District responds to report of sheen on Kitimat River

At noon on March 16, the District of Kitimat was alerted to reports of an oil sheen on the surface of the Kitimat River.

The District immediately set out to investigate this report, ensure that municipal facilities were operating normally and to confirm that there was no danger to the quality of the community's drinking water, which there was not.

The source of the contamination on the river was eventually determined to be the outflow of a storm drain in the Service Centre.

The District is investigating where the source of the contamination came from but at this time it is unclear how the material entered the storm drain system.

Booms are in place in the river to contain the material and mitigation measures were followed to remove any oil.

While precise details of the source of this contamination are not known, the District encourages all residents and businesses to take care to make sure polluting materials stay out of our storm drain system for the health and safety of our community's water.

An image showing a water boom in the Kitimat River, March 17, 2023. The brown material is peat moss which was placed to absorb any oil material.