By Heather Douglas
“A war of ideas can no more be won without books than a naval war can be won without ships. Books, like ships, have the toughest armor, the longest cruising range, and mount the most powerful guns.” Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882 – 1945), 32nd President of the United States (1933 – 1945).
The war of words that’s raging today is focused on the ‘marine risks’ posed by the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion. Alberta’s naval war cannot be won without the longest cruising oil tankers – all doubled-hulled and double-bottomed.
According to Dr. Blair King, a British Columbian lower mainland chemist and biologist who assesses environmental hazards and risk, there is a focus on the tankers and other, more dangerous ships sailing in the same channels that are not subjected to the same scrutiny as the tankers.
King says there is nary a whisper about the dozens of ferries leaving the British Columbia mainland for Vancouver Island and other ports scattered up and down the coast. “Some terminals are located on environmentally fragile eelgrass beds, that provide habitat for countless small fish and the protected Pacific flyway,” he says. Many ferries make dozens of roundtrips every day.
These ferries carry tens of thousands of litres of diesel fuel, enough to run the ship for its entire voyage, King adds. Many also carry hundreds of cars and transport trucks – tightly packed and all loaded with gasoline or diesel – through incredibly tight shipping lanes of the Gulf Islands, amid the notoriously treacherous Active Pass, and across other challenging straits. These waters are home to the endangered J-pod orcas.
These ferries carry thousands of passengers, without the support of any rescue tugs. Even more frightening, they shuttle tens of thousands of litres of hazardous goods through these same perilous routes, considered too dangerous to transport with civilians on-board. These are charted late at night and in the dark.
From a marine risk perspective, these routes are a nightmare. King reports, “They pose enormous risks to human health and the potential for staggering environment damage – from spills, collisions, narrow passages, charted and uncharted rocks, even engine loss. All possible outcomes from each trip. Yet the B.C. government has not cancelled a ferry run.”
Does anyone remember the tragedy of the Queen of Victoria ferry? On August 2, 1970 a Soviet freighter, Sergey Yesenin sliced deep into the ferry, ripping a giant hole into the side of the ship. The collision occurred in the western end of the dangerous Active Pass, between Mayne and Galiano Islands. Five hundred and forty-five passengers were aboard for the 11:00 a.m. sailing from Tsawwassen to Swartz Bay. Both ships had tried to do evasive maneuvers but were on different radio frequencies and couldn’t communicate. Three people were killed – a 31-year old mother, her seven-month-old son, and a teenage girl.
Has the B.C. government conducted a full and proper risk assessment of its coastal ferries? Has it evaluated the triple-jeopardy its playing with the endangered orcas, fragile eelgrass beds, and protected Pacific flyway? What about the potential loss of human life if a ferry capsizes? Or the staggering environmental pollution if tens of thousands of litres of goods, too dangerous to transport with civilians on board, collides with another freighter and its contents spill?
Obviously, there is no such thing as zero risk, says King.
Despite this, the B.C. government wants to freeze any increases in the transportation of dilute bitumen (affectionately called ‘dilbit’), partially based on the risks associated with the project. Yes, pipelines run the risk of leaks. Tankers run the risk of spills. But if the government stops the pipeline expansion, it substantially increases the risk of a major fossil fuel spill, as oil producers resort to shipping their bitumen by train.
No one can deny the B.C. ferries pose a significant risk. Others believe the daily barge runs that move fuels from Vancouver and the Washington refineries in Puget Sound to Vancouver Island and the other islands pose a more dangerous threat. Never mind they deliver the diesel and gasoline necessary to keep the outlying communities alive.
According to the Port of Vancouver, the barges run on odd schedules, through both good and inclement weather, and are never accompanied by rescue tugs. Some would think this risk would be far more frightening, from a marine spill perspective.
Did you know the Port of Vancouver wants to expand the size of its Delta Port? It wants to grow large enough to handle another 5,000 or more ships annually, up from the 23,000 it currently manages. This dwarfs the 720 additional tankers needed to carry the Alberta bitumen to Asia.
The National Energy Board required a detailed risk assessment of the tanker risk. This is what Trans Mountain filed:
• “Without the project, the risk of a credible worst-case oil spill is estimated as one in every 3,093 years … If all the risk reducing measures discussed in this report are implemented, the frequency will be one in every 2,366 years.
• “This means that after the project is implemented, provided all current and future proposed risk control measures are implemented, the increased risk of a credible worst-case oil spill in the study area of the Trans Mountain tanker traffic will only be 30 per cent higher than the risk of such an occurrence if the project did not take place.”
Sadly, the Port of Vancouver has not required a detailed risk analysis for its Delta Port expansion, nor for the increased freighter and barge traffic
President Roosevelt was right. This war with British Columbia over the ‘marine risks’ of tanker traffic can no more be won without books than the naval war can be won without ships. Ours are double-hulled and doubled-bottomed. Theirs are not.
#TransMountain #BritishColumbia #Alberta #Canada #Oil #OilandGas #Tanker #DeltaPort #MarineRisk #bitumen #Ferry #Environment #Government #TheRoughneck
