The real mess is our woeful oil-spill response system
Every time there’s a minor oil spill on the B.C. coast, it’s treated as yet another warning that a bigger spill is possible and it’s time to do something about it.
It’s been going on for years. From the 2007 Kinder Morgan pipeline breach that dumped 70,000 litres of crude into Burrard Inlet and sprayed a dozen homes with smelly oil to the 2015 spill of toxic bunker fuel into English Bay from the leaky MV Marathassa cargo ship.
The latest wake-up call is the release of an estimated 105,000 litres of diesel fuel into the waters off Bella Bella from the Nathan E. Stewart tugboat that struck a reef and sank Oct. 13.
As with the Marathassa spill, the emergency response to the tugboat spill has been criticized for being slow and ineffective.
Sadly, this doesn’t come as a surprise to experts who have taken a close, hard look at B.C.’s oil-spill prevention and response system, and found it sorely lacking.
In 2013, the province hired Nuka Research and Planning Group — a respected environmental consulting firm — to review the system. The resulting three-volume study is an indictment of B.C.’s marine environment safeguards that badly trail other jurisdictions like Alaska, Washington state and Europe.
The report details more than 30 critical areas where B.C. fails to measure up to world-class, oil-spill prevention and response standards.
A small sample:
EMERGENCY TOWING:
Washington state, Alaska and Newfoundland are some of the jurisdictions that have powerful rescue tugboats permanently stationed on its coasts to assist distressed vessels.
Alaska, for example, places rescue tugs at key coastal locations and has a training manual and exercise program for their use. Not so in B.C. “There are no designated rescue tugs stationed in B.C. today,” the report says.
COORDINATED RESPONSE:
“An effective spill response will require coordinated action from government agencies at all levels, as well as companies, organizations and First Nations,” the report says.
“There is no established mechanism in B.C. for ongoing coordination among agencies, jurisdictions, response organizations, industry and stakeholders.”
COORDINATION OF VOLUNTEERS:
Volunteer rescuers and first responders are often crucial in a rapid-response spill situation. After a spill in California, the state created the California Volunteers Disaster Corps to train volunteers. U.S. federal guidelines for volunteers were created after the Deepwater Horizon spill in 2010. There is nothing similar in B.C. “There is no known plan in place to manage large numbers of people showing up voluntarily to participate in a spill response,” the report says.
The report also criticizes B.C. and Canadian standards for vessel safety, vessel traffic management, marine firefighting and salvage resources, spill detection and tracking, and many other critical areas.
Premier Christy Clark has demanded “world-class” oil-spill prevention and response standards in B.C. before her government supports the Alberta-to-Burnaby Kinder Morgan pipeline expansion.
With a federal decision on the project looming, Clark is correct to double-down on this demand. The situation is unacceptable.