Sewage backups lead to $10,000 fine for Sault Ste. Marie trailer park company

A Sault Ste. Marie mobile home park company has been fined $10,000 for failing to comply with provincial orders to fix an inadequate sewage works and not filing the required paperwork.

A numbered company — 2442259 Ontario Inc. — was convicted on two counts of violating the Ontario Water Resources Act in a Sault Ste. Marie court on Jan. 10, according a Feb. 6 news release from the Ministry of Environment, Conservation and Parks. 

The company owns Rosedale Trailer Park, a 32-trailer park home park, purchased in 2015.

The company was fined $8,000, plus a victim fine surcharge of $2,000 and given six months to pay.

Back in 1971, the Sault Ste. Marie Health Unit issued a temporary approval for a septic system at the trailer park. The trailers discharge into 11 septic tanks and three septic beds. One of these beds receives sewage from 28 trailers.

Since 1971, the ministry said it has not received any applications for approval for the sewage works, aside from one application in 2006 which was returned because it was “grossly incomplete.”

Ministry staff inspected the park in 2016, following the company’s purchase of the park, requesting that the company participate in voluntary abatement and submit a completed sewage works application by Sept. 1, 2017. The company did not submit the application.

On two occasions, in 2019 and 2021, the company reported that the sewage system field bed was failing. Sewage could be seen on the surface. Both incidents were inspected by the ministry’s investigation and enforcement branch.

The construction of a new sewage system was advised by the ministry. 

The company instead went ahead and made modifications to the existing sewage on its own and ignored a ministry order, issued in 2021, requiring several work items to be completed.The court also heard that the company twice failed to file a ministry-requested sewage works application to construct a new system. 

The convictions are for failing to submit a completed application for ministry approval of an on-site sewage works and failing to provide a copy of the completed application to ministry staff.

As part of the sentencing, an order was issued to the company requiring them to come into compliance, in terms of the 2021 ministry order, within 12 months.