City investigating allegations of polluted water dumped in a creek leading into Gorge

The city is looking into claims milky-white water has flowed into a creek that empties into the Gorge Waterway, following online reports from a whistle-blower who said their company had dumped “close to 1 million litres of chemically altered water” into a storm drain.

The since-deleted anonymous post on Reddit alleged: “Our workplace (semi-industrial in the Burnside/Gorge area) has dumped close to 1 million litres of chemically altered water (large bromine and heavy metal concentrations) as well as various chemicals (highly concentrated hydrochloride acid and petroleum solvents/pint thinner) into a storm drain outside our workplace.”

The post does not identify that workplace.

“Today we were pouring waste liquid which contained thousands of tiny styrofoam pellets/threads mixed with oil products into it which feels all sorts of illegal as well as being unethical and we have a creek only a block or two away from us,” the post read.

The post then asks: “Is there someone/somewhere I can anonymously report this to?”

A comment from the same “throwaway account” said, “Past 4 weeks, we have discharged 974,000 litres, not including chemical/oil products.”

City acted swiftly

The city has sent water samples to the CRD for testing and awaits the results, said spokesperson Colleen Mycroft, who described the city as being in “a holding pattern.”

Multiple spills have been reported, Mycroft said.

Speaking to the Times Colonist on Tue., William Doyle, acting director of engineering and public works called the posts “very, very concerning.”

“We do not have information that would suggest a cause for alarm at this time,” Doyle told the TC.

“We’re working closely with our partners to verify and pursue all suggestions that have been put forward,” Doyle said.

City sends letter to area businesses and residents

On July 12, the city sent a letter to residents and business owners whose stormwater infrastructure flows into the Cecelia Creek and Gorge Waterway.

“Over the past week, there have been several reports of unusual white, cloudy water discharged into Cecelia Creek,” it begins.

“The City of Victoria, in collaboration with the Capital Regional District, neighbouring regional municipalities, and provincial environmental agencies, are actively investigating the source of this pollution to prevent further contamination.”

The letter then notes the city’s sanitary sewer and stormwater utility bylaw No. 14-071, which bans the disposal of contaminated water into the stormwater system. Those contaminants include paint wash water, drywall wash water, sediment-laden water, and concrete slurry.

Hefty fines for dumping

Anyone caught discharging prohibited substances into the stormwater infrastructure is subject to fines of up to $1K per day.

The letter also said anyone seeing a spill can report it to the city’s public works department at 250-361-0400, a line monitored seven days a week, 24 hours a day.

Brad Procter, executive director Gorge Waterway Action Society, a charity dedicated to preserving and enhancing the Gorge, said he has confidence the CRD and city are on top of it, and he’s hopeful the now-deleted claims are overblown.

“Because it’s a shocking amount of water—they were talking about a million litres of wastewater going into a storm drain.”

Cecelia Creek is its own watershed and runs from Uptown down through the industrial area, to the Gorge.

Hope it's not so bad, confident it will be cleaned up

“While this amount of water would be uncommon, there are spills in this area, they respond to them, and they’re diligent about it so, I would trust their processes,” Procter said.

He said it’s a good time to reflect that the Gorge right now is a bit of a success story in that it has gone through lots of cycles of degradation, usually through development, and then it gets cleaned up.

“And then it gets degraded again, and then we clean it up and it gets degraded again. And we're now at a point, while there's lots of work still to do, the Gorge is in a lot better spot than it was a few decades ago.”

Procter said it’s also an opportunity to remind us all to be diligent and to break that cycle of degrading the waterways.

Area swimmers using the Gorge's popular new dock have not been deterred and there has been no call from the city or CRD to avoid swimming in the area.