Response time raises flags in English Bay spill
Officials concerned about 12-hour delay between first report to coast guard and contact with the city about a possibly toxic substance fouling the harbour
Containment crews did not respond to an oil spill spreading in English Bay until three hours after it was first reported to authorities.
And it was significantly longer — 12 hours — before city officials were informed of the spill, believed to be toxic bunker fuel, which a pollution expert warned Thursday could linger in the marine environment for decades.
A sailor first reported the estimated kilometre-long oil slick to Port Metro Vancouver at about 5 p.m., but the coast guard didn’t begin to contain the area until 8 p.m. By 2 a.m., crews in five boats from private contractor West Coast Marine Response Corp. had set up a boom around the ship Marathassa, a bulk grain carrier from Korea. They worked all night and into the next day to recover some of the heavier oil around the ship and try to pinpoint its source.
City officials, however, were not informed of the slick until 6 a.m. Thursday. They activated the emergency operations centre, called in Vancouver police, and fire and rescue marine units, as well as city staff and park rangers to monitor the shoreline, and biologists and wildlife experts to assess any risks to wildlife.
“We’re here to help and support. We need to be an integrated part of any response,” city manager Penny Ballem said.
Coun. Geoff Meggs also voiced concerns about the delay. While the spill may be considered a minor event by federal authorities, it is a huge deal to the people of Vancouver, Meggs said at a news conference held at English Bay Thursday morning.
“I think a lot of councillors want to know the details of the event, how notifications occurred, who decided to make the various decisions about response time. Clearly the spill cleanup occurred promptly, but was it enough? … I want to be cautious today because we value the good working relationship we have with the port, but at the same time we always want to strengthen it.”
Canadian Coast Guard assistant commissioner Roger Girouard admitted late Thursday that the city should have been informed earlier. “I certainly think we have to review (the process). Our protocol was the conversation with Port Metro Vancouver and the province, and our understanding was that they’d do the fan-out to the city. It was not our intent to leave the city in the blind.”
Girouard said there was a “disconnect” between the time they found out about the spill and the time it took to get on board the ship, and that the ship might not even have known there was a problem.
“It took about five hours to get on board,” Girouard added. He also said about 2,800 litres of oil were spilled and 1,400 litres recovered. “We’re going to go through the timings and what went on and look at the conversation with the vessel and see if anything could have been done differently.”
Asked if the ship’s crew and captain co-operated with officials, Girouard responded that they did “in the main,” but were “careful in terms of some of the information they’ve shared. They offered access to the vessel readily and gave us data we asked for. So in the main, I’d say they’ve been co-operating, but in a guarded fashion.”
As to the amount of time in getting the boom around the vessel, Girouard said it’s not always immediate. “We had the boom around the vessel in about six hours. There’s always a natural little lag. From acknowledgment that this was going to be a real issue to containment, six hours is within the time I’d expect.”
Rob O’Dea, the sailor who reported the spill, was out in English Bay at about 5 p.m. when he noticed a half-a-kilometre section of flat water amid the windswept waves. As he sailed closer, he realized the slick wasn’t just on the surface but deep beneath the water.
“There were thousands of block globules from the size of a pea up to a fist,” O’Dea said. “It wasn’t just an oily sheen.”
He called the coast guard, but noted there was not an emergency response on scene until at least an hour later when a harbour patrol boat appeared and went back and forth through the slick. By 8 p.m., he said, the slick still hadn’t been contained. Ironically, O’Dea added, the spill had occurred in sight of the nowclosed coast guard station.
“If we don’t have emergency response capabilities out there in the harbour, it doesn’t speak well to the rest of the coast,” he said. “I would have expected there would have been a boat there within minutes. There should have been a boom in there within an hour or two.”
Spencer Chandra Herbert, Vancouver-West End’s New Democrat MLA, said he was concerned that people and their dogs were swimming in at English Bay without being informed of the toxic fuel spill.
“Obviously this is a huge concern,” Chandra Herbert said. “I think the federal government shares some responsibility here. The fact that they didn’t even tell the city about it until 12 hours after is a huge failure.”
It wasn’t until the coast guard took an aerial view of the site that it realized the size of the spill was much larger than first thought, coast guard spokesman Dan Bate said.
Crews from five West Coast Marine Response Corp. boats used skimmers Thursday to recover some of the oil surrounding the ship.
Meanwhile, Port Metro Vancouver said it has not been confirmed the oil is from the Marathassa. If the ship is found to have caused the spill, it will likely be responsible for all cleanup costs under Canada’s polluter pays principle, which dictates a shipper is liable for costs if it causes marine pollution, Port Metro spokeswoman Julia Ren said.
“It’s still a very developing situation, which is challenging,” Bate said Thursday. “We’re working with our partners (for a response plan) to boom off sensitive areas.”
Bate wouldn’t confirm the identity of the oily substance but Vancouver city officials posted a boater and watercraft alert on Twitter early Thursday saying that the spill is believed to be bunker fuel and that it is toxic. They are warning people not to touch the fuel, which is still being tested.
Bunker fuel is a type of liquid fuel used on ships that is fractionally distilled from crude oil. It is extremely toxic and highly polluting.
Aerial photos show a sheen on the water out in the bay which pushed oil onto Second and Third beaches on English Bay and the North Shore. Several people posted photographs on social media websites showing a sticky oil residue on their hands, and one user posted a video showing what appears to be an oily substance on the water’s edge at the north end of English Bay.
All beaches remained open Thursday, but the Vancouver park board is urging people and pets to stay out of the water.
Park rangers and members of the city fire department’s emergency assistance team patrolled Sunset Beach, English Bay and Second and Third beaches, warning people to stay away.
Park board officials reported oil has been found on Sunset Beach as well as English Bay, while four oil-covered ducks were seen preening themselves between Second and Third beach on the shore in Stanley Park.
Board chairman John Coupar said he noticed traces of the oil on the seawall when the tide came in at 8:25 a.m. but said the spill doesn’t seem to have affected Spanish Banks or Jericho. The Burrard Civic Marina at the mouth of False Creek also seems to have escaped unscathed, he said.
But Craig Minielly, commodore for the False Creek Yacht Club, said there was concern that oil could be swept in with the afternoon tide, putting the marina’s 115 boats at risk.
“We’re right at the entrance to the creek,” he said. “From what I’ve seen, it’s a nasty bubblegum stuff that sticks to paddle boards. If that should get into any marina or our boats, it would be a hell of a mess to clean up.”
Minielly questioned why the coast guard or Port Metro Vancouver didn’t alert the marinas of the spill, noting he could have put a notice out to boat owners before the tide came in overnight. He hopes the coast guard and city officials have since come up with a response plan that would protect the local marinas.
Steve Keenan was out for his weekly paddling practice in English Bay Wednesday night when he got a faint whiff of oil about a kilometre from Siwash Rock.
“You could smell a petroleum product and see a sheen in the water,” he said. “All around us there was just this film.”
Keenan, who was in a solo kayak, didn’t think much of it at first, as there were no freighters nearby and he had encountered minor spills and discharges before in English Bay. But as he and his friends, who were in a six-man boat, made the 20-minute paddle back to shore, they realized the sheen wasn’t dissipating.
And the situation was about to get even worse.
“When we stopped, we saw all this brown stuff on the side of the boats. It felt like chewing gum,” Keenan said. ”We weren’t too concerned until we realized it wouldn’t wash off.”
Keenan used WD40 to clean his carbon fibre boat, but the group is still debating what to use to get the oil off the six-man fibreglass kayak.
And there’s also the issue of the oil itself, with the city warning it could be toxic. “We splashed it. It was all over my clothes and my hand goes in the water with every stroke,” Keenan said. “At least I didn’t fall in.”
The Vancouver Aquarium and Marine Science Centre said it would closely monitor the spill to determine whether it will affect aquatic species. Spokeswoman Deana Lancaster said the aquarium is sending a response team to help any fish, seabirds and marine mammals that might be at risk, while Dr. Peter Ross was gathering samples at the local beaches.
The size and scope of the spill have not yet been determined, but Ben West, spokesman for the environmental advocacy group Tanker Free BC, said the spill is a reminder of a “nightmare scenario” that could happen if there is increased tanker traffic along the B.C. coast.
“It may actually be lucky that this is only bunker fuel and not bitumen,” he said in a statement.
Greenpeace also said any oil spill is a disaster for marine life and for those who depend on a healthy ecosystem.
“While we don’t know how big this toxic spill is and the damage is still being tallied, we do know it pales in comparison with what could happen if new oilsands pipelines were built to the B.C. coast or if Shell’s Arctic drilling plans were to proceed,” Jessica Wilson, head of Greenpeace Canada’s Arctic campaign, said in a statement.