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More than 300 fish killed in Sidney's Reay Creek; bleach suspected

On Friday morning, cutthroat trout, coho, sculpins and stickleback were darting through the shady shallows of Sidney’s Reay Creek.
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Ian Bruce, executive co-ordinator of the Peninsula Streams Society, in Reay Creek Park on Saturday, June 5, 2021, near the location where hundreds of dead fish were found. DARREN STONE, TIMES COLONIST

On Friday morning, cutthroat trout, coho, sculpins and stickleback were darting through the shady shallows of Sidney’s Reay Creek.

By the next morning, flies were gathering on large zip-lock bags containing the remains of 318 cutthroat trout and six coho pulled from the creek bottom that morning by Ian Bruce, the executive co-ordinator of Peninsula Streams Society.

The lifeless fish had been spotted Friday afternoon by a five-year-old, said Bruce. The boy’s parents reported them to the Town of Sidney, which asked Bruce to investigate. He traced the contaminant to a storm drain entering the creek near the bottom of Frost Avenue.

“It appears somebody did something with a lot of bleach and it dropped into their perimeter drains then flowed out through the storm drain into the creek,” he said.

Bruce will pass his findings to investigative authorities in Fisheries and Oceans Canada and the Ministry of Environment “and suggest they come out, knock on a few doors and do some education face-to-face.”

The public needs to be aware that storm drains lead t0 these creeks and the ocean so and that there is a need to be careful about what goes down them, said Bruce.

“Even if you don’t go out to the street and put bleach down your grate, if you do it in your yard and it gets into your perimeter drain, this kind of thing can happen.”

Bruce said this is the seventh fish kill he has investigated on the creek.

“It’s not as bad as some, but it’s worse than others,” he said.

It’s ironic, he said, that Transport Canada and the Town of Sidney began cleaning up Reay’s Creek Pond last year after years of public pressure. The creek was designated a Class 1 contaminated site in 2016 and deemed a “high priority” for remediation after sediment samples revealed high levels of heavy metals, including cadmium, zinc, chromium and lead.

Reay Creek begins on the north face of Mount Newton and flows through North Saanich and the airport lands before emptying into Reay Creek Pond, about 200 metres downstream of Canora Road.

The contamination of the pond has been linked to industrial activity at the airport as far back as 75 years ago when it was operated by Transport Canada. The Victoria Airport Authority has already done extensive work to remediate the section of Reay Creek that flows through its property.

It’s also ironic that school children brought coho fry to the creek a month ago as part of their education program, he said.

ldickson@timescolonist.com