Headway finally made on Stoney Creek’s contamination issue

Advocates for Stoney Creek can finally breathe a sigh of relief.

Problems facing the creek aren’t over, but two major sources of pressure on the salmon-bearing stream appear to have been resolved, giving streamkeepers and other volunteers a reason to feel hopeful.

And for the first time in a long time, George Kovacic sounds optimistic.

That’s because earlier this week, Coquitlam city council voted to require all developers near Stoney Creek to implement live monitoring systems for the water they dump into storm drains. And Kovacic said he’s hopeful an October rerouting of waste sewage will alleviate sewage contaminations.

Both come after years of advocacy work.

Years of advocating for Stoney Creek

Kovacic—along with his wife, Suzana, and son, Luka—have led a public campaign for local, provincial, and federal governments to take action on contaminants entering Stoney Creek, including waste sewage and construction effluence, for several years.

Tri-City News first reported in spring 2021 on the issue, and at that time, it appeared mostly to be an issue of sewage entering the creek, although Luka Kovacic had also spotted an oily substance in the creek.

Over the course of months, stretching into years, Kovacic filed a freedom of information requests with various governments, including Burnaby, Coquitlam, and Metro Vancouver, as the contaminations in Stoney Creek appeared to come from the border of the two cities and also involved some regional infrastructure.

In short, the sanitary sewage system appeared to be overloaded during periods of heavy rainfall—something Kovacic believes has been exacerbated by rapid development in the area without expanding sewage infrastructure to keep up—causing an overflow into the storm sewer drains that feed Stoney Creek.

This is believed to be the cause of e. Coli levels skyrocketing around heavy rainfall periods.

Then, in August of 2021, a grey, milky substance filled the creek, and hundreds of fish were found dead. The cause of this contamination is unknown, but streamkeepers believe it is from construction site effluence.

Ever since, volunteers with the Stoney Creek Environment Committee have been calling on all three local governments to implement third-party monitoring systems both on the drains that feed the creek and on the construction sites that dump water into those drains.

Water monitoring begins

And Coquitlam did implement monitoring systems on Stoney, Hoy, and Partington creeks in February, while further monitoring was implemented at Stoney Creek in March.

“After seven months of monitoring, data have shown that Stoney Creek experiences more frequent and elevated spikes in several water quality parameters (e. g., turbidity and pH) than Hoy Creek, which could be caused by upstream development activity within the drainage catchment,” reads a staff report to Coquitlam city council from earlier this week.

But while Burnaby had also begun requiring monitoring systems on construction sites earlier this year, the City of Coquitlam appeared relatively silent on the matter—until October of this year, Kovacic said.

“Late October, I heard rumblings that stuff is going to get done,” he said.

And earlier this week, a city staff report recommending water quality monitoring and regulation at construction sites went before Coquitlam city council.

Early success at construction sites

According to that report, staff also used monitoring systems to run compliance checks at a construction site.

“After analyzing the data from the unit at this one construction site, results since mid-May showed that there were 13 occasions when construction discharge was measured to be non-compliant to bylaw parameters for turbidity or pH and was recirculated for further treatment before discharging to the storm system and eventually Stoney Creek,” staff noted.

Coquitlam began notifying developers of the technology “and encouraged inclusion within new development applications as a voluntary best-management practice.”

Staff offered three options: continue a voluntary approach to water quality monitoring, requiring monitoring systems only in the Stoney Creek watershed (this was the staff recommendation), and requiring them city-wide.

Council voted this week to implement the recommended option.

At the same time, Metro Vancouver has been looking at expanding its sanitary sewer system in the area to keep up with the demand in the area. But in the meantime, Kovacic said, Metro Vancouver and Burnaby have rerouted some of the sewage in the area to a Burnaby sewage line that has extra capacity.

Not about to slack off

But while Kovacic said he’ll be sleeping easier now, that doesn’t mean the work is over. For one, it’s not just construction sites that are contaminating the stream.

“My wife has continued with e. Coli testing, and we know that e. Coli levels, when the rainwater is there like in the past several weeks, remain high in the creek. So somehow, sewage is getting into the creek,” Kovacic said.

“We don’t know how. We have an ongoing problem, which we’re going to have to figure out.”

But he said the last year or so has marked a significant shift in how the cities have addressed the issue.

“The cities are being proactive,” Kovacic said.

“Instead of the past, hiding results [of water testing], now everybody’s been getting proactive and transparent, and this is how you figure out these problems.”

Get Burnaby Beacon in your inbox.

An in-depth understanding of the stories that affect Burnaby and beyond, every weekday.