Governments love buzzwords — probably because they roll off the tongue so nicely that people often overlook the fact they’re meaningless.

Take one of the B.C. government’s favourite expressions of late: “world leading” oil spill response.

It’s included not once, but twice, in B.C.’s five conditions for approval of oil pipelines — used to give the green light to the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline.

But what does “world leading” oil spill response actually mean?

“I see a lot of gaps in this wording of ‘world class’ response,” says Riki Ott, a marine toxicologist who was working as a commercial fisher in Cordova, Alaska, when the Exxon Valdez ran aground on Bligh Reef in March 1989, spilling more than 41 million litres of oil into Prince William Sound.

Ott says little has changed in terms of oil spill response in the past 28 years. She witnessed that first hand during the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010.

“I set foot down in Louisiana 21 years after the Exxon Valdez and I’m watching the news and I’m seeing it’s the same booms, it’s the same burning, it’s the same dispersants that were used 21 years ago,” Ott said.  “I thought surely we had all learned lessons from the Exxon Valdez and that industry was going to be forced to improve its clean up methods based on lessons learned. Nope.”

The fact is there is no proven way to clean up a large oil spill in water.

Transport Canada expects only 10 to 15 per cent of a marine oil spill to be recovered from open water. That’s about as good as it gets.

But it gets a whole lot worse, especially when you’re dealing with diluted bitumen, or dilbit, from the oilsands — which nobody actually has a clue how to clean up, because it sinks.

“There is no known clean-up response for dilbit,” Ott told DeSmog Canada. “All of our so-called cleanup equipment deals with floating oil: the booms, the dispersants, the skimmers. You could have all the floating boom and skimmers available, but this stuff is going to sink so it’s not going to be effective.”

Diluted bitumen is comprised of the “worst parts of crude oil,” Ott says.

It has both the persistent, concentrated heavy hydrocarbons that end up on beaches or the ocean floor and don’t readily evaporate or dissolve.  But it also has the volatile organic compounds, which are a hazard for spill responders, nearby public and wildlife.

“I would not want to see an Exxon Valdez- or a BP Deepwater Horizon-sized oil spill in British Columbia,” Ott said. “You’re not ready for it. You’re just not.”

Ott said Alaskans made a lot of assumptions going into the Exxon Valdez spill.

“You trust the government has these standards in place, that the government is ready, that you’re going to be taken care of if there is a spill,” she said.

“Instead what we found was that promises sound really good when the industry and the government want something and it all becomes kind of like smoke after the ink is dry on the permits.”

Nearly 28 years later, the herring fishery in Prince William Sound has never recovered. One pod of orcas has never reproduced since.

“Things just collapsed,” Ott said. “What comes back is not quite the same. It’s like Humpty Dumpty. It’s not put together quite the same way any more.”

About a third of the fishing community had to leave town because they couldn’t make ends meet. It took 10 years for the salmon to recover.

The stress led to spikes in domestic violence, substance abuse and suicide — all documented in Ott’s book Not One Drop: Betrayal and Courage in the Wake of the Exxon Valdez Spill.

“The state wasn’t there for us, the federal government wasn’t there, certainly Exxon wasn’t there. And it took 20 years before the litigation ended even for our most basic fishing claims,” Ott said. “This is what communities need to be ready for.”

Ott says there are plenty of red flags about B.C.’s ability to respond to an oil spill.

“You’ve already had a couple wake-up calls: you had the Marathassa oil spill right in English Bay … and it got away. And then you had Bella Bella much more recently … and it still got away.”

In the Bella Bella instance, a fuel barge tug ran aground, leaking an estimated 227,000 litres of diesel fuel. Oil spill response efforts were repeatedly hampered by poor water, failed spill containment and even an incident where a spill response ship took on water and itself began to sink. Meantime, the Heiltsuk’s shellfish harvesting areas were devastated.

“B.C. does not have world-class response. We’ve already seen that. It’s already been demonstrated,” Ott said. “It’s all shouldered off onto the communities that live near the shores where this stuff happens.”

“My hope as your neighbor across the border is that people really wake up and realize that the government has promised nothing.”

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This is a guest post by Glen Thompson. It originally appeared on Abbotsford Today the Watershed Sentinel and is republished here with permission.

“Once the oil leaves the dock, Kinder Morgan holds no obligation or responsibility, even 10 metres out – that’s the carrier’s liability.”

At the last two information events in Chilliwack, Kinder Morgan brought a large team of professionals and specialized aids to cover an exhaustive range of issues. Resembling a Royal Commission, everything concerning the proposed pipeline was in the tow of a Subject Matter Expert and neatly secured in a rolling briefcase.

The first audience was the full Board of the Fraser Valley Regional District (FVRD) and the second, an invited group of government regulatory officials, community leaders and representatives of major environmental organizations. Audiences with a formidable amount of assembled oversight.

The new pipeline, it seems, is as complicated as the first mission to the moon, with a robust 15,000 page draft plan, guiding a small army of civil engineers, scientists, and project leads. It took no less than nine expert presenters with technical analysts standing by, to present an hour and a half project overview to the FVRD Board.  

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Sitting two rows deep, the project leads extolled advanced science and gleaned wisdom distilled from forensic analysis of past catastrophes. The presentation team successfully stick-handled their way through the Boards member’s queries; air quality, the depth of the pipeline in deep rooted agricultural crops, financial compensation capacity and riparian protection.

The second event was a long afternoon of Kinder Morgan being slow cooked by fully qualified, and at times pointed, questions from a highly informed group of community leaders, advocates and government agency analysts. Kinder Morgan walked away roughed up, limping a bit, but uninjured. Every concern it seemed, had a graph, a published opinion or a mitigation plan and supposedly every bit of it, was reasonable, given the daunting task of moving extremely heavy oil, over mountains, in February.

At the FVRD meeting, a single phrase, made by the pipeline’s head director, hung in the air like a high fly ball. I’ll never forget the finality in his voice, “Once the oil leaves the dock, Kinder Morgan holds no obligation or responsibility, even 10 metres out – that’s the carrier’s liability.” Nobody caught the ball.

The Exxon Valdez

The oil cargo that was loaded into the Exxon Valdez traveled safely through the supply pipeline from Prudhoe Bay without incident. The Alaska coast disaster had nothing to do with the pipeline, and everything to do with the carrier. The Kinder Morgan director’s sharp statement pulls the sheet off the question: Who will take Kinder Morgan’s oil out of the Port of Vancouver? West Coast oil tankers are a critical link in the supply chain between the Alberta Rigs and the far off Chinese refineries.

The little known outcome from the Exxon Valdez case is worth considering when examining the full supply route.

The Exxon Valdez ran aground on Bligh Reef in 1989 dumping hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil into Prince William Sound. The ship’s Captain Joseph Hazelwood, an alcoholic, was reported to be intoxicated and had stepped away from the bridge at a critical moment.

A lawsuit alleged Exxon negligently allowed a known alcoholic to be in charge of a vessel and failed to maintain a collision avoidance system that, if functioning, would have warned the crew. The system had been broken for over a year.

In 1994, international media outlets hammered out stories when a jury’s verdict announced Exxon would have to pay a massive $5.3 billion dollar fine. This was enough to pay for the cleanup, compensate 38,000 economic victims and punitively punish the corporation firmly enough to prevent it from ever happening again. The public was satisfied in the justice system and the media moved on.

Exxon Appeals

In 2002, Exxon appealed. The case was heard by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and the fine was dropped to $4 billion. Exxon appealed. The fine was raised to $4.5 billion. Exxon appealed. The 2nd appeal ruling was struck down and the fine was reduced to $2.5 billion. Exxon petitioned for a rehearing but failed, the $2.5 billion fine was upheld.

After the accident, Exxon towed its ripped up vessel to California for repair. The cost of putting her back in service would be $30 million dollars. In 1990 the U.S. Congress passed a law (375 – 5) that prohibits a tanker that has spilled more than one million gallons of oil from entering Prince William Sound.

In 1998 Exxon launched a legal action against the law and tried to return the ship to service on the Alaskan coast. They claimed the law unfairly targeted Exxon, and argued past incidents are not an indicator of an increased likelihood of a future accident. In 2002 Exxon lost the case and by that time the law had prevented 18 ships from entering the sound.

In 2007, Exxon filed a fourth appeal of the fine, this time in the U.S. Supreme Court. Using past case settlements Exxon lawyers argued that a punitive judgement in a maritime case based on reckless behavior should not impose a fine greater than the amount of compensation damages.

In 90 minutes Exxon’s lawyers reduced the fine by $2 billion dollars from $2.5 billion to $500 million. The 5 – 3 decision was supported by (former Monsanto attorney) Justice Clarence Thomas. Exxon paid what amounts to 10 per cent of the original fine.

Exxon is based in New York. It is the world’s third largest company by revenue (est. $420 billion annually). It is readily subject to, and bound by, American law; but despite this, the prosecution of Exxon was largely unsuccessful.

If a U.S. Court has difficulty prosecuting a U.S. company, how would a Canadian court fair prosecuting a Chinese company?

The lesson of the Valdez is that petroleum exporting ports such as the Port of Vancouver need solid legal protection and regulations in place prior to spills. A Chinese Oil conglomerate is likely to be even more challenging to fine or regulate than Exxon.

Who will ship oil to China, state-run China Shipping, Exxon’s shipping subsidiary, Liberian Oil Tankers?

The Kinder Morgan pipeline approval must include a regulatory mechanism for preventing any flavour of Liberian Oil Tankers, a financial bond formula to cover spills, and a double hull safe shipping certification, like the one in place in the Mediterranean. The pipeline should not be considered without these controls.

The current pipeline approval system is as irresponsible as licensing a pub without a drunk driver law. Kinder Morgan needs to serve its oil responsibly. It is not reasonable or logical to separate a pipeline approval from tanker regulation.

The Exxon Valdez was renamed several times by Exxon and eventually sold to a Hong Kong company. She collided with another ship in 2010 and sent to ship breakers for scrap. Under her final name Oriental Nicety, she was the subject of a case in the Indian Supreme Court, beached and dismantled at Alang, India in 2012.

Image Credit: Exxon Valdez cleanup via Buffalo State University.

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Canada's northwest coast stands alone as one of our planet's last unspoiled coastlines. Its rich assemblage of wildlife, wild rivers and intricate landscapes makes it qualitatively different from any other place in the world.

British Columbians have increasingly come to cherish this maritime commons of waters, islands, and forests. According to an Angus Reid public opinion poll, wild salmon — the foundation species on which this coastal bounty is built — are as important to British Columbians as the French language is to Quebec.

With March 24 marking the 25th anniversary of the Exxon Valdez oil spill, this disaster provides a lens into considering the Enbridge Northern Gateway oil tanker and pipeline project and the risk it poses to wild salmon, one of our country's greatest natural assets. The Valdez spilled more than 41 million litres of crude oil. Negative impacts from the spill are still felt, with only 13 of the 32 monitored wildlife populations, habitats and resource services injured in the spill listed as fully “recovered” or “very likely recovered.”

A recent report by the Raincoast Conservation Foundation concluded that the consequences just to wild Pacific salmon from Enbridge's project are not a risk worth taking. The report, "Embroiled: Salmon, Tankers and the Enbridge Northern Gateway Proposal," explores the connections between the oil industry's anticipated activities on the B.C. coast and how those activities could adversely affect salmon.

The Queen Charlotte Basin, the backdrop for Enbridge's oil tanker routes, is home to more than 5,000 spawning populations of wild salmon. These fish represent 58 per cent of Canada's Pacific salmon and are the foundation of B.C.'s remarkable coastal ecology, the iconic wildlife that rely on them and the basis for multi-million dollar economies in eco-tourism, salmon-based tourism and the salmon resource sector.

Salmon naturally have poor odds for survival. On average, only one salmon for every thousand eggs that a female lays will return to spawn. These odds have further declined in recent years due to intense human activities in salmon watersheds and in the ocean. Oil tankers and terminals present a new, added threat to salmon survival.

With a fresh oil spill, toxic vapours from the oil threaten living organisms that breathe in air and water. In contrast, other components in oil, known as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) are of equal, if not greater, concern. These compounds can persist in the environment for years, if not decades, and can continue to harm organisms long after the oil first spills. Even low levels of exposure to PAHs — in parts per billion — can have lethal consequences for salmon.

The most vulnerable period for salmon to be exposed to oil is during their egg incubation in the spawning gravels. Embryos and larvae are 10 times more sensitive to oil than adult salmon because their high lipid content attracts oil. In the gravels, chum and pink salmon are at the highest risk to marine oil spills because their parents tend to spawn in the lower reaches of streams, where oil residue can reach the gravels.

Early life is the next most vulnerable period from an oil spill. When young salmon first migrate to sea, they rely on estuaries and near-shore waters for food, protection, and safe migration. These areas are usually the most heavily impacted by oil spills.

Importantly, there are threats from industrial oil activities even in the absence of large spills. Oil tankers and terminal activities bring routine small spills, dramatically altered shorelines, river water extraction, increased underwater noise, ship wakes, turbidity and impacts to salmon food sources.

In Alaska's Port of Valdez in Prince William Sound, the rise and accumulation of PAHs in ocean sediments from small, chronic oil spills (while loading tankers), tracks perfectly the volume of oil shipped. In B.C., stressors from oil industry habitat loss and toxicity would add to cumulative affects that push salmon — most of which are already at their lowest levels of known abundance — beyond their ability to survive.

Enbridge has maintained there are no significant risks or consequences to salmon from their proposed Northern Gateway project. This is based on their wholly inadequate assessment of baseline conditions and project impacts, and is exacerbated by their failure to adequately consider cumulative impacts, including climate change. Consequently, the conclusions arrived by Enbridge cannot be scientifically supported in many cases.

In the absence of an adequate assessment of risk by Enbridge (risk defined as the probability of an oil spill times the consequence of an oil spill), Raincoast performed a limited risk assessment to demonstrate the type of analysis that should have been undertaken. Our assessment found that more than 400 spawning populations of salmon lie adjacent to the confined channels of the tanker routes and that these streams contain some the highest densities of spawning salmon on the B.C. coast. These salmon streams drain into Enbridge's highest risk routes for tanker accidents.

Salmon, and the wildlife and human communities that they support, are the very soul of British Columbia and the lifeblood of our coastal ecosystem. Despite the National Energy Board's blessing that Northern Gateway should go ahead, British Columbians are clearly not willing to surrender these values and way of life to the oil industry.

This article was co-authored by Misty MacDuffee, a biologist and fisheries ecologist with Raincoast Conservation Foundation.

Image via NOAA

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