The saga of the case of Gold Rush reality star Anton “Tony” Beets is over.

On Friday afternoon, Judge Peter Chisholm issued his verdict on fines that Beets and mining company Tamarack Inc. must pay after gasoline was poured into a dredge pond and lit on fire in 2014.

Beets was fined $6,000 for charges under the Yukon Waters Act for permitting the deposit of waste into a water management system and not reporting it.

Tamarack was fined $25,000 for the same two charges plus two charges for breach of a water licence.

They have three months to pay the fines.

Chisholm said the sentence should send a message to others that these kinds of breaches will be taken seriously by the Yukon courts.

“A fine should not be perceived by the offender or the public as the cost of doing business,” he said.

In this case, the charges stem from an incident in October 2014, at a mining site near Indian River in the Dawson City mining district.

It was captured in the episode “Hundreds of Ounces” in season five of the Discovery reality series.

Mark Favron, who was a welding contractor employed by Beets at the time, poured gasoline into the dredge pond, which was then lit on fire.

He testified during trial that at the end of the work day on a whim, he came up with the idea for the fiery stunt.

He said that when he asked Beets for permission to do so, Beets replied that he “didn’t give a f---.”

Favron pled guilty to two charges under the Waters Act and paid a fine of $1,725 for his participation in the incident.

In a clip from the episode, which was played several times in court, the narrator describes the event in dramatic fashion as a “Viking baptism”, intended to give luck to the dredge, which had sprung a leak.

As the music swells, Beets appears on screen outlined by the flames and shouts, “I told you guys, ‘come hell or high water,’ didn’t I?”

On Friday, Chisholm said that Beets “fully participated in this spectacle for the benefit of the cameras.”

He said Beet’s sensationalization of the event for TV showed his state of mind at the time of the incident, and that there is no evidence this has changed.

He also noted that while Beets had the opportunity to prevent the incident, he abdicated his managerial and corporate responsibilities by not doing so.

The judge said Tamarack is culpable because there was no training program in place for handling fuel nor any defined method for combatting fuel spills at the mining site.

Defence lawyer André Roothman had referred to the case as a “tempest in a teacup”.

He noted that only a small amount of gasoline was used, and claimed his client was being targeted because of his fame.

But Chisholm disagreed. He found that while neither Beets nor Tamarack have a history of prior environmental offences, the spill was serious in nature.

Given the large and remote nature of the Yukon, the judge said, there is a reliance on miners to comply with the law.

Beets and Tamarack were found guilty of the charges on May 17. Roothman and Seiling presented their arguments for sentencing on June 30.

The Waters Act charges each carry a maximum sentence of $100,000, one year in jail or both.

The charges for breach of a water licence in this case each carry a maximum sentence of $15,000, six months in jail, or both.

Crown prosecutor Megan Seiling had argued that Beets should be fined $10,000 and Tamarack $40,000.

Roothman had countered that a fine of $1,500 for Beets and $10,000 for Tamarack would be more appropriate.

Beets, who immigrated to Canada from the Netherlands in 1980, now runs a large gold mining operation near Dawson City with his family.

One of the major highlights from his mining career documented in Gold Rush was the purchase of the historic Walter Johnson Dredge in July 2015.

In the late 1930s, the dredge was built in California, then shipped to the Yukon, where it was used for only six mining seasons.

Tamarack is one of the largest privately-held placer gold mining companies in the Yukon, with 337 placer claims.