In a press release on Tuesday, Vancouver’s Fraser Riverkeeper demanded an international investigation into Canada’s “failure to stop toxic sewage pollution.” The organization has asked the Commission for Environmental Cooperation to investigate Canada’s failure to enforce the Fisheries Act to prevent ongoing discharges of sewage from Iona Island Wastewater Treatment Plant into the Strait of Georgia at the Fraser River.
The plant provides primary treatment to wastewater from approximately 600,000 people (in Vancouver, the University Endowment Lands and parts of Burnaby and Richmond) before discharging it through a 7.5-kilometre, deep-sea outfall into the Strait of Georgia.
The plant opened in 1963 and has been expanded six times for growth and treatment upgrades allowing more than 200 billion litres of wastewater to be treated in 2001.
