A release of flammable wastewater from a now-shuttered southern Alberta biodiesel plant will set the cash-strapped company back $160,000 and spells house arrest for a former employee.
Western Biodiesel was fined for a breach of provincial environmental law over the October 2008 dumping of wastewater containing methanol out on the ground at the back of the company’s property at High River, about 50 km south of Calgary.
The charges against the company involved the release of the wastewater — leading to a fire at the facility — and giving “false or misleading information to investigators,” the province said in a release Tuesday.
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Jason Freeman, a former manager, was sentenced to four months’ house arrest after pleading guilty to “directing the release of contaminated wastewater and knowingly providing false or misleading information to investigators,” the province said.
According to Alberta’s environment department, Provincial Court in Okotoks heard that on Oct. 27, 2008, Freeman “directed workers to release flammable wastewater onto the ground” at the High River plant.
A welder, who didn’t know about the release, ignited the wastewater while working with a torch the next day, causing a fire in which no one was injured, the province said.
Investigators then showed up at the plant to check on an anonymous complaint, at which time Freeman “denied that a release had occurred,” the province said.
“Sometime in 2011”
Western Biodiesel’s website on Wednesday said the plant is “temporarily shut down with potential restart sometime in 2011.”
While the site doesn’t give a reason for the shutdown, the High River Times reported in late 2010 that the company had halted production due to an alleged cash shortfall from funds unpaid by the federal government, without which the plant couldn’t keep operating.
Ottawa in May 2009 pledged $19.9 million over seven years to the Western Biodiesel plant through ecoEnergy for Biofuels, an incentive program based on eligible plants’ production levels and “market conditions.”
However, the Times’ Evan Careen in late 2010 quoted Western Biodiesel’s CEO Dean Cockshutt as saying the federal government owed the company “close to $600,000” in ecoEnergy funds, some dating back to January that year.
The company, whose High River plant has a nameplate production capacity of 19 million litres of biodiesel per year, is still listed on the program’s website as a “successful applicant,” having signed its contribution agreement in November 2008.
