The community of Bella Bella, B.C., is on lockdown. No one is coming in or out; even Heiltsuk First Nation members who live out of the territory are being asked to stay away for the moment.

But that hasn’t stopped the yachts.

“I’ve just watched five yachts pull into the Shearwater harbour,” says Megan Humchitt, a band councillor with Heiltsuk First Nation. “Which is quite concerning, since we do have a travel advisory in place.”

The travel advisory has been in place for more than two weeks. It tells non-residents they will be turned away. The community will also be broadcasting over VHF radio to inform boaters of the bylaw.

“We’re asking that non-residents — tourists or visitors — do not come to Heiltsuk territory because it puts a strain on our limited resources,” Humchitt says.

Jess Housty, Heiltsuk member and executive director of the Qqs Project Society, a youth, culture and environment non-profit in Bella Bella, took to Twitter to criticize the unwelcome arrivals, saying, “you shouldn’t be trying to draw down on our limited resources.”

If you can afford a yacht, you can afford to stay the fuck away from my remote community. You shouldn’t be trying to draw down on our limited resources OR potentially introducing COVID here. We’re not risking the lives of our elders to supply you in your pandemic pleasure cruise.

— Jess H̓áust̓i (@JessHausti) April 3, 2020

Bella Bella is home to about 1,400 people, about a fifth of whom are Elders. The community has just one ventilator and only two permanent doctors. A small handful of other doctors visit the community on rotation.

“If there was an outbreak, only one person would be able to get that kind of care in the community,” says Dan Bertrand, a director of the Central Coast Regional District.

Any evacuation from a place like Bella Bella or nearby Klemtu or Rivers Inlet would have to be done by plane, which is highly dependent on weather.

So far the central coast has not seen any cases of COVID-19, but the fear of epidemics runs deep here, where entire villages were once wiped out by foreign diseases brought by outsiders.

“It’s only going to increase, because people are looking to be in places where they feel safe.”

“It’s a scary thought that those numbers could increase exponentially, and we don’t have the resources to take care of them,” Humchitt says. “We hardly have the resources to take care of ourselves.”

Bella Bella is a frequent stopover for yachters navigating the Inside Passage between Seattle and Alaska, and a popular destination in its own right by central coast standards. But it’s not the only community seeing yachters; Bertrand says Rivers Inlet, Ocean Falls and Bella Coola have all been visited as well. In the case of Bella Coola, one person even sped through a checkpoint the Nuxalk First Nation had set up outside the community without slowing down.

Bertrand says the provincial government should be stepping in to restrict intra-provincial travel. During wildfire season, it routinely asks the RCMP to manage traffic; he says this is no different.

COVID-19 is a “wildfire that will spread” to every community if it’s allowed to do so, he says.

In Bella Bella, one of the yachts was flying a Canadian flag, and two others had American flags. The First Nation has informed the Canadian government about the American vessels, given restrictions on non-essential travel that came into effect on March 21.

Humchitt is concerned that, despite warnings, people are going to continue to flout the local request and sail in.

“It’s only going to increase, because people are looking to be in places where they feel safe,” she says.

Shearwater harbour in Heiltsuk territory. Photo: Louise Whitehouse / The Narwhal

This is not the first time non-residents have shown up where they’re not wanted to try to escape COVID-19. Last weekend a couple from Quebec arrived in Whitehorse, having sold all their possessions and driven across the country. They then flew immediately to Old Crow, the northernmost community in Yukon, thinking they would live off the land and wait out the pandemic.

“We were busy dealing with a life-altering pandemic, and this couple just strolls off the plane like cartoon characters,” Vuntut Gwitchin chief Dana Tizya-Tramm told me, reporting for VICE.

The couple was quarantined by the RCMP in the local Co-op store until they could be put on a plane back to Whitehorse.

In Bella Bella, the yachters are being asked to stay on their boats. Groceries will be brought to them, but stores have been asked not to let them — or other newcomers who haven’t self-isolated for 14 days — shop there.

“People might think we’re being assholes, closing everything down, turning people away, but man, that’s just what has to be done right now,” explains William Housty, a board member for the Heiltsuk Integrated Resource Management Department.

The Heiltsuk Coastal Guardian Watchmen, the community’s eyes and ears on the water, are patrolling the waterways near Bella Bella to inform any potential visitors that the community is closed to visitors.

The town’s own dock is currently being used by one sailboat. It’s just down the hill from the band’s store and office, the centre of Bella Bella. The others, according to Humchitt, docked at Shearwater Resort and Marina on nearby Denny Island.

“Everybody sees them,” Housty says, adding the newcomers visibly stand out and are a very real source of fear. “It’s almost like someone’s got the plague, coming off a boat.”

Heiltsuk rising: inside the cultural resurgence of one B.C. First Nation

Why the Heiltsuk Nation wants to establish its own oil spill response centre

Update Friday, April 3, 2020 5:45 p.m. PST: This article incorrectly stated that Bella Bella has no doctors. In fact, the community has two permanent doctors and additional doctors that visit on rotation. The story has been updated to reflect this fact.

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On the surface, the water looks like glass, reflecting the fluffy clouds that roll above the cedar inlets of Bella Bella, on B.C.’s Central Coast. But looks can be deceiving.

In this part of the Great Bear Rainforest, carnage lingers under the sea: in 2016, the tugboat Nathan E. Stewart ran aground on Edge Reef, spilling more than 100,000 litres of diesel fuel into the Heiltsuk Nation’s waters. Powerful winds pushed the fuel across Seaforth Channel and into Gale Pass, a critical marine harvesting site. The event is something the nation’s members, many of whom served as first responders on the spill, are still struggling with, both emotionally and economically.

Nearly two years later, many marine species in these waters remain contaminated. The Heiltsuk’s manila clam fishery, which provided up to $200,000 of annual income for the remote community, has been unable to reopen. In response, the Heiltsuk and other First Nations who have borne witness to increasing marine traffic, have lobbied the federal government to give them a more proactive role, and the resources needed, in defending and managing their coastal territories.

Last week, while the world marked National Indigenous Peoples Day, the First Nations came one step closer to realizing their goals.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau joined First Nations leaders at the Prince Rupert Coast Guard Base to announce a partnership with 14 B.C. North Coast First Nations that will promote reconciliation alongside environmental management.

The accord, named the “Reconciliation Framework Agreement for Bioregional Oceans Management and Protection,” is the first of its kind to link the federal government’s mandate of reconciliation with Canada’s Indigenous peoples to the objective of environmental protection.

The agreement will help protect Canada’s Northern Shelf bioregion, which includes the north and central coast of B.C., Haida Gwaii and northern Vancouver island, and will create a landscape of shared authority that recognizes the importance of Indigenous knowledge-based management.

“First Nations have a well thought out understanding of what the needs of this coast are, and through our millennia-old relationship with our territory and our intimate knowledge of our waterways, we are best suited to determine what is needed to protect our waters,” Heiltsuk Chief Councillor Marilyn Slett told The Narwhal.

A humpback whale surfaces in the Great Bear Rainforest. Photo: Gloria Dickie.

Though the exact details of the agreement have yet to be released, it’s intended that it will build off the government’s promised $1.5 billion investment into a national Oceans Protection Plan. That plan strives to improve marine safety and responsible shipping, as well as protect the marine environment — although it’s been met with considerable cynicism in B.C. where Trudeau has pushed for a seven-fold increase in oil tanker traffic through Vancouver Harbour, as part of the expansion of the Trans Mountain pipeline.

“When we announced the Plan, we envisioned Indigenous people as guides in managing Canada’s oceans,” Trudeau said at last week’s press conference. Together, he says, First Nations and the federal government will coordinate efforts on marine spatial planning along two-thirds of the B.C. coast and develop a network of Marine Protected Areas, as well as improve waterway management and boost the response capacity of First Nations.

The latter portion could come in the form of funding the Heiltsuk’s $111.5 million proposal for an Indigenous Marine Response Centre in their territory, to respond to disasters like the Nathan E. Stewart. Had the community been equipped with an oil spill response facility and fleet, the nation feels things would have turned out differently. In the months that followed, the Heiltsuk were highly critical of the federal government’s slow response to the spill, scoffing at Canada’s branding of a “world-leading” response.

But Chief Slett seemed cautiously optimistic at Thursday’s gathering that the Centre would come to fruition.

“[It’s a] major investment, but it’s required if we’re going to live up to the agreement that we signed and that we’re celebrating here today around truly protecting the ocean,” Slett said.

Though the government has made no final decision on the Heiltsuk proposal, a spokesperson said they will be delivering training in spill response and search and rescue, as well as collaborating with Indigenous peoples to develop an information system that provides real-time information on vessel traffic and marine conditions.

It’s likely the central and north coast of British Columbia will serve as a testing ground for how reconciliation can play out on the ground, with hopes that this model can then be replicated in other parts of Canada.

Increasingly, the government has been investing in Indigenous environmental stewardship, with $25 million allocated in last year’s budget for an Indigenous Guardians Program, which assists band members in becoming stewards of their ancestral lands and waters. Coastal First Nations have such a network of Coastal Guardian Watchmen who patrol their territories for illegal activity and facilitate environmental monitoring projects and conservation work.

Coastal Guardian Watchmen patrol their territories. Photo: Gloria Dickie.

A government spokesperson said that in the near term, Canada intends to initiate collaborative processes around the Bay of Fundy/Scotian Shelf, the Newfoundland/Labrador Shelves, the Estuary and Gulf of St. Lawrence and the Salish Sea. The latter will undoubtedly become a war of wills, given the federal government’s intention to expand the Trans Mountain pipeline, thereby increasing the volume of oilsands bitumen shipped through the Salish Sea.

“Our elders tell us, if we take care of the ocean, the ocean will take care of us,” Slett said. “This value will ensure our cultural survival.”

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Kelly Brown was awoken at 4:30 a.m. on October 13, 2016, by the kind of phone call nobody ever wants to receive: an environmental catastrophe was unfolding a 20-minute boat ride up the coast from his home in the community of Bella Bella.

“I had to call this guy back because I wanted to make sure — because I’m half asleep — wanted to make sure that I heard him right, that there’s a tug that ran aground in our territory,” he recalls.

Brown is the director of the Heiltsuk Integrated Resource Management department, the branch of the Heiltsuk government in charge of the environmental stewardship of the First Nation’s traditional territory.

Two hours later he was on site with a team ready to respond.

“It was total chaos,” says hereditary chief Harvey Humchitt.

The Nathan E. Stewart, a 30-metre tugboat owned by the Kirby Corporation based in Houston, Texas, had failed to make a turn as it headed south. Instead, it ploughed into a reef. The barge it was pushing — a fuel barge with a capacity of 10,000 tons of fossil fuels, but which was mercifully empty — was caught on the reef while boats and ships of all sizes gathered to watch helplessly.

ICYMI: Diesel Spill Near Bella Bella Exposes B.C.’s Deficient Oil Spill Response Regime

“No one knew who was giving the orders,” Brown says. The captain of the Nathan E. Stewart had declined aid from the three Coast Guard vessels at the scene.

“We could hear the barge banging against the rock,” he says. “When we got there, there was already some fuel in the water, but not a lot.”

That quickly changed when the tug sank. The fuel started coming faster and faster; in the end, more than 110,000 litres of diesel fuel, along with more than 2,000 litres of lubricant, were released into the fast-moving currents of Seaforth Channel.

That milky, foul-smelling mixture washed ashore along the coast, coating the shoreline where 50 people made their living harvesting butter and manila clams.

“About 90 per cent of the [commercial] harvest comes out of Gale Creek,” says Russell Windsor, who made a living digging clams there prior to the spill.

The clam harvest was cancelled last year. This year, it likely won’t go ahead either, and it’s unknown how long it could remain closed.

The loss was more than economic. Gale Creek is also a site of huge cultural significance to the community.

“When I was younger I was brought out here to learn how to fish, hunt, clam dig,” says Windsor, floating at the exact spot from which he watched the spill. “This is one of the learning grounds for the Heiltsuk people… You can feed all of Bella Bella right now with all the food that can be harvested here.”

No one has brought children to Gale Creek to learn to harvest this year. Other sites around the territory are being looked at for clam harvesting, but Brown doubts enough could be gathered to replace what has been compromised by the spill.

“It’ll be one year officially that this particular vessel ran ashore,” Brown says. “And we’ve been paying for it since.”

Slow Response, Little Follow-Through

The accident happened at 1 a.m. Witnesses saw the fuel leaking at 5:30 a.m. By 6:30, Heiltsuk first responders were on scene, but lacked the booms and pads that would be capable of containing and absorbing the diesel fuel.

The official responders, a team subcontracted by Western Canada Marine Response Corporation (WCMRC), meanwhile, were dispatched from Prince Rupert. But they didn’t arrive on scene until 7 p.m., 16 hours after the accident happened. By then, it was getting dark, and nothing could be done until the next day.

ICYMI: ‘Nothing Has Changed’: B.C.’s Botched Oil Spill Response Haunts First Nation

“There’s no ‘world-class’ spill response here,” Brown says, referring to the former Conservative government’s claim in 2015, which was intended to assuage fears of a spill along the Central Coast and help build social licence for oil pipelines from Alberta.

That lack of a response has bled into the ongoing monitoring of the health of the spill site. A week after the accident, Kirby gave the First Nation $250,000 to assist in cleanup efforts. But Brown says the last time the company conducted an assessment of the environmental health of the site was December 2016, just a month after the sunken tug was recovered.

He estimates the cost of a comprehensive assessment of the current and long-term impacts of the spill will be over $500,000.

In the interim, the First Nation says Kirby and the provincial government have been negotiating in secret to determine responsibility for, and scope of, future environmental impact assessments.

‘No World-Class Spill Response Here’: First Nation Pursues Lawsuit 1 Year After Tug Disaster https://t.co/35B13lF3vb @HeiltsukCouncil

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) October 13, 2017

Lawsuit Coming

The Heiltsuk First Nation plans to pursue legal action.

“Since this nightmare began, the polluter and provincial and federal governments have ignored our questions and environmental concerns, our collaboration attempts, and our rights as indigenous people,” said Chief Councillor Marilyn Slett in a statement released to media. “We have no choice but to turn to the courts.”

The First Nation is seeking damages for the incident, including its effect on the harvests in Gale Creek and all the associated losses that has meant for the community.

Speaking to the Globe and Mail, Kirby said it would rather “work to find pragmatic solutions” than “engage in media battles and litigation” — but the First Nation shot back with a statement Friday morning, saying it, too, wants to find pragmatic solutions. It just has a different definition of “pragmatic” — the First Nation wants comprehensive assessments of the impacts on human, natural and cultural values.

“It is difficult for Heiltsuk to have faith in Kirby discussing pragmatic solutions when they won’t engage in a full impact assessment, and has left Heiltsuk with a $140,000 bill for sampling that they conducted earlier this year,” Slett said in the second statement.

ICYMI: North Coast Oil Tanker Ban Won’t Actually Ban Tankers Full of Oil Products on B.C.’s North Coast

It also wants the government and industry to better prepare for future incidents. From the wrong booms being deployed too late, to unclear leadership on scene, to a lack of safety equipment and training, the First Nation says it has learned it can no longer rely on outside parties in an environmental crisis.

The Nation has decided to take its defence of its own territory a step further.

“We’re trying to work on setting up a marine response centre close to Bella Bella.”

Windsor has already taken it upon himself to scrutinize the marine traffic heading through Heiltsuk waters, taking note of their contents and crews. He says he has seen Kirby Corporation vessels near Bella Bella since the spill.

“The Nathan E. Stewart taught the Heiltsuk a great lesson about oil spills,” Humchitt says.

*Updated October 13, 2017 4:07pm pst. This article previoulsy quoted an individual who claimed Kirby corporation had begun passing through Heiltsuk waters at night in unidentified vessels. We have since found we could not verify this claim and have removed the statement as a result. 

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

In July, a pipeline leak near Maidstone, Saskatchewan, spilled about 250,000 litres of diluted oil sands bitumen into the North Saskatchewan River, killing wildlife and compromising drinking water for nearby communities, including Prince Albert. It was one of 11 spills in the province over the previous year. 

In October, a tugboat pulling an empty fuel barge ran aground near Bella Bella on the Great Bear Rainforest coastline, spilling diesel into the water. Stormy weather caused some of the containment booms to break. Shellfish operations and clam beds were put at risk and wildlife contaminated.

Governments and industry promoting fossil fuel infrastructure often talk about “world class” spill response. It’s one of the conditions B.C.’s government has imposed for approval of new oil pipelines. But we’re either not there or the term has little meaning. “This ‘world-class marine response’ did not happen here in Bella Bella,” Heiltsuk Chief Councillor Marilyn Slett told Metro News. 

If authorities have this much trouble responding to a relatively minor spill from a tugboat, how can they expect to adequately deal with a spill from a pipeline or a tanker full of diluted bitumen? The simple and disturbing truth is that it’s impossible to adequately clean up a large oil spill. A 2015 report commissioned by the City of Vancouver and the Tsleil-Waututh and Tsawout First Nations concluded that “collecting and removing oil from the sea surface is a challenging, time-sensitive, and often ineffective process, even under the most favourable conditions.”

What the oil and gas industry touts as “world class spill response” boils down to four methods: booms, skimmers, burning and chemical dispersants. An article at Smithsonian.com notes, “For small spills these technologies can sometimes make a difference, but only in sheltered waters. None has ever been effective in containing large spills.” Booms don’t work well in rough or icy waters, as was clear at the Bella Bella spill; skimmers merely clean the surface and often not effectively; burning causes pollution and greenhouse gas emissions; and dispersants just spread contaminants around, when they work at all.

Researchers have also found that cleaning oil-soaked birds rarely if ever increases their chances of survival. A tiny spot of oil can kill a seabird.

After the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill off the Alaska coast, industry only recovered about 14 per cent of the oil — which is about average — at a cost of $2 billion. The 2011 BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has cost more than $42 billion so far, and has not been overly effective. In that case, industry bombed the area with the dispersant Corexit, which killed bacteria that eat oil! Record numbers of bottlenose dolphins died.

We’re not going to stop transporting oil and gas overnight, so improving responses to spills on water and land is absolutely necessary. And increasing the safety of pipelines, tankers and trains that carry these dangerous products is also critical, as is stepping up monitoring and enforcement. With the Saskatchewan spill, the provincial government deemed an environmental assessment of a pipeline expansion connected to the one that leaked as unnecessary because the Environment Ministry did not consider it a “development.” University of Regina geography professor Emily Eaton, who has studied oil development, told the National Observerthat Saskatchewan “gives a pass” to most pipelines it regulates.

Beyond better response capability and technologies, and increased monitoring and enforcement, we have to stop shipping so much fossil fuel. The mad rush to exploit and sell as much oil, gas and coal as possible before markets dry up in the face of growing scarcity, climate change and ever-increasing and improving renewable energy options has led to a huge spike in the amount of fossil fuels shipped through pipelines, and by train and tanker — often with disastrous consequences, from the Gulf of Mexico BP spill to the tragic 2013 Lac-Mégantic railcar explosion. 

Spills and disasters illustrate the immediate negative impacts of our overreliance on fossil fuels. Climate change shows we can’t continue to burn coal, oil and gas, that we have to leave much of it in the ground. If we get on with it, we may still have time to manage the transition without catastrophic consequences. But the longer we delay, the more difficult it will become.

David Suzuki is a scientist, broadcaster, author and co-founder of the David Suzuki Foundation. Written with contributions fromDavid Suzuki Foundation Senior Editor Ian Hanington.

Image: The Nathan E Stewart sunken tug in stormy waters off Athlone Island in Heiltsuk territory. Photo: Heiltsuk Nation

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It has been two weeks since the Nathan E. Stewart, a U.S.-based fuel barge tug, struck ground and sank near Bella Bella, B.C., contaminating the harvest waters of the Heiltsuk First Nation with an estimated 60,000 gallons of diesel fuel.

During that time coastal residents have watched with dismay as spill response efforts have been hampered repeatedly by unfavourable weather, failed spill containment and even one incident where a spill response ship took on water and itself began to sink.

But the ongoing failure to contain and clean up the spill has been witnessed most closely by members of the Heiltsuk First Nation, who have been on the frontlines of the spill response effort since day one.

Jess Housty, member of the Heiltsuk tribal council, told DeSmog Canada the spill has put much of her community’s regular life on hold, thrusting many individuals into the unfamiliar territory of disaster response.

“That’s been one of the great challenges for us — as a nation we have no particular capacity and expertise around spill response,” Housty said, saying that hasn’t stopped members of her community from stepping in to help response teams from the Canadian Coast Guard and the Western Canadian Marine Response Corporation.

Housty said community members are working on every aspect of spill response from wildlife monitoring to ecological sampling to maintaining and preparing oil spill booms.

The Nation is currently crowdfunding for support to hire experts to continue sampling and monitor environmental and human health impacts of the spill.

“We’re working in a kind of incident command system that makes objective sense but is certainly not a system that reflects our values and the way we would operate and govern a process like this,” Housty said.

“There’s a lot we don’t know. We’re not engineers or spill response technicians.”

“We’re fishermen, we’re harvesters, we’re mariners, we’re people who love the place we come from.”

Heiltsuk crews gather absorbent materials. “We haven’t known how long this process will carry on. I still don’t know how long it will carry on,” Jess Housty said. Photo: Heiltsuk Nation

Diesel sheen seen on the beach of Athlone Island on October 23. Photo: Heiltsuk Nation

The Nathan E. Stewart, owned by Texas-based Kirby Corporation, sits grounded near Gale Pass. Photo: April Bencze

Poor weather conditions have prevented containment booms, shown here stopping the spread of contaminants from the tug, from staying in place. Photo: Tavish Campbell and April Bencze

“Ninety per cent of our resources come from that area,” Russell Windsor said. Photo: Heiltsuk Nation

On October 24, day twelve of the spill, containment booms broke apart on the beach. Photo: April Bencze

“One of the frustrating thing is some of the containment booms broke apart and you end up with what looks like soggy toilet paper all along the beach,” Jess Housty told DeSmog Canada. Photo: Heiltsuk Nation

It is difficult to measure the effectiveness of containment booms and absorbent materials, Housty said. Photo: Heiltsuk Nation

“We have no great sense of what is still in open water,” Housty said when asked about diesel recovery rates.

“I can tell you how many garbage bags of sorbent pads have been hauled out of the water, but that doesn’t really give you any idea of how soiled they were and how much diesel they’ve picked up.”

She added, “My reports that I’ve been getting every day is they’re not particularly effective unless the diesel is concentrated enough for it to pick up.”

“It’s really hard to put a number to how much.”

Diesel sheen on the beach of Athlone Island. Photo: April Bencze

Prints can be seen alongside tattered sorbent. Photo: April Bencze

Heiltsuk trapper and fisherman Fred Reid. “I had a trapline in the area…have trapped in that area for 14 years,” Reid said. Reid added the region is critical for salmon, cockles, abalone, urchins, five species of clams and otters. “We were already devastated this year, I guess the temperature of the water, the seaweed never came back. It just never grew.” Photo: Heiltsuk Nation

Heiltsuk crew continue to collect contaminated material October 25. Photo: Heiltsuk Nation

Diesel sheen can be seen spreading far beyond containment booms. Photo: Heiltsuk Nation

Diesel slick can be seen escaping a failed containment boom on October 22. Photo: Heiltsuk Nation

Poor weather has made it extremely difficult to keep containment materials in place. Photo: Heiltsuk Nation

Herring smelt seen around the sunken Nathan E. Stewart. The tug is still releasing fuel into surrounding waters. Photo: April Bencze

Herring are a species of traditional importance for the Heiltsuk First Nation.

“I think it’s really important for the wider world to understand this isn’t just an environmental issue; it’s not just an ecological disaster,” Housty said.

“It is that — don’t get me wrong. But what has been violated is not just the environment. It’s also about food security, it’s our certainty that we can maintain our trade relationship with our relatives in other communities.”

Housty said her community has lost its certainty that they can feast and conduct ceremony with traditional foods.

“And there is a huge ceremonial loss because the things we hold sacred have been violated by this. So for our community, this is not just about cleaning up an environmental disaster, it’s about our whole certainty that we can be Heiltsuk and practice the fullness of our identity in the way we did before.”

“And to have that certainty taken away has introduced a grief into our community that is going to take a very long time to heal.”

The Nathan E. Stewart resting along the rugged reef, an area rich in biological diversity. Photo: Heiltsuk Nation

The crumpled base of the Nathan E. Stewart. Photo: Heiltsuk Nation

Rich marine life, such as these colourful anemones, surround the sunken tug. Photo: Tavish Campbell

Photographers survey the wreckage. Photo: Heiltsuk Nation

Sorbent pads on the waters of Gale Pass. Photo: Tavish Campbell and April Bencze.

“We have several different types of containment booms deployed and sorbent pads deployed as well to try to pick up some of the diesel sheen but as you may have been following we have had really difficult weather conditions,” Housty told DeSmog Canada.

“Four of the last five days we’ve had to stand down small vessels because it’s too challenging for us to operate out there.”

Gale Pass with a trailing line of sorbent pads. Photo: Tavish Campbell and April Bencze

A transient orca passes by clean up crews on October 24. Photo: Heiltsuk Nation

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

Since the Liberals formed government last November, Enbridge and Northern Gateway Pipeline have lobbied Ottawa an astounding 86 times, federal lobbying reports reveal.

Fifty-one of those meetings have taken place since August — which, funnily enough, is around the same time Prime Minister Justin Trudeau started backtracking on his commitment to ban oil tankers on B.C.’s north coast, a policy that would leave Enbridge’s Northern Gateway pipeline proposal dead in the water.

Since October last year, representatives from Enbridge and Northern Gateway Pipeline met with representatives from the Prime Minister’s Office eight times, Transport Canada 10 times, Fisheries and Oceans Canada 10 times, Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada 12 times, Natural Resources Canada 31 times, and mostly Liberal Members of Parliament 39 times to name just a few.

During this time Enbridge and Northern Gateway Pipeline lobbyists met with more than 130 top-level chiefs of staff, policy directors, and ministers, records show.

Diesel Spill Off B.C. Coast Creating New Urgency Around Promised Tanker Ban

The issue of oil transport along the B.C. coast has been thrust back into the spotlight in the wake of ongoing diesel spill recovery efforts near Bella Bella.

Coastal residents were in a state of disbelief last night after learning an emergency response vessel, sent to B.C.’s central coast to retrieve the diesel-leaking Nathan E. Stewart, sank beside the sunken tug in windswept waters.

Since October 13, cleanup of the diesel spill in the traditional waters of the Heiltsuk First Nation has been slow and unsuccessful, hampered by a lack of response equipment, relief crews and favourable weather.

This has heightened criticism of the federal government and Trudeau who made a clear commitment to enact an oil tanker ban for the north B.C. coast during his election campaign last year. Trudeau even included formalizing the tanker ban on the list of ‘top priorities’ in Transport Minister Marc Garneau’s mandate letter in early November last year.

When pressed on his promise to ban tanker traffic — a proposal some say is not nearly comprehensive enough to protect the coast from vessels like the Nathan E. Stewart —Trudeau awkwardly dodged the question.

“Over the past year there’s been a lot of underinvestment by the federal government in marine safety and spill response. That’s something we’re absolutely committed to turning around,” Trudeau told Breakfast Television.

“And one of the symbols of that — as someone who knows Vancouver and the Lower Mainland as well as I do — one of the first things we did was reopen the Kits coast guard base because we understand that having responders there if something happens is absolutely essential.”

Jess Housty, tribal councillor for the Heiltsuk, took to Twitter to express her dismay with the Prime Minister’s comments.

“Saw your interview today,” Housty tweeted. “You know Kits is ~650km away from Bella Bella and Seaforth Channel, right?”

Nathan Cullen, MP for the Skeena-Bulkley Valley region in B.C. and environment critic for the NDP, said it is incredibly frustrating for coastal people to have the federal government stall on the tanker ban.

“When we are talking about protecting the coast out here, for the people who live here, that’s life and death,” Cullen told DeSmog Canada.

“The insult is twice because the promise was twofold: one, to bring in a tanker ban. It’s been a year and we’re still waiting. Two, to establish respectful relations with First Nations.”

“This is literally killing two birds with one stone,” Cullen said.

He added Trudeau’s inability to follow through on his promises is indication of a dangerous duplicity.

“We are a year in and one has to wonder if there are two Justin Trudeaus. One that campaigns and does public events and Twitter. The other that meets in the private backrooms in Ottawa with more oil lobbyists — one would imagine by a factor of 10 — than he has with environmental and First Nation leaders.”

Cullen said it isn’t just the diesel spill near Bella Bella that British Columbians have to worry about, but the pending decision on the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline.

“You wonder if the West Coast is being thrown under the bus for nothing other than political calculation.”

John Horgan, leader of the B.C.NDP, said the response to what is unfolding in Bella Bella at both the federal and the provincial level has been “frustrating” and “astounding.”

“It does really speak to an Ottawa-based arrogance to believe that reigniting the much-needed Coast Guard base in Vancouver is somehow a benefit to the coast north of Vancouver Island all the way to Prince Rupert,” Horgan told DeSmog Canada.

When asked about Enbridge and Northern Gateway’s recent lobbying spree, Horgan said “the government should spend more time with the people of B.C. when considering these problems and less with those lobbying government offices.”

Lobbying Records Disclose the Bare Minimum: Watchdog

These high volumes of lobbying are troubling, according to Duff Conacher, co-founder of Democracy Watch, a government accountability watchdog.

“Everybody should be worried about the power of large corporations in terms of lobbying governments,” Conacher told DeSmog Canada.

“They not only have economic power in terms of threatening to sue under trade deals or to take their business elsewhere…but they also usually hire people who have connections to the ruling party to do their lobbying so they have undue and unethical political power as well.”

Conacher said Enbridge and Northern Gateway could be doing a lot more lobbying of the federal government without any disclosure due to vast amounts of lobbying loopholes.

The documented lobbying by Enbridge and Northern Gateway is likely just scratching the surface, he said.

“Only oral pre-arranged meetings are required to be documented in those monthly logs. So you shouldn’t think that’s all the lobbying: that’s just the lobbying they disclosed.”

– With files from James Wilt

Enbridge Northern Gateway Lobbying Aug 2015-Oct 2016 – Sheet1 by DeSmog Canada on Scribd

Image: Justin Trudeau via Flickr

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I’m irritated today. Maybe it’s a case of the Mondays. Maybe it’s because B.C.’s pipeline incident webpage has been down for over a month. Or maybe it’s because the amount of oil spilled from a pipeline into an Alberta wetland, first reported on October 6, remains undetermined.

But I think the real reason is that a media request I placed with the B.C. government on Thursday last week — to speak with a scientist about the barge that ran aground on the central coast last week and its tug that’s leaking diesel into Heiltsuk territory— has yet to be fulfilled.

Not that I’ve been ignored. No, on the contrary, I’ve received helpful messages along the lines of ‘don’t lose hope, Carol! We’re going to connect you with a real, live scientist soon. Very soon!’

Yeah, um, not holding my breath.

Maybe I’ve become a little too accustomed to the improved access journalists now have to federal scientists. But in B.C. it remains a different story.

Although I knew the name and e-mail address of the scientist I needed to speak to about the diesel spill and was able to contact him directly on the day of the incident, he said my interview request had to be routed through communications staff.

And so it was.

What will likely happen now, in an all-too-familiar fashion, is the interview will be delayed until after the media wave — which has raised questions about the hazards of oil transport on the coast and government’s inadequate spill response measures — has all but passed.

That's a shame, because local community members and the public would benefit from knowing what a taxpayer-funded Ministry of Environment expert could tell us about the nature of the spill and efforts to clean it up.

In the meantime, the Heiltsuk First Nation, which has already borne the burden of being first responders to the spill, is also playing the role of chief information outpost, fielding calls from journalists like me amid generating press releases, taking media calls and keeping their community informed.

Huge concern for our animal relatives as this unfolds. Orcas spotted near contamination site this morning. #NathanEStewart

— Jess Housty (@heiltsukvoice) October 17, 2016

Jess Housty, a Heiltsuk elected tribal councillor, has been tirelessly informing journalists, the public and her community through Twitter and Facebook.

Along with her brother, William Housty, who is leading containment and clean up efforts, chief tribal councillor Marilyn Slett and other members of the community, Housty has been saddled with the important work of describing what is happening in the area — like where the sunken tug and lingering diesel fuel are, what is being done to contain the damage and what is at stake for local wildlife and the community.

The Heiltsuk reported the spill occurred in an area critical for 25 marine species. Indeed, the spill has directly impacted the Heiltsuk’s clams beds that were just about to open for fall harvest.

#Heiltsuk lead #NathanEStewart #fuelspill cleanup & public communications where govt’s fail https://t.co/4TIiaEux9v @heiltsukvoice #bcpoli

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) October 18, 2016

The Heiltsuk aren’t strangers to natural resource tragedy. The community was at the centre of a major battle with the federal government over its right to fish for herring, a tradition it had relied on since time immemorial.

By the time the nation’s case had made it through the courts, the commercial fishing industry, with the sanction of the federal government and their exorbitantly expensive licences, had all but decimated the herring stocks.

That fishery only partially reopened earlier this year.

Now, with the ongoing spill containment and clean up in Heiltsuk territory, the community is once again bearing a disproportionate burden, stepping in where the federal and provincial governments have failed.

Premier Christy Clark used the diesel spill as an opportunity to blame the federal government for not protecting coastal waters.

But Clark’s own government put off the release of a provincial marine oil spill plan until after the 2017 election.

Go figure.

Image: The tug of the Nathan E. Stewart barge partially submerged and leaking diesel fuel in Heiltsuk water. Photo: West Coast Marine Response Corporation handout

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The grounding of a fuel barge near Bella Bella is raising fresh concerns about B.C.’s ability to respond to marine oil spills as a tug releases diesel fuel into the traditional waters of the Heiltsuk First Nation — and oil spill response crews have still not arrived on scene more than 15 hours after the accident.

The Nathan E. Stewart, a 10,000-ton tanker barge owned by Texas-based Kirby Corporation, ran aground around 1 a.m. Thursday in Seaforth Channel near Gale Pass on Athlone Island.

Although the barge itself was empty, three fuel tanks for the 100-foot tug powering the vessel were damaged and hold an estimated 60,000 gallons of diesel fuel, according to a statement from the Heiltsuk First Nation.

“A spill in this area is problematic because it’s an area where our clam harvesters do a lot of commercial digging,” Jess Housty, councillor for the Heiltsuk First Nation, told DeSmog Canada.

Diesel Spill ‘Not Even Close to Being Contained’

Five Heiltsuk vessels responded to the grounded tug in the early hours of Thursday morning and three Coast Guard vessels are also at the spill site working to contain the release.

Emergency responders from the Western Canadian Marine Corporation, a private oil spill response company, are en route to the spill location from Prince Rupert. The response crews include a mobile skimming vessel, two boom skiffs and a response barge which spokesperson Michael Lowry, told DeSmog Canada will arrive around 6pm this evening.

“We have equipment caches all along the coast and we train local contractors along the coast,” Lowry said, adding some emergency responders were on scene before 11am this morning.

Housty told DeSmog Canada she worries the primary oil spill response vessels, which are traveling from more than 300 kilometres away, won’t arrive soon enough to protect marine life from uncontained diesel fuel.

Housty said her community set up a containment boom from the community dock to try to limit the spread of fuel to sensitive clam beds.

She added the Nathan E. Stewart tug had a spill kit on board but that the containment boom it carried was barely large enough to encircle the tug. Coast Guard vessels had ten sections of boom measuring 50 feet each.

That is far from enough to manage the spill, Housty said. “It’s not even close to being contained.”

Housty said U.S.-based barges like the Nathan E. Stewart are exempt from some regulatory standards if they carry less than 10,000 tons of fuel, including a requirement to have a pilot on board while traversing Canadian waters.

“It doesn’t sound like this vessel was regulated strongly enough,” Housty said.

Regulation for marine oil spill response rests with the federal government, Karen Wristen, executive director of Living Oceans Society, told DeSmog Canada. But much of that responsibility has been shirked off to industry itself, she said.

“The owner of the vessel is responsible to have a spill response service in place,” Wristen said. “But that’s a real problem on most of the coast because the current caches of marine response equipment are either in Prince Rupert or Vancouver and there’s a heck of a lot of coast in between.”

Wristen said poor response time in instances like this allows for oil to dissipate in marine environments.

“This is diesel, it’s a very light fuel. Oil spreads very quickly on the surface of water and unless a ship itself is carrying enough equipment to boom the area — which is rare — it’s very unlikely you can protect shoreline.”

Lack of Emergency Response Strain on Community

According to Heiltsuk Integrated Resource Management Department director Kelly Brown diesel fuel from the spill has already made its way to land.

“It’s really bad out here. A lot of fuel is on the beach already, and fuel is in the water,” she said.

“The initial spill response has been totally inadequate. The first responding vessels were not equipped to deal with a spill, and had to return to town to gather more gear. The Heiltsuk are providing our own equipment because what responders have been able to provide so far is insufficient.”

Wristen said there is an urgent need for industry to coordinate oil spill response with communities along the west coast.

“This highlights the need to do spill response planning that involves communities that are sufficiently trained.”

Wristen said there is a big role for government to play in integrating industry and community spill response capabilities.

“We don’t have any of that kind of planning in B.C.” she said, adding, “It’s very different in the States, though.”

Wristen said the Exxon Valdez disaster dramatically changed the way industry and communities in the U.S. cooperate in the planning and supervision of oil operations.

“People realized they needed to be involved in the planning,” Wristen said. “It took many years but they have an active advisory council that involves community and industry stakeholders to talk through these issues to ensure industry is properly regulated and supervised so those regulations are followed.”

Fuel Spill in Heiltsuk Marine Breadbasket

Heiltsuk Chief Councillor Marilyn Slett told DeSmog Canada diesel fuel is notoriously difficult to clean up.

“Looking at this, we know from our neighbours to the north, the Gitga’at are still affected 10 years later from the sinking of the Queen of the North,” Slett said.

“This spill is in a breadbasket for our community and going forward this is going to have a long term impact on our community sustenance.”

The fuel spill has contaminated water that is home to 25 important species the Heiltsuk harvest, according to a Heiltsuk Traditional Use Study that is currently being conducted by the nation.

Manila clam beds in the area provide the Heiltsuk with an estimated $150,000 annual income.

Housty told DeSmog Canada the spill is precisely what her community has been fighting for years to prevent but without success.

“It’s infuriating that you have levels of government who are making decisions from Victoria or Ottawa who are treating this like an academic or political exercise when there are communities who have so much more at stake than anyone realizes,” Housty said.

“This is a place where we’re three weeks from the opening of a commercial clam fishery where our community members are expecting to participate in commercial clam harvest to get their families through Christmas.”

“None of these realities are understood by these decision makers in government or industry offices.”

Diesel Spill Near Bella Bella Exposes BC’s Deficient Spill Response Regime https://t.co/hlcE2Z1s6l @JustinTrudeau @christyclarkbc #bcpoli

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) October 14, 2016

Chief Councillor: ‘Complete Nightmare for Our Community’

Slett said the emergency responders will now be focused on a salvage operation “because the tug has completely sunk.”

“This is a complete nightmare for our community,” Slett told DeSmog Canada. “We’re working to mitigate what we can but the damage has been done.”

Slett said this kind of incident is precisely what her community raise concerns about at the joint review panel hearings for the Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline.

Those hearings brought the issue of increased oil tanker traffic off the rugged coast of B.C. to the public’s attention. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau campaigned on a promise to ban oil tanker traffic on B.C.’s north coast — something he has been dragging his feet on doing.

Housty said this fuel spill has reignited calls for a legislated tanker ban on the coast, but said that won’t be enough to prevent accidents like the one unfolding in Heiltsuk waters.

“A lot of the feedback that we’re getting on social media is this is why we need a tanker ban on the coast but that wouldn’t even prevent this kind of thing from happening.”

“This tanker ban is being legislated to protect the coast but there are people actively lobbying to limit what that ban includes,” Housty said.

Housty said that ban, as it’s currently being discussed, won’t cover fuel barges like the Nathan E. Stewart, which ferries petroleum products between B.C. and Alaska.

Slett said more has to be done to protect the communities impacted by the movement of petroleum products off the B.C. coast.

“We’ve been talking a lot about this oil tanker moratorium and I know there’s been a lot of discussion on what it will cover but this incident proves that anything we do here has to protect the integrity of the ecosystems, of the marine life, of the coast,” Slett said.

“It must protect the lives of the people who live here and derive their sustenance from the natural environment.”

Image credit: West Coast Marine Response Corporation

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