BC coastal protections not adequate: Seattle researcher

SEATTLE (NEWS 1130) – The federal government and environmentalists remain divided over whether the BC coast has or will have adequate protection from a major oil spill in the event of a leak, rupture or spill along Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain pipeline.

Ottawa gave the green light to expand that pipeline on Tuesday and Justin Trudeau expects the company to “meet and exceed” the 157 conditions the National Energy Board imposed on the project in April, including spill-mitigation plans.

“There’s certainly not much evidence to suggest that the protections are adequate. The track record of cleaning up dilbit spills is quite poor,” says Eric de Place with the Seattle-based Sightline Institute, an independent, non-profit research and communications centre.

“It looks like the spill response on the BC Coast is nowhere near as robust as we’d like to see it. So I think there is plenty of reason for concern and not much evidence to support (Justin) Trudeau’s assertion that it’s all going to be fine.”

He says it would be nice to have had those assurances in place before any approvals were granted.

“It really doesn’t look like we have the infrastructure or the expertise in place to protect our natural environment or economic resources from that sort of thing,” says de Place.

He says you only need to look at the history books to find that the Pacific Northwest has never been prepared.

“If you look at the history of oil spills in the Northwest, on the Northwest coast, it’s not particularly rosy. You can point to spills that happened either on the Canadian coast, you can point to spills like the Nestucca (barge) which happened on the Washington coast (in 1988) but ended up on Vancouver Island,” says de Place.

He sees no evidence that situation has gotten any better or will before the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion is finished.

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