. On the same day, the company obtained an additional sample of the effluent and tested it once a week for four weeks with no further reported failure.
In the other incident, air emissions at the mill exceeded a ministry standard set for pulp and paper plants. Technical standards prohibit the discharge of total reduced sulphur into the air in a concentration exceeded 27 parts per billion over a 10-minute average period more than two times in a six-month period.
According to the ministry, the facility surpassed this prohibition four times in May 2023.
The company reported this to the ministry and submitted an abatement plan. A ministry investigation resulted in charges being laid.
