A whistleblower report led B.C. to penalize Alpine Helicopters after it crashed in Banff National Park and then dumped fuel and crash debris on Crown land
The B.C. government has penalized a company after it crashed a helicopter near a glacier and later dumped some of the hazardous waste on Crown land near a creek.
The incident occurred on April 14, 2023, when an Alpine Helicopters Inc. Bell 407 crashed near Saskatchewan Glacier in Banff National Park, releasing aviation fuel and orange-red transmission fluid onto the snow.
Four days later, Parks Canada officials visiting the site found 80 to 90 per cent of the spill had been cleaned up. The leftover contaminated snow and crash debris were the subject of a recent decision from Kelly Mills, an official deciding the case for B.C.'s Ministry of Environment and Parks.
“Alpine deposited snow contaminated with hazardous waste at an unauthorized location,” wrote Mills.
“This undermines the basic integrity of the overarching regulatory regime and significantly interferes with the Ministry’s capacity to regulate.”
The B.C. registered company has seven locations in Western Canada, where it specializes in tourism, heli-skiing, wildfire management, back-country rescue and a number of other commercial aviation activities.
Two and a half years after the crash, a former employee of Alpine submitted a whistleblower complaint to B.C.’s Report All Poachers and Polluters (RAPP) system.
The individual claimed that top management at the...
TikToker Camilla Alhassan Jailed 1 Year Over False Claims About Prez Mahama BBC CNN DW CGTN NBC ABC ALJazeera France24 JoyNews CitiTV Net2TV TV3 UTV DelayTV KofiTV MagrahebTV MGTV OTHERS | Movies...