Promises Made, Pollution Left Behind: Inside Prince Rupert’s Ghost Mill

After a failed foreign-backed purchase, Prince Rupert is left managing a hazardous industrial site no one can legally touch—or afford

BY QUINN BENDER

Water drips through the rafters of the gutted pulp mill on Watson Island. Inside, barrels of caustic chemicals, tanks of black liquor and crates of radioactive devices sit abandoned and decaying. Nearly 20 years after Sun Wave Forest Products promised to revive the site, Prince Rupert is left with a toxic liability—costing more than $1 million a year, stalled in court, and edging toward environmental collapse.

In 2006, amid a regional economic downturn, the Chinese government-backed company bought the shuttered Skeena-Cellulose mill, pledging to restart production and restore hundreds of jobs. The City of Prince Rupert supported the plan with a multi-million-dollar tax break. What followed was something else entirely.

Sun Wave stalled. Critical machinery was removed and shipped off for auction. As months passed, even the most hopeful residents of the city of 14,000 came to view the company as a North Coast pariah.

Few now believe Sun Wave ever intended to restart the mill.

In 2009, the City billed Sun Wave retroactively for taxes—applied only after the company failed to restart operations, as required under their agreement. When the company didn’t pay, the City seized the property. Sun Wave’s owner, Ni Ritao, was later investigated in China for an alleged bank fraud linked to the mill deal. The head of China’s National Energy Administration and several B.C. officials were also named in the widening probe.

Whatever the company intended, the outcome is now beyond dispute: a decaying industrial site leaching toxins, draining $1.2 million a year from local taxpayers, and halting progress on community programs and infrastructure.

Sun Wave sued the City over the seizure and lost. An appeal may still follow, but any hearing is likely years away. The City has offered to let the company retrieve its remaining assets—still legally theirs—but only after removing millions of gallons of toxic chemicals, radioactive waste and asbestos. Sun Wave has refused. Redevelopment plans remain frozen.

“The mill looks like everyone went for a coffee break and did not come back,” reads a recent court filing by the City. “However, most movable equipment needed to operate the mill is still missing.”

What remains is stacked on wooden pallets: towers of spare parts, cafeteria items, and rusting metal once destined for auction. The artifacts now sit in quiet ruin—a museum of halted industry.

Michael Trim remembers when the site could churn out 1,000 tonnes of northern softwood pulp per day.

“You used to walk through here and it would just be so hot. People were busy in every corner, thinking about how they were going to spend all their money.”

Trim was the site and services superintendent during the mill’s operating years. After the shutdown, the City asked him to return, relying on his familiarity with the layout and systems to keep the plant from further deterioration.

He was two weeks into retirement when he accepted.

“My retirement can wait,” he says. “I’m a Rupert boy. I want to see something done with this place, and I’ll watch over it until then.”

During a routine inspection, Trim walks beneath a single working bulb and climbs the stairwell to the cafeteria. At the door, he finds the padlock freshly torn off.

The City is legally responsible for protecting Sun Wave’s assets. Despite eight full-time security guards, this is the 12th break-in in three years.

Trim pushes past the broken lock and steps inside.

Dust coats stacks of kitchenware on cafeteria tables. Old microwave ovens and toasters line the walls. The more valuable appliances disappeared years ago—under Sun Wave’s supervision. This time, the intruders were likely hunting for canned food, rumoured locally to exist in near-mythical quantities. Trim hesitates. After a decade, the term “non-perishable” is misleading. Eat at your own risk.

After inspecting the room, Trim receives a message: call the Ministry of Environment.

“This doesn’t sound good,” he says.

Last November, the Province sent hazardous materials crews to clean up a large sulphuric acid spill on site. Since then, the City has braced for a $500,000 bill.

Trim suspects it has arrived. He pockets his phone and heads back down the dark stairwell.

The City hopes to transfer responsibility for the site to a consortium of coal companies and the Lax Kw’alaams and Metlakatla First Nations. The Watson Island Development Corporation—known locally as Watco—has offered $5 million for the property, plus $500,000 to the District of Port Edward for adjoining lands. The group estimates remediation costs between $40 million and $70 million.

With no reliable fibre supply, Watco does not plan to reopen the mill. Instead, it would dismantle the facility and redevelop the site as a bulk-shipping terminal and industrial park, using existing rail infrastructure and deep-water access. The project would process between 10 and 20 million tonnes of material annually and employ roughly 200 people.

Time, however, is working against the site. Decades of pulp production and explosives handling have left contaminants in an advanced state of decay. Watco says remediation must begin within a year, before costs spiral beyond reach. The sale cannot proceed until Sun Wave’s legal challenge is resolved—an ongoing process costing the City $250,000 a year in legal fees.

To monitor the site’s decline and deter intrusions, security guards patrol a dozen checkpoints every few hours. One of them, David MacKenzie, allows me to accompany him.

In front of a five-storey high-density storage tank, he strains his neck for an upward glance at brick cladding flaking away in large chunks and crumbling to the ground.

“It’s wild,” MacKenzie says. “The rain gets beneath the bricks and they just peel away.”

Deeper into the complex, beneath the No. 6 recovery boiler, our truck jolts through deep ruts in the mud. Tin sheets clatter overhead in the wind. At the site of last November’s sulphuric acid spill, industrial tape still covers a breach in the tank. The acid was shipped to a working mine, but heavy rain flooded the containment area, preventing a full cleanup. What remained was diluted—too weak for industrial use, but still too alkaline for release. The site now holds 15,000 gallons of unusable wastewater.

Nearby, corrosion is eating into the base of another tank. If the sodium chlorate inside were to spill and dry on organic material, it would ignite.

MacKenzie continues through the hazards left behind: 1.5 million gallons of black liquor, a caustic by-product of wood-chip processing that strips oxygen from water, killing fish and plant life. There are also 500 tonnes of pulp; caustic soda in 10- and 50-per-cent concentrations; 23 tonnes of sulphur stored in a leaking warehouse; 30,000 barrels of C fuel oil; 50,000 cubic metres of hog fuel; PCBs; and 38 nuclear devices once used to measure slurry flow. And then there is the asbestos—embedded in walls and scattered across the island.

The infrastructure holding this inventory is failing. Soil has eroded beneath the power station, raising concerns at BC Hydro that transformers could topple.

The three black liquor vessels have not been serviced since 2000. Crews attempt to monitor their integrity, but with limited resources, warning signs may go unnoticed until a breach occurs.

Before ending his shift, MacKenzie collects a water sample from the No. 1 Lagoon and checks its pH back at the office. It is the last time he will need to.

Trim’s call with the Ministry of Environment brings unexpected news. An LT50 test shows the lagoon water is safe for discharge into Porpoise Harbour. The test measures fish mortality from direct exposure. None died.

But the result only resolves last year’s sulphuric acid spill. The broader risks remain.

“It’s critical to get the site cleaned up,” says Prince Rupert mayor Jack Mussallem. “That pulp mill was never decommissioned. It was just shut down with the intention that a new owner would be in here within 30 days and get it up and running.”

After meetings with stakeholders, including the Consul General of China, Mussallem says the best-case scenario would see Watson Island removed from the City’s expense column and returned to the tax roll within six months.

“Ideally, the City would obtain clear title to the property; that Sun Wave... is able to remove its chattel in a timely manner; that the provincial government and Watco are able to come to terms on a remediation plan so that redevelopment of the property would start.”

That outcome, however, hinges on the courts.

“I believe there is sincerity between the provincial government and Watco,” Mussallem says, adding the city is still waiting on the court cases to proceed, and he has no idea how long that will take.

“I’m finding out more and more about Sun Wave. I understand they had some difficulties with the people that were representing them, but I find it strange the owners didn’t get an

overview of what was really happening on Watson Island.”

Repeated attempts by The Northern View to contact Sun Wave were unsuccessful.