Algoma Tubes Inc. Faced Four Fines for Environmental Offences in 2022
Records Show Wastewater from Company Failed Tests for Acute Toxicity
Pollution from Algoma Steel Inc. has been in the spotlight recently, including multiple spills to the St. Mary’s River.
However, publicly accessible records show that its industrial neighbour, Algoma Tubes Inc. (operated by Tenaris), has also been arousing the attention of Ontario’s environmental regulator.
Just last year, the company faced four fines for environmental offences and paid just under $40,000 in total as a result.
Despite that fact, the environmental record of Algoma Tubes has largely managed to evade to public scrutiny.
The fines respond to the company’s failures of what are called ‘acute lethality tests.’
Photo Credit: Algoma Tubes Inc. (Tenaris)
The tests use live organisms to gauge the toxicity of wastewater from industrial facilities, typically including daphnia magna (water fleas) and/or rainbow trout.
The company failed acute lethality tests for its wastewater in April, August, September, and November of 2022.
As a result, four separate fines were levied in 2023.
As a part of environmental oversight and enforcement, facilities must comply with provincial guidelines for wastewater toxicity and report their results to Ontario’s Ministry of the Environment, Conservation and Parks (MECP).
Algoma Tubes stresses that it’s aware of the problem with its wastewater and is proactively mitigating it in collaboration with the MECP.
According to a media relations representative from the company, Carolina Mendoza, “operating with care for the environment is a priority for Tenaris.”
She says that the company complies with all environmental rules and regulations except for a “small number” of recent failures of acute lethality tests involving daphnia.
Similar tests involving rainbow trout have been passed by the company.
In addition to acute lethality tests, the company is required to conduct regular tests for total suspended solids, oil and grease, total residual chlorine, and pH.
Photo Credit: Daphnia Magna (Wikimedia Commons - Hajime Watanabe)
Mendoza also says the company boasts “an action plan... in collaboration with the Ministry to resolve the issue including an increase in our testing to weekly from monthly.”
The company aims to improve its environmental performance, including a new “project to modernize its water management system at the plant,” part of a planned $6.8 million investment.
In the past five years, the company has been struggling with environmental compliance.
Publicly accessible records from the Ontario government show that the company failed two acute lethality tests in 2021 (in February and December) and two in 2019 (in January and November).
The company does not appear to have been fined in response to failed tests before 2022.
A media spokesperson for the MECP, Gary Wheeler, explains that the company’s Environmental Compliance Approval stipulates that an “effluent discharge to the environment must not be acutely toxic.”
Acute lethality tests are considered a failure if they result in the deaths of more than half of live organisms when exposed. Failures also require the company to investigate potential causes.
While acute lethality tests provide a rough estimate of the toxicity of wastewater that’s discharged, they “do not directly identify the pollutant or mixture of pollutants that caused the toxicity failure,” says Wheeler.
According to Wheeler, the company has struggled with daphnia tests “for a few years.”
The company had another challenging year in 2023, when the company failed six of 12 daphnia tests.
Nonetheless, the company passed all 12 acute lethality tests involving rainbow trout that year.
Despite “many investigations into the cause of the test failures” on the part of the company, Wheeler says the precise cause “remains unknown.”
When the company failed a daphnia test in late 2021, the MECP issued an order directing the company to investigate potential causes (in early 2022).
The company subsequently submitted a report to the MECP that same year.
Although a specific cause wasn’t identified, Wheeler says “a detailed two-phase action plan was put in place to reduce toxicity events.”
The plan entails more detailed explanations of failed tests and an assessment of potential upgrades at the facility.
Wheeler assures the community that the MECP “continues to hold the company accountable” with appropriate oversight and penalties when required, while the precise cause of failed tests is further investigated.
Algoma Tubes requires process water that’s drawn from the St. Mary’s River and used for cooling purposes in its production process. The water is then collected and treated in a wastewater process before being discharged.
The company says that “the effluent is not directly released into the St. Mary’s River.”
Its effluent is discharged into the East Davignon Creek, a small canal between Algoma Tubes and Algoma Steel that flows into the St. Mary’s River.
The company’s Environmental Compliance Approval does not require the company to notify the City of Sault Ste. Marie of environmental offences, or discharges of wastewater that might negatively impact river water quality.
Photo Credit: 2022 Ribbon Cutting with Public and Company Officials (Tenaris)
While its environmental fines in 2023 amounted to just under $40,000, Algoma Tubes has been the beneficiary of large sums of public assistance from different levels of government lately.
In 2017, the company received an investment of $2 million from the Northern Ontario Heritage Fund Corporation, an economic development agency connected to the Ontario Ministry of Northern Development.
In 2019, the company received a $14.6 million investment from Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada.
In 2020, the company received another $9 million investment from the Northern Ontario Heritage Fund Corporation, and another $5 million investment from Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada.