Notley’s vow inflames pipeline tensions in B.C.

Project threatens vulnerable orcas, writes Chris Genovali.

“Mark my words, that pipeline will be built,” vows Alberta Premier Rachel Notley.

With multiple lawsuits before the courts, including one by the Raincoast Conservation Foundation, and an anti-Trans Mountain provincial government taking power in B.C., Notley’s audacious guarantee seems intemperate at best. However, if Notley’s intention was to harden opposition in B.C. to the Trans Mountain expansion, she certainly accomplished that.

Notley’s inflammatory throw down, coupled with her hectoring and lecturing that Kinder Morgan’s pipeline and supertanker mega-project is in the best interests of British Columbians, will never win hearts or minds in B.C.

What Notley clearly does not understand is many British Columbians consider the Salish Sea and its southern resident killer whales as priceless and irreplaceable; a worth immeasurable in monetary terms.

With a dangerously small population hovering around 80 individuals, the killer whales are labouring under existing stressors, including a lack of food, chronic and acute vessel disturbance and a high contaminant load.

The Trans Mountain pipeline will deliver 890,000 barrels of diluted bitumen to Vancouver per day, all destined for offshore markets. Tanker traffic in the Salish Sea will increase by an estimated 700 per cent with more than 800 annual oil tanker trips to and from Burrard Inlet.

Raincoast biologists Adrianne Jarvela Rosenberger, Misty MacDuffee and Andrew Rosenberger, along with Vancouver Aquarium scientist Peter Ross, have just published a peer-reviewed paper in the scientific journal Archives of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology examining how marine mammals are inherently vulnerable to oil spills. The authors developed a conceptual framework to evaluate the impacts of potential oil exposure on marine mammals and applied it to 21 species inhabiting coastal B.C. Oil spill vulnerability was determined by first examining the likelihood of each species being exposed to spilled oil, then the consequent likelihood of population-level effects. Oil exposure pathways, ecology and physiological characteristics were used to assign vulnerability rankings to each species.

The paper, Oil Spills and Marine Mammals in British Columbia, Canada: Development and Application of a Risk-Based Conceptual Framework, found killer whale populations were deemed at highest risk due to small population sizes, complex social structure, long lives, slow reproductive turnover and dietary specialization. The paper’s findings challenge the typical “indicator species” approach routinely used; it underscores the need to examine marine mammals at a species and population level for risk-based oil spill predictions.

Noise is another significant and increasing threat to the whales and their critical habitat. A recent publication by Fisheries and Oceans Canada states underwater noise can interfere with the ability of southern residents to conduct their life functions. Such disruptions include decreased foraging success, displacement from their feeding habitats, displacement of their prey and impaired hearing.

Kinder Morgan’s shipping route transects critical habitat the federal government has identified as essential for the survival and recovery of these endangered killer whales. As interveners in the National Energy Board review of Trans Mountain, Raincoast submitted extensive scientific evidence, including a population viability analysis, which was not contested by Kinder Morgan or the federal government.

Raincoast’s evidence showed that even without oil spills, the additional noise from the increase in tanker traffic significantly escalates the risk of extinction to the already imperilled southern residents. As we pointed out to the NEB, acoustic disturbance due to vessel noise will make it more difficult for killer whales to communicate, navigate, mate, hunt and feed.

A key component of our written evidence to the NEB is a report by Cornell University’s world-renowned marine mammal expert Dr. Christopher Clark, which focuses on acoustic impacts of the oil tanker traffic associated with the Trans Mountain project. The report explains the importance of sound to killer whales’ critical life functions and how elevated noise from vessel traffic can hinder these.

Contrary to the claims by Notley and other pipeline proponents, the approval of the Trans Mountain expansion was not based on scientific facts or evidence. Rather, the official sanction of Trans Mountain was a political calculation, one that happens to hold grave consequences for the Salish Sea and its most iconic species.