Dear Editor:
Re: Risk of an oil spill is just too large, Opinion, Burnaby NOW, April 28.
Trans Mountain believes the safety of our coastline is paramount. We’ve been safely loading vessels with petroleum products from our marine terminal in Burnaby for 60 years without a single spill from a tanker. Our goal is to have a world-leading emergency response plan that’s never used.
While the region’s existing safety regime already meets global standards, we’re proposing additional measures informed by risk assessments, product testing and oil spill modelling that will further improve safety for the entire marine shipping industry – because spill response is about ferries, cruise and cargo ships, and all the vessels using our waterways.
This includes a $100-million investment in Western Canada Marine Response Corporation to create new response bases, fund new equipment and employ 100 new people. This will double the spill response capabilities along the tanker route and cut mandated response times in half.
About 6,000 large commercial vessels transit through the Salish Sea each year, and of those 600 are tankers. Today our pipeline terminal serves about five tankers per month, and if our project is approved this could increase to up to 34 tankers per month. In reality, we’re only a small part of the existing tanker traffic, and our expansion proposes the same sized vessels, shipping the same products as we do today.
We share the value British Columbians place on the environment and we clearly understand the concerns raised about tanker traffic, safety and emergency response. That’s why we’ve carefully developed measures to protect the health of communities and our ecosystems. For more than four years, we’ve been consulting with communities along the proposed route to identify and mitigate concerns. But, there is still more work to do. The Trans Mountain team is committed to earning your trust and confidence. We’ll continue to work with communities, aboriginal groups and our safety partners to support collaborative efforts to enhance safety and protect our environment.
We have a shared interest in the safe transport of oil through the Burrard Inlet, and we understand that our coastal waterways are of significant cultural, economic and environmental value to the people who live and work here. I encourage you to learn more at www.transmountain.com.
Michael Davies, senior director of marine development, Kinder Morgan Canada
