Accident at U of A kills 9,000 fish, frogs
Loss of research time estimated to be years
Thousands of fish and 75 frogs are dead at the University of Alberta after chlorinated water flooded freshwater fish tanks in the Biological Sciences Aquatics Facility.
University officials said 2,073 goldfish and 1,093 adult trout, along with 6,000 fingerlings, were killed sometime between 4 p.m., May 12, and 8 a.m. the following morning.
Mike Belosevic, a distinguished professor in the department of biological sciences, said Tuesday aquatic research at the university will be delayed months. It could affect some professors’ ability to get grants due to the loss in research productivity.
“There are 15 researchers that are directly affected by this and in excess of 40 graduate students, post-doctoral fellows and undergraduate researchers whose programs will be pushed back now because of what happened,” he said.
The total loss in research time could amount to years.
An electrical switch is being blamed. A sodium thiosulfate pump that dechlorinates the city water fed to the tanks shut off when the switch failed. There was a backup pump, but it was connected to the same switch. There was no alarm or monitoring system in place.
The switch has been replaced and an alarm system installed.
There are plans to install a chlorine-monitoring system.
Had one been in place, it still may not have been enough to save the trout, which can only survive 30 minutes to an hour in chlorinated city water.
The aquatics facility, opened in 1969, has for several years needed work. There is a $25-million, four-year plan to upgrade the facility. The $2.4 million needed for the first phase, dedicated to upgrading water monitoring, was recently secured and set to begin soon.
Lorne Babiuk, the schools’ vice-president of research, said it’s unlikely the electrical switch that caused the failure would have been identified as in need of replacing.
The university is facing nearly $750 million in deferred maintenance costs, according to its 2016 Comprehensive Institutional Plan.
More than half of those costs are related to science facilities and 88 per cent are related to facilities over 40 years old.