A B.C. highway contractor has been fined $1 million after a chemical spill from their West Vancouver job site led to a fish kill on Larson Creek.

Keller Foundations pleaded guilty to one count under the Federal Fisheries Act and was sentenced in North Vancouver Provincial Court on Friday.

The company had been hired by the Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure to do concrete work on an overpass near Horseshoe Bay.

According to an agreed statement of facts submitted to the court, on April 18, 2018, a Keller employee poured water onto a stockpile of concrete byproduct, washing its leachate through a rusted culvert and into the nearby creek. A plume of high-pH water flowed down to Howe Sound, killing 85 cutthroat trout.

It was only because volunteers from the West Vancouver Streamkeepers Society noticed the dead fish and tracked the pollution to its source that the problem was corrected and flagged for further investigation by Environment Canada.

After an four-year-long investigation, the company was charged last July with two counts of depositing a deleterious substance in water frequented by fish.

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