VANCOUVER—Kinder Morgan admits it repeatedly broke federal laws meant to protect marine animals from harmful noise during construction work on the Trans Mountain pipeline’s Burnaby, B.C., terminal this year.

The company declined an interview request for its Canadian CEO, Ian Anderson, about a Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) letter warning that its pile driving in Burrard Inlet exceeded noise rules multiple times from January to May — and that it failed to report the violations as required at the time.

“We take any issues of non-compliance very seriously,” the ministry said in an email confirming the authenticity of the June 6 letter, leaked to StarMetro after being first reported in the National Observer this week.

“Failure to comply” with the noise and reporting rules, “constitutes an offence under … the Fisheries Act which may result in prosecution,” wrote DFO regional fisheries protection manager Tracey Sandgathe in the letter, which described numerous breaches — including six in a single day on April 3.

“After each of the six separate exceedances … the noise threshold continued to be exceeded after each subsequent attempt … Trans Mountain nonetheless resumed pile driving after each exceedance.” But the firm failed to contact DFO before resuming work, as required by law, and broke the same noise law six days later, and again on April 23.

Kinder Morgan Canada’s CEO would not answer StarMetro questions about federal government allegations his firm broke laws meant to protect marine animals from harmful noise.

But StarMetro approached Anderson as he boarded a flight from Edmonton to Vancouver on Wednesday afternoon to ask about the alleged Fisheries Act violations and the DFO warning letter.

“I’ve got nothing to say about that,” he told StarMetro.

In an emailed statement, the company said it is “committed to compliance” with environmental laws and regulations, and “engaged with DFO directly, transparently and collaboratively” on the matters raised.

“We are aggressively implementing measures to avoid future non-compliance,” a company spokesperson wrote. “In the case described in the April monitoring report, it is key to note that each exceedance resulted in an immediate response by Trans Mountain.

“In each instance, pile driving was stopped, the situation was assessed and further mitigation was undertaken. Trans Mountain recognized and reported exceedances of the thresholds.”

The DFO, in an email, told StarMetro that sea mammals, such as whales, orcas, or seals, “were unlikely to have been impacted by this non-compliance, as observers were on site, watching for marine mammals.”

The Fisheries Act violations alleged by the ministry — which have not been tested in court — weren’t the only warnings the company received over construction work. On Sept. 22, the National Energy Board ordered it to stop laying unauthorized anti-salmon spawning plastic mats in streams.

According to former DFO lawyer Martin Olszynski, who now teaches law at the University of Calgary, the conditions attached to permits under the Fisheries Act have the weight of law and could certainly lead to prosecution, even though that’s increasingly rare in Canada.

“It’s easy to dismiss this as no big deal, but this isn’t just a noise violation of people partying too hard and keeping the neighbours up,” he told StarMetro in an interview. “There are reasons why we worry about noise in the aquatic environment … it is quite serious and can have a potentially very serious effect on marine life.

“It is a violation, and it could be prosecuted. Most departments apply this pyramid of escalation in their enforcement activities: the first step is a warning, if there’s chronic non-compliance they might move towards punitive measures.”

Asked about the status of pipeline and terminal work Wednesday, Anderson told StarMetro his firm hasn’t yet resumed full construction activities prior to April 8, when it announced it would suspend all “non-essential spending,” nearly two months before Ottawa inked a deal to buy the project for $4.5 billion.

“We don’t know when (the deal) will close yet — as early as August,” he said. “I’m staying on, we’re going through normal transition work … But we’ll be ready. It’s business as usual.”

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According to Kinder Morgan’s U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filings on the sale, Anderson will receive a $1.5-million bonus to stay on.

The agreement also includes completing the $7.4-billion expansion of the 1,100-kilometre pipeline, which will nearly triple diluted bitumen it already carries from Alberta’s oilsands to Burnaby, B.C.

The deal sparked protests earlier this month against dozens of Liberal MPs across the country, and a May 31 poll by Forum Research found that Ottawa’s purchase was opposed by 52 per cent of Canadians, only 25 per cent of whom supported the deal. (The survey of 969 adults had a three-point margin of error).

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