An investigation by the conservation service into a Spallumcheen manure lagoon breach Feb. 16 will determine what, if any, penalty the farm will incur.
The lagoon breach happened at Grace-Mar Farms, a dairy operation on Salmon River Road.
“Conservation officers are a sister division of the Ministry of Environment and have enforcement powers,” said ministry deputy director Christa Zacharias-Homer, who updated residents on the situation at a public water quality advisory update meeting Friday night at Hullcar Hall.
“They can write a ticket, refer the situation if it warrants a judicial review and have the authority to refer the file back to the environmental protection division for an administrative monetary penalty.
“We are waiting for the conservation office to complete their investigation and have a conversation about the next steps.”
Zacharias-Homer said the environmental protection division has also undertaken an investigation into the spill, which occurred in the afternoon of Feb. 16. She said the spill was reported to the ministry at 10:30 a.m. the next day, followed by a second follow-up phone call at 11 a.m. Ministry staff were on-site by 11:30 a.m.
“They witnessed two pumper trucks collecting the spilled lagoon material as well as disposing the material back into the primary circular lagoon,” said Zacharias-Homer.
Staff left the farm at 12:45 p.m. after speaking with a number of people involved in the operation.
On Saturday, Feb. 18, said Zacharias-Homer, several calls were placed to the ministry’s reporting line and she received a number of e-mails to her attention between 2 and 4 p.m. about more issues at the farm. The conservation office was sent to investigate.
“On Feb. 17, sometime after ministry staff left, the farm decided to land apply some of that spilled material to their fields,” said Zacharias-Homer. She noted this happened exactly one year after the farm land applied manure.
In the past year, Grace-Mar Farms was issued a warning letter and was later among the farm operations issued a pollution abatement order by the ministry in May 2016.
Zacharias-Homer said following the spill, knowing that Grace-Mar “is at capacity with respect to effluent lagoons as well as solid waste storage,” she amended the pollution abatement order to add tighter requirements, including ceasing land application of manure to frozen ground; immediately secure an alternate liquid effluent storage mechanism or dispose of it; and cease land application of liquid manure until the farm develops a nutrient management plan with an agronomic balance of zero, taking into consideration post-harvest nitrate study results.
“We are taking action and we are taking it very seriously,” said Zacharias-Homer.
Spallumcheen resident Shelley Baumbrough thanked the actions of farmer Kevin Curtis, who, she said, went down to Grace-Mar after the spill with an “enormous load of shavings” to spread over the spill and showed the employees at the farm how to compost that manure.
That, Baumbrough said, is an issue the ministry has to address.
“When you have a situation at the lagoon, there is no Plan B in place for these people,” she said. “Those employees, when they put the effluent on the snow, while they were doing their very best, they din’t know what to do.
“We need a Plan B so when something happens to a lagoons that is breached by the weather or whatever situation, there has to be a Plan B or maybe a Plan C.”
Baumbrough called for such a plan to become a policy. She’d like to lee all lagoons checked to be sure they’re structurally sound; all the lagoons be able to hold effluent for a whole year; and all soil around the lagoons to be tested.
“So we know if the soil is clean because we don’t know,” she said.
Zacharias-Homer said part of the action plan for the pollution abatement orders is to “develop a Plan B or Plan C.”
John Kampman, a spokesperson for Grace-Mar Farms, apologized to the Spallumcheen community, saying heavy snow and rainfall filled the lagoon more quickly than expected, and that the snow hid the actual level in the lagoon.
“We have taken strong and immediate steps to rectify this issue, achieving rapid containment,” said Kampman.