It’s not surprising that dead sea animals are washing up on shore near Bella Bella after a tug sank two weeks ago and released an unknown amount of the tug’s 226,840 litres of diesel and 10,000 litres of heavy oil and dirty bilge water escaped.
That is the immediate impact of the accident. No one knows at this point what the future holds for the waters the Heiltsuk Nation depends upon for food and income. Disaster doesn’t seem too strong a term for whatever damage this spill will wreak.
What is also not surprising is that the spill response was fully inadequate and officials now believe that only about 15 per cent of any fuel or oil released may have been contained or captured. A boom that was to contain the spill broke and a spill response boat sank.
“You literally can’t make this stuff up,” said Andrew Weaver, leader of the Green Party in B.C.
As Weaver noted: “This spill, as well as the bunker oil leak in Vancouver Harbour that closed beaches, demonstrate that it is impossible for the provincial and federal governments to meet all of the five conditions set by the province regarding pipeline expansion.”
And yet Trans Mountain, which has been given the preliminary nod from the National Energy Board, provided the NEB with a model that showed much higher recovery amounts for oil if a spill occurred on the West Coast.
That model said that over half the oil would be recaptured. Trans Mountain counted on rapid deployment and good planning.
Really?
Apparently that was on an ideal day with ships and crews in the immediate area.
It took 20 hours just for a vessel to reach the site of the Bella Bella spill. By that time, with winds and tidal action, the fuel had already dispersed and contaminated everything it touched.
Imagine if a huge oil tanker carrying a massive amount of oil suffered the same fate of the tug.
It is unthinkable what it would do to B.C.’s coast.
Trans Mountain’s plan calls for an increase of tanker traffic from about seven a month to 35. That’s rolling the dice with very bad odds.
B.C. can’t afford to take such a chance, and the federal government should throw out the NEB recommendation. If the NEB’s recommendation is based on such a completely bogus oil recovery model, why should we believe the rest of the findings?
