Site C dam’s categorical builder fined roughly $1M for ‘high risk’ workman reserve violations

The categorical executive building a large Site C Clean Energy Project near Fort St. John, B.C., has been fined roughly $1 million for reserve violations deemed “high risk” by WorkSafeBC.

The violations include a workman repelled with 1,000 volts of electricity, and a probable bearing of workers to dangerous silica dust. 

WorkSafeBC levied only over $972,000 in dual penalties opposite Peace River Hydro Partners Construction Ltd (PRHP). 

The group pronounced the incidents had “a high risk of critical injury, illness or death.”  

In a initial incident, in 2018, WorkSafeBC found “high levels of bright silica“, a intensity carcinogen that can means critical and irrevocable lung disease, in element that workers had excavated, bloody and crushed.

According to WorkSafeBC, workers were supposing with respirators that “provided deficient insurance for a turn of exposure.”

The agency’s review dynamic PRHP hadn’t kept skeleton for silica exposure, control, testing, and dirt suppression up to date.

In a second case, in 2019, a workman was repelled with 1,000 volts of electricity from a circuit breaker in a high-voltage electrical cupboard on tunnelling equipment. 

These repeated, high-risk violations resulted in a … limit chastisement being imposed.– WorkSafeBC

WorkSafeBC’s inspection dynamic a cabinet’s door was malfunctioning and had been rendered ineffectual by wire ties. Isolation covers were also blank from a categorical circuit breaker switch box.

WorkSafeBC also lifted concerns about PRHP’s training and organisation of a worker, who hadn’t been taught a lockout procedure. 

“These steady high-risk violations resulted in a orthodox limit chastisement being imposed,” pronounced Ralph Eastman of WorkSafeBC media relations. 

The reserve violations occurred during tunnelling work on the Site C project, a $10-billion hydro dam underneath construction on a Peace River.

In further to hovel construction, PRHP is laying Site C’s petrify foundation, and building an earthfill dam one kilometre high as partial of a $1.75-billion polite works contract.

PRHP now employs about 1,900 workers on a project. 

PRHP communications manager Jamie Bodnarchuk pronounced a association has “addressed all penalties … and met all a WorkSafeBC requirements. This matter has been reviewed and sealed by WorkSafeBC.”

Penalty appealed

BC Hydro’s Site C village family manager Dave Conway says reserve is a high priority. 

“We are committed to ensuring a contractors have a correct reserve projects and procedures in place,” pronounced Conway. 

WorkSafeBC annals uncover PRHP appealed a $310,339.36 chastisement levied for a 2018 silica dirt incident. 

But a orator for the Workers’ Compensation Appeal Tribunal told CBC News it could not yield any information about a interest or a outcome, due to remoteness issues.

Article source: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/site-c-high-risk-worker-fined-1.5448208?cmp=rss