For years, Alberta’s government has reassured the public that it has a plan to ensure the oilsands’ 1.2 trillion litres of hazardous tailings are permanently dealt with after mines shut down.

That assertion is becoming less convincing by the day.

Industry still hasn’t decided on a viable long-term storage technology to begin testing. The fund to cover tailings liabilities in case of bankruptcy is arguably extremely underfunded. And there are concerns from the likes of the Pembina Institute that the future costs for tailings treatment will be far greater than anticipated.

Martin Olszynski, assistant professor in law at University of Calgary, told DeSmog Canada such questions simply can’t be left unanswered.

“It would the height of unfairness if at the end of all this massive profit and wealth generation, Albertans were left on the hook for what will be landscape-sized disturbances that are potentially very harmful and hazardous to humans and wildlife,” he said.

Oilsands Tailings Plans Nonexistent

The history of tailings regulations is a short one in the province: there simply hasn’t been anything binding. Toxic tailings have been allowed to expand for decades without any real constraints. The last attempt by the province’s energy regulator to require companies “to minimize and eventually eliminate long-term storage of fluid tailings in the reclamation landscape” completely failed.

Every single company breached their own targets.

Directive 085, introduced by the Alberta Energy Regulator (AER) in July 2016, is intended to rectify that.

On March 17, the AER somewhat surprisingly rejected the first tailings management plan that was submitted under the new rules by oilsands giant Suncor for a series of reasons, including its uncertain timelines and reliance on the “unproven technology” of end pit lakes or water capping (the practice of sealing fine tailings under freshwater with the expectation ponds will evolve into healthy aquatic ecosystems).

“What this most recent rejection of Suncor’s proposal suggests to me is they haven’t done the work, and they’re not yet doing the work,” Olszynski says.

“And they need to do the work.”

No Definite Plan A and Definitely No Plan B For #Oilsands’ Tailings https://t.co/scnvuXz9OV #ableg #cdnpoli #YEG #YYC #oilandgas

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) April 21, 2017

Provincial Auditor General Warned of Risk of Oil Price Drop

In July 2015, provincial auditor general Merwan Saher issued a harsh indictment of the fund intended to ensure that Albertans won’t be on the hook for reclamation expenses when oilsands and coal mines shut down.

At the time, only $1.57 billion was held as security deposits in the Mine Financial Security Program for all of Alberta’s reclamation liabilities, worth an estimated $20.8 billion.

As of September 2016 that total is now $1.38 billion with oilsands companies responsible for $940 million of the total. The other $19 billion or so is expected to be paid by companies in the last 15 years of a project's life, with reserves effectively serving as collateral — but that's a risky approach, especially with declining oil prices.

There is a “significant risk that asset values…are overstated,” Saher said..

“If an abrupt financial and operational decline were to occur in the oilsands sector,” wrote the auditor general., “It would likely be difficult for an oilsands mine operator to provide this security even if the need for the security was identified through the program.”

Oilsands Accounting Expert Says Situation Is “Major Concern”

That very thing has happened.

Thomas Schneider, assistant accounting professor at Ryerson University who has written extensively on oilsands liabilities, said in an interview that “it’s a major concern” given the recent decline in asset values.

“The main asset securing the liabilities now as per the government and people of Alberta — and ultimately Canada I guess as I don’t know who’s going to have to pay for it if it doesn’t get cleaned up — are supposedly the assets in the ground,” he told DeSmog Canada. “That’s where it stands right now.”

The province’s $20.8 billion estimated liability is already based on shaky market grounds; the asset-to-liability approach considers “proven” (90 per cent likely to be commercially viable) and “probable” (only 50 per cent likely to be commercially viable) reserves as equally valuable, allowing companies to avoid putting in additional securities to the fund so long as assets are assessed at three times that of liabilities.

It’s a potentially troubling prospect in the era of massive write-downs of reserves by the likes of ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips.

Schneider says at this point in time, the government is supposed to re-evaluate the asset-to-liability ratio and require companies to cover off any missing securities with letters of credit or other financial instruments.

A government spokesperson didn’t respond to a question about whether the government has taken a recent look at the ratio.

No Definite Plan A and Definitely No Plan B For Oilsands’ Tailings

Companies and industry groups are putting a lot of work into developing new technologies to deal with tailings.

Nina Lothian, senior analyst at Pembina, said in an interview with DeSmog that there are pros and cons to every tailings technology — end pit lakes, centrifuges, atmospheric fines drying, consolidated tailings — with no clear best choice. Based on the recent rejection of Suncor’s plan, it’s clear the AER is expecting more from companies.

However, there’s the obvious related problem of if those plans fail.

The AER has established an unfortunate reputation in some circles for failing to implement required monitoring and enforcement actions to ensure compliance when it comes to pipeline safety and orphaned wells.

Lothian says that end pit lakes are considered a bit of a “silver bullet” by industry.

The Canadian Oil Sands Innovation Alliance, a joint effort by 13 companies, has long planned to build a Demonstration Pit Lakes Project, made up of over a dozen test water bodies and based off of learnings from Syncrude’s Base Mine Lake. The alliance’s website still notes that “phase one of the project could move to construction with potential operation by 2017.” However, when contacted by DeSmog, a spokesperson was unable to provide any information on the status of the Demonstration Pit Lakes Project.

Olszynski says that it will likely require 15 years of monitoring data to know if any particular plan worked. He says that as a result, we wouldn’t have solid results until 2032. But the alliance hasn’t even started building the project.

“For me, the big problem here is we’re well into 2017 at this point, we’re staring down the productive life of some of these sites, and we do not yet have a proven tailings mitigation technology,” he says.

Recent Mining Disasters and Abandonments Point to Potential Dangers

As to whether or not security deposits are meant to include the treatment of tailings, Lothian says Pembina has had no success in answering that question.

Neither Alberta Environment and Parks or the AER have provided clear responses to Pembina. Lothian says that submissions from companies under the Mine Financial Security Program include related reclamation costs like land contouring and revegetation, but there’s no indication of whether funds have been set aside explicitly for tailings treatment.

“We know from all this work with the tailings management plans how many billions of dollars are associated with the treatment side of things,” she says.

In 2011, University of Alberta energy economist Andrew Leach wrote in an Alberta Oil article: “As long as companies expect to pay the full costs of reclamation, there’s no reason to expect that deferring environmental security payments will appreciably increase investment.”

In other words, the “asset-to-liability approach” might not even have notably increased investments, and instead exposed Albertans to serious costs down the road if companies go bankrupt.

That’s assuming companies expect to pay the full costs of reclamation.

There have been numerous examples in recent years that indicate mining companies can get away without fines or charges for catastrophic tailings breaches, most notably the Mount Polley mine disaster in B.C. and Peabody bankruptcy in the U.S. (the latter of which left around $2 billion in unfunded liabilities).

Provincial Regulator Has Variety of Options to Pursue, Critics Say

But regulators like the AER could take a different approach to avoid such financial disasters.

That could include providing clarity around what the Mine Financial Security Program actually covers, revoking leases for non-compliance, update calculations to acknowledge the distinction between “proven” and “probable reserves” and tap into financial instruments such as letters of credit which Olszynski describes as “bankrupt-proof.”

It would ultimately be up to the AER as an independent agency to craft new calculations for required security deposits or improve communication of the scope of the Mine Financial Security Program. But such shifts would likely require pressure from the government.

In fact, Premier Rachel Notley appeared reasonably convinced of that fact when serving as opposition environment critic, asking during Question Period in 2010: “will this government commit to eliminate the existing lakes of poisonous sludge within 20 years and to exercise all authority necessary to make sure it happens?”

However, since forming government the Alberta NDP has said little publicly about tailings management that served as contrast to previous decisions; Environment Minister Shannon Phillips responded to the 2015 report by the auditor general by stating: “We need to analyze whether the asset calculation needs to be changed. We need to update this security program and conduct that detailed risk analysis.”

Nothing appears to have been changed or updated since then.

“This is a really common strategy, where industry just kicks the can down the road over and over again until they are able to get out of cleaning up the waste themselves at the end of operations,” said Jodi McNeill, policy analyst, from the Pembina Institute, in a recent webinar.

“There’s a lot of reason for us to be very concerned.”

Image: Alberta oilsands tailings pond. Photo: Alex MacLean 

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Costs associated with the closure and reclamation of 84 abandoned industrial sites, mostly from mining, in B.C. have increased to $508 million, according to new information released from the Crown Contaminated Sites Program.

Responsibility for the sites has fallen to the province because the owners or operators of the projects “no longer exist,” according to a provincial press release.

The estimated cleanup costs have grown by $231 million since 2014, representing an increase of 83.4 per cent, watchdog group MiningWatch notes.

According to the province, a number of the mines, like the Britannia Mine near Squamish, or the Bralorne-Takla Mine in northern B.C., that now present a risk to human and enviornmental health, operated before 1969 when modern environmental legislation was created.

Although the province is quick to highlight work done over the past two years to clean up contaminated sites, Ugo Lapointe from MiningWatch says the significant growth in overall liability signals an urgent need for reform in the mining sector.

“Almost two years after the Mount Polley mine disaster, multiple cases of environmental mismanagement, and exponentially growing costs to clean up contaminated mine sites at taxpayers’ expense, it’s about time the B.C. government starts ‘walking the talk’ on desperately needed reforms in the province’s mining sector,” Lapointe said.

“This is only the tip of the iceberg, as yesterday’s report indicates that only 18 of 84 identified sites have been remediated to date, 16 are still under investigation, and 48 more are categorized as ‘lower priority’ and have yet to cleaned up. About 90 per cent of these sites are mining sites.”

Lapointe said at current rates it will take B.C. 64 years to clean up the remaining sites.

Polluter-Pays System a Failure in B.C.

In May B.C. Auditor General Carol Bellringer issued a scathing report that criticized B.C.’s weak mining liability regime. Bellringer estimated the province’s mining operations carried a $1 billion liability shortfall that ultimately falls onto taxpayer shoulders.

Economist Robyn Allan followed up on that report with a new analysis that showed, when combined with underfunded mining reclamation costs, the liability ballooned to $1.5 billion.

B.C. claims a polluter-pays system is in place for mines: “The Environmental Management Act ensures that those that pollute are held responsible under a polluter pay principle so the taxpayer does not have to assume these clean-up costs.”

Although, according to Robyn Allan, that claim is misleading.

“This statement is not true from the perspective of protecting human health and the environment, nor is it true that polluters are paying for the damage they cause,” Allan told DeSmog Canada. “The polluter pay principle is not working in B.C. For the polluter pay principle to work, polluters must pay for the damage they create. Instead, we find time and again, that it is taxpayers who are paying, or else much of the damage mining companies have caused is going unaddressed.”

Allan’s recent report detailed “decades of neglect in compliance and enforcement activities” within the B.C. Ministry of Mines and the Ministry of Environment.

“The regulators are not protecting the environment from substantial harm or protecting taxpayers from bearing extensive financial cost to fix it,” Allan told DeSmog Canada.

She added the province has standards in place, but doesn’t do enough to ensure the protection of human health or the environment. Both the Snipgold Johnny Mine and Chieftan Metal’s Tulsequah Chief Mine are prime examples of a failed compliance and regulatory system in B.C.

Allan added financial failure in the mining sector, especially in relation to coal, increases these concerns. The collapse of Walter Energy, which Allan outlines in her report, will likely lead to water contamination at the company’s coal mine in northern B.C., Allan said, “because the company was not required to post full financial security” and “is now under bankruptcy protection.”

Allan added a similar situation could unfold with Teck Resources that could see “taxpayers picking up billions of dollars of reclamation and water treatment costs in the Elk Valley in the future.”

“The polluter doesn’t pay if the polluter becomes unable or unwilling,” Allan said. “This is why it is imperative that a fully secured financial assurances system with accurate estimates of reclamation costs and responsibilities be introduced as soon as possible.”

Underfunded Liability Concerns Alaskans Downstream of B.C. Mines

B.C. has at least 10 new mines planed or proposed for northwest B.C., many located above salmon-spawning rivers that travel directly into Southeast Alaska.

Weak regulations, limited liability and a lack of mining oversight has Alaskans living downstream of the mine sites worried another Mount Polley-style disaster will negatively affect local tourism operations and salmon populations.

Concerns over the recent increase in mining activity in northwest B.C. were heightened with the approval of the Red Chris Mine, located in the Iskut and Stikine watersheds. The Red Chris Mine is owned and operated by Imperial Metals, the same company responsible for the Mount Polley mine disaster which sent an estimated 25 million cubic metres of mining waste into the pristine waters of Quesnel Lake nearly two years ago.

The majority of that mining waste, which contains mercury and arsenic, remains on the bottom of Quesnel Lake. No charges or fines were issued in response to the Mount Polley incident.

Recently Alaska’s Congressional Delegation asked Secretary of State John Kerry to step in to protect Alaskan interests from B.C.’s mining boom.

In a letter to Kerry, the delegation wrote, “Alaskans need to have every confidence that mining activity in Canada is carried out just as safely as it is in our state. Yet, today, that confidence does not exist.”

“Should there be an impact to the transboundary waters that flow from Canada to Alaska, our state’s fisheries, tourism and native peoples could all be hurt.”

“Clearly, this program has not been a priority for the B.C. government and nothing in the report indicates that this will change in the future. Nor is there anything to indicate that the B.C. government will seriously enforce the ‘polluter-pays’ principle so that the industry pays for the mess it created,” Lapointe said.

“That’s a shame, because at the end of the day, it’s B.C. taxpayers who will be left with a bigger hole in their pocket to clean up the mess.”

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This week marks the one-year anniversary of the Mount Polley mine spill, the largest mining disaster in Canadian history. On August 4, 2014 an estimated 24 million cubic metres of mining waste spilled from a failed tailings impoundment, flowing down the Hazeltine Creek into Quesnel Lake, a local source of drinking water and home to an estimated quarter of the province’s sockeye salmon.

DeSmog Canada spoke with local resident and fisheries biologist Richard Holmes to discuss the anniversary of the accident. Holmes said some members of his community are disappointed the mine hasn’t done more to repair the social and economic damage done to residents in the wake of the spill.

Although the Mount Polley mine, owned by Imperial Metals, has put an estimated $67 million into stabilizing the Hazeltine Creek, Holmes said the area resembles a “pretty ditch” that won’t be suitable fish habitat for at least two more years.

“It’s disappointing,” Holmes said.

“The last public meeting was about a month ago and I was really disappointed to watch the mine and their consultants and the government people act like they’d just won the lottery. There were as happy as pigs in shit.”

Holmes said the company was eager to have the mine up and running again — something the province gave them approval to do last month. The mine partially reopened in July to the frustration of locals who feel not enough has been done to make reparations for the spill.

“I felt somewhat insulted actually,” Holmes said. “Here our community had just gone through this year of frustration with both parties and their main focus was the environment, which is good, there’s no doubt about that, but their second focus, an equally important focus was on the economics of it.”

“But they've forgotten completely about the social impacts and the cultural and economic impacts on the people in the community.”

Image Credit: Water destined for Quesnel Lake gathers in a sediment pond, March 2015. Photo: Farhan Umedaly 

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Gary and Peggy Zorn lost their livelihood in the wake of the Mount Polley mining disaster one year ago today, the couple explained, after foreign tourists lost the desire to experience the region as a travel destination renowned for its wildlife.

Gary Zorn, adorned with the impressive title of “bear whisperer,” said their eco-tour grizzly-watching outfit lost hundreds of thousands of dollars the day the mine’s tailings pond breached sending as estimated 24 million cubic metres of contaminated mining waste down the Hazeltine Creek and into Quesnel Lake, a local source of drinking water.

The Zorns said in the year that has passed since the spill, the mine, owned by Imperial Metals, has only completed a superficial cleanup in the area, leaving a lingering stain on both the environment and the region’s reputation.

“It’s pretty quiet here,” Gary Zorn said. “The businesses are suffering quite a bit here in Likely because of the damage the breach has done.”

“It’s not just what the breach did environmentally to us; it’s what has happened with the bad publicity we got when this went around the world. That also hurt everybody here.”

He added Mount Polley has yet to deal with the social aspect of the accident.

“They did a lot of damage to a lot of people and are they going to address that? That’s what a lot of people here are wondering about.”

He said he questions the province’s decision to even consider giving the mine a partial start up license “when they’ve totally avoided dealing with what they’ve created.”

Gary said their guide business has been hit hard so he can empathize with the community’s need for economic stimulus — the kind a reopened mine might provide.

“I do know there are people who need jobs. There’s no two ways about it,” he said. “We’re not against mining or logging at all. I worked in mine and in the forestry industry and we worked together with these people.”

“It’s just that when I go ahead in our business and I make a mistake in the bush that affects someone else I’m expected to make that right.”

“That’s all that people here are expecting of Mount Polley. We’re called ‘Canada’s largest mining disaster’ now,” he added. “You guys screwed up. At least make it right.”

B.C. Claims "Significant Progress" Made in Mount Polley Cleanup

Last week the B.C. Ministry of Environment announced “significant progress” had been made in the first phase of the Mount Polley mine mitigation and remediation plan. According to the province the plan focused on stabilizing Hazeltine Creek and improving the quality of water entering Quesnel Lake.

The Ministry of Environment said it considered the containment of tailings, water treatment and the protection of fish “complete or suitably initiated.” Ongoing work will include an ecological and human health risk assessment, the province said.

Environment Minister Mary Polak said she acknowledges “full environmental remediation will take years,” but said the work done over the past year “is truly impressive.”

Peggy Zorn said the mine and the province are over-emphasizing clean up efforts without acknowledging the vast majority of the spill remains lingering at the bottom of Quesnel Lake.

“They’ve taken care of the aesthetics,” she said. “Things look okay but they haven’t dealt with the environmental mess.”

“They talk about the clean up that has been done. They’ve cleaned up the surface but there’s a lot of other stuff that hasn’t been done. They’ll never get [the mine waste] out of the lake so you can hardly call that a cleanup.”

Gary added, “all we’re saying is, hey, you guys created the mess. At least make an effort to straighten it out and not just what looks nice along the road.“

"Year of Frustration"

Richard Holmes, Likely resident and fisheries biologist, said he wishes there was more progress when it comes to environmental cleanup and recovery for the community on the one-year anniversary of the spill.

“We’ve managed to carry on in spite of it all, but we wish there was better news. It’s unfortunate this turned out the way it has,” he said, adding the community is divided over the outcome of the spill and the recent approval from the province to partially restart the mine.

“There are people going back to work at the mine that live here and there are at the other end of the spectrum people that were impacted or had their businesses impacted that haven’t had their needs addressed whatsoever by the company or the government.”

“We find that to be really lacking.”

Holmes also criticized the mine and the B.C. government for their self-congratulatory attitude concerning remediation and the reopening of the mine.

“The last public meeting was about a month ago and I was really disappointed to watch the mine and their consultants and the government people act like they’d just won the lottery. There were as happy as pigs in shit,” Holmes said.

“I felt somewhat insulted, actually.”

Holmes said his community was at the tail end of a “year of frustration” and to hear Mount Polley and the government so focused on making the mine profitable again seemed insensitive. “They’ve forgotten completely about the social impacts and the cultural and economic impacts on the people in the community. It’s disappointing.”

Holmes acknowledged that important environmental remediation work has been done but that both parties are likely too happy with what they’ve accomplished.

“They’ve certainly accomplished some things. Hazeltine Creek has been somewhat cleaned up," he said, adding flatly: "it looks like a pretty ditch now."

"But unfortunately it’s going to be used as a pretty ditch for a couple of years to transport waste water and it’s not going to be used for fish habitat for at least two years.”  

“They may be happy but for people who live here it’s not what we envisioned at all,” he said.

“We expect better. They’re going to be here another 12 years. We expect them to get along with all the community and not just cherry pick who they hang out with here. They seem to be really focused on looking after their employees, the rest of us be damned.”

Image Credit: Tailings waste in the Hazeltine Creek, August 11, 2014. Photo: Carol Linnitt

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Late Saturday afternoon, Transport Canada officially cleared the Marathassa to leave Canadian waters. As it slowly moves out of the Salish Sea, the bulk carrier leaves angry mayors, a combative coast guard, a distrustful public and many, many questions in its wake.

Even U.S. authorities are anxiously looking north wondering if Canada knows anything about marine oil spill response. 

What we know about this spill is important, but there’s a lot more we don’t know, and might never know, about what happened in English Bay.

We Don't Know the Total Volume of Fuel Spilled, and Maybe Never Will 

In his first press conference after the April 8th spill, Commander Roger Girouard of the Canadian Coast Guard stated that the volume of the spill was 2,700 litres, or approximately 17 barrels of bunker C fuel. He reiterated this point several times at media appearances and press conferences in the weeks following the spill. Federal Industry Minister James Moore echoed his comments.

Vancouver City Manager Penny Ballem disagrees. In her presentation to Vancouver City Council after the spill, she quoted officials saying that figure is incorrect and the real volume is likely in the range of 3,000 – 5,000 litres spilled.

Similarly, there’s the reality that even the most successful oil spill cleanup efforts only recover a small portion of the oil. In 2010, Gerald Graham, president of Worldocean Consulting, a marine oil spill prevention and response planning firm based in British Columbia, told LiveScience.com that recovering between 10 and 15 per cent of conventional oil spilled in seawater is a ‘best case’ scenario.

Except bunker C fuel — the product spilled in English Bay — is not conventional: it is denser, more viscous and heavier than conventional crude oil. Unlike conventional crude oil, bunker C fuel is not certain to float on water surfaces, nor does it weather and dissolve as easily. On average only five to 10 per cent of the bunker C fuel will evaporate in the first 24 hours after a spill. Instead it breaks into tarballs and settles lower in the water column, sometimes as far down as one to three metres below the surface.

On April 9, Commander Girouard reported that cleanup crews had recovered approximately 1,400 litres of the oil spilled. A few days later, a statement from Coast Guard Commissioner Jody Thomas stated that cleanup crews recovered 80 per cent of fuel spilled within 36 hours after the spill.

If these figures are correct, then without counting the oil which washed up on Vancouver and West Vancouver beaches or the large ‘bathtub ring’ of bunker fuel oil encircling the Marathassa, the Coast Guard should have recovered approximately 2,200 litres of spilled oil in the first 36 hours (based on lower spill estimates). This is definitely possible, but extremely unlikely given past precedent of what constitutes a ‘best case’ cleanup.

But if total spill volumes are incorrect — as City Manager Ballem and others suggest — there is a lot of oil still unaccounted for.

It is worth noting that in the first 24 hours after the spill, oil traveled 12 kilometres to foul at least 10 beaches in Vancouver, West Vancouver and North Vancouver.

Would an Operational Kits Coast Guard Station Have Helped? Who Knows

In 2013, the federal government closed the Kitsilano Coast Guard station, consolidating operations with the Coast Guard Station in Delta, B.C. Both the City of Vancouver and the province of B.C. publicly objected to the closure, citing its importance in oil spill and disaster response efforts.

“The Kitsilano Coast Guard base has been one the most important public safety resources in and around the City of Vancouver, responding to over 300 calls each year. Vancouver is one of the busiest harbours in North America and has depended on robust search and rescue services that are professionally-trained and fully-resourced by the federal government. In the event of major freighter, cruise ship, or aviation emergency, we remain very concerned that the Kitsilano closure will put many additional lives in danger.” – Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson

Both Commander Girouard and Federal Industry Minister James Moore stated they believe the Kitsilano Coast Guard Station being open would have made no difference in the cleanup of this spill. Speaking to the media on April 12, Girouard said the station was never manned with environmental response experts, and would not have been called on in this scenario. James Moore echoed his comments.

According to Commander Girouard, the Kitsilano Coast Guard station had less than 100 metres of oil-absorbing booms, and that they were likely too old to be useful.

Retired Coast Guard Captain Tony Toxopeus, who served at the base, disagrees. So does Mike Cotter, General Manager of the Jericho Sailing Centre, which is located next door to the shuttered station. In an interview with CKNW’s Shane Woodford, Captain Toxopeus confirmed that the Kitsilano Coast Guard Station had two ships (a pollution response vehicle and an Osprey cutter), along with oil spill response equipment and staff trained in pollution response.

At the same time, an operational Kitsilano Coast Guard Station would have greatly reduced the response time for the spill.

As it stands, it took the Coast Guard more than three hours from the time the spill was reported to send a ship to investigate, a further four hours to set up an absorbent boom and a total 12 hours to completely encircle the Marathassa in a containment boom. In an open letter to Minister Moore, Mr. Cotter said:

“Had the Kitsilano Coast Guard Station remained open, the Osprey could have been on scene within 10 minutes in direct contact with the boater who originally reported the spill just after 5 pm on April 8. Her crew would’ve assessed the scene (the boater says he could tell the fuel was coming from the aft section of the source ship) and activated the PRV crew who would’ve been on scene and commenced spill containment within an hour of the report.”

Late last week, the federal government announced that it would also be closing the Vancouver office for its Marine Communications and Traffic Services. Now everything from marine safety communications co-ordination with rescue resources, vessel traffic services and waterway management, broadcast weather and sail plan services for the entire south coast and most of Vancouver Island will be managed out of the Victoria office.

As the Globe and Mail recently reported, officials in Washington State have serious doubts about the Canadian government's ability to address oil spills in the Puget Sound. The Washington Department of Ecology told the state's Governor that "B.C. lacks authority over marine waters, and their federal regime is probably a couple decades behind the system currently in place in Washington State."

A U.S. maritime lawyer also said if the U.S. Coast Guard scored an eight or nine on a worldwide 10-point spill response scale, Canada would score a one or two. 

We Don’t Know Who is Responsible for Monitoring Burrard Inlet for Long-term Spill Impacts

To be clear, the Burrard Inlet and the Salish sea have not been pristine waterways for a long time. E.coli contamination regularly closes local beaches to swimming in the summer, and the waterway is a working port. All of that considered, Vancouver beaches attract millions of people every year, and many people fish its waters for recreation or subsistence.

On April 15, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans banned fishing for shellfish and groundfish in Burrard Inlet, citing concerns about the Marathassa spill. DFO calls the closure a precautionary measure, and gives no indication of when the fisheries may reopen.

The closure makes sense, of course. While the Marathassa spill was minor,  toxins from bunker C fuel can stay in the water for a very long time. A study done by U.S. Department of Fisheries scientists on a 2007 bunker C fuel spill in San Francisco harbour found the spill had decimated local herring stocks and left surviving fish with extensive birth defects and short life spans. This persisted for at least three years after the spill.

But Vancouver’s waters are different. According to Dr. Peter Ross, director of the Vancouver Aquarium’s Ocean Pollution Research Program, there’s no baseline data for English Bay’s waters, nor is there a cohesive long-term monitoring program. Both of these deficiencies make it hard to measure long term impacts.

Since coastal waters fall under the purview of the federal government, it should be the responsibility of the DFO to monitor long-term impacts. But millions of dollars in cuts by the federal government have decimated DFO budgets, closing programs and leaving at least 50 scientists out of work. This included Dr. Ross, who used to run a marine toxicology program through DFO. It no longer exists.

The Vancouver Aquarium, the City of Vancouver and the Department of Fisheries and Oceans have all collected water samples independently following the spill. Unfortunately, as Dr. Ross says, "There is no official clarity around who is to monitor the effects of a spill."

WWKMD? We Don’t Know What Kinder Morgan Would Do Differently

For all the opacity of the government response, one thing is crystal clear after the Marathassa spill: we could, and must, do better by these waters. As the National Energy Board considers approval of the Kinder Morgan TransMountain tanker and pipeline expansion, both parties could be learning from the Marathassa response and ensuring that future spill preparedness and response is truly ‘world-class.' But, as always, there’s a problem.

Namely, that Kinder Morgan refuses to publicly reveal any of its oil spill cleanup plans for Burrard Inlet — even though the company owns 50.9 per cent of Western Canada Marine Response Company, the lead party responsible for cleanup operations on the Marathassa spill and the primary subcontractor for any future oil spills on the B.C. south coast.

This leaves all levels of government in the dark about what might happen if the new twinned Kinder Morgan pipeline ruptures again (as it did in 2007), or one of the hundreds of new Aframax-sized tankers (40,000 tonnes larger than the Marathassa bulk carrier) leaks diluted bitumen into English Bay.

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As the death toll of the tragic Lac-Mégantic derailment rises to 28, with another 22 presumed dead, the environmental impact of the crude oil spilled during the disaster is also becoming clearer. Further risk of environmental damage comes from the one million litres of crude oil still trapped in tankers at the blast site, according to the Montreal Gazette.

Aaron Derfel writes for the Gazette, that "cleanup crews must wait to begin the months-long decontamination — which is projected to cost tens of millions of dollars — because a police investigation and a coroner's search for human remains must first be completed."

Derfel reports Ghislain Bolduc, a member of the National Assembly for Mégantic riding, as saying that though the investigation must take top priority, "each day's delay in decontaminating the four-hectare site means that oil will continue seeping into the ground and sewage system, which will almost certainly have to be rebuilt."

CBC News reports that the investigation itself will "take months or more" to ensure "Canadians get the answers they need," according to Transportation Safety Board chair Wendy Tavos.

Bolduc emphasized the urgency of removing the five intact rail cars still in the town centre, each containing 100,000 litres of crude oil. This is in addition to residual oil in the damaged cars, which "altogether probably contain about 500,000 litres."

The Montreal, Maine & Atlantic Railway company gave Environment Quebec an estimate of 6.5 million litres of crude oil burned or spilled from damaged tanker cars in the hours following the derailment, with much of it "[flooding] the basements of more than 50 buildings and houses in the downtown core."

In comparison, the 2013 ExxonMobil pipeline oil spill in Mayflower, Arkansas, spilled an estimated 893,000 litres of crude oil, while the 1989 Exxon Valdez tanker oil spill totalled about 41.6 million litres of crude.

The oil also leaked into the sewer system and burned there, causing "underground explosions [that] cracked sewage pipes and blew manhole covers, with geysers of flames shooting up 10 metres in the air," according to Bolduc.

The oil is not just in the water and the soil either, as "above-ground explosions sprayed oil droplets thousands of feet into the sky, and the wind carried that oily mist as far as eight kilometres from the derailment," with Lac-Mégantic residents reporting oil coating their cars.

The Chaudière River has also been contaminated, with "extensive oil slicks" seen on its surface as far as 80 kilometres away, in the town of St. Georges, northeast of Lac-Mégantic. SIMEC, a private company specializing in removing oil spills, was hired on Tuesday to place booms "designed to contain the oil and to prevent it from polluting shorelines" on the river, 1.5 km from the blast site.

"400,000 litres of oil have been pumped out of the sewers thus far," and "4 million litres of oil-tainted river and lake water, as well as sewage" recovered, Michel Rousseau, deputy Environment Quebec minister, told the Gazette. Rousseau added that the cleanup will "cost a lot of money" because "the quantity of oil is very, very big," and that Montreal, Maine & Atlantic will have to pay for most of the bill.

Derfel writes that "decontaminating thousands of tonnes of oily earth" in Lac-Mégantic will "take months and cost millions of dollars," whether done by excavating and replacing 30,000 truckloads of earth from the town or on-site by "setting up a temporary facility to clean the oily earth and then refill the site." This task would be followed by repairing of the sewer system–removing or replacing damaged and contaminated pipes, and "extensive repairs" to the town's sewage treatment plant, which is "clogged with oil as well." The town's water supply, which comes from reservoirs and wells, escaped damage.

"To repair all this, to rebuild the town centre and return to normal will take years," said Bolduc. Rousseau confirmed that soil decontamination could take months, though he couldn't provide an exact number.

Premier Pauline Marois has pledged $60 million in emergency aid to Lac-Mégantic. Bolduc says that this is "a good start," but warns that "millions more are needed, including from the federal government."

Image Credit: Transportation Safety Board

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