Brookfield Gardens acquitted on charge related to fish kill

A P.E.I. vegetable farm was acquitted Friday morning on a chargerelated to a 2014 fish kill in the North River.

According to court testimony, 1,155 dead fish were recoveredfrom a 3.5-kilometre section of the river in central P.E.I. around Aug. 9, 2014.

Following an investigation by provincial and federal officials, Brookfield Gardens Inc.was charged under the federal Fisheries Act with contaminating a waterway with a deleterious substance.

Provincial court Judge Nancy Orr ruled Brookfield Gardens exercised sufficient due diligence to prevent runoff from a carrot field into the river that could have triggered a fish kill.

She also said there was reasonable doubt about where pesticides measured during the ensuing investigation might have come from.

And while expert testimony established a significant amount of pesticide would have run off the field maintained by Brookfield Farms during a rainstorm which began three days before the fish kill was detected, Judge Orr said the testimony did not establish how much of that runoff would have passed through the 25-metre buffer zone between the field and the river.

Brookfield Gardens had pleaded guilty to previous charges under the province's Environmental Protection Act on Dec. 15, 2014, also related to the fish kill investigation.

Those charges were for planting grass in the buffer zone without a permit, and for farming on land with a slope greater than nine per cent.