This article originally appeared on The Tyee.

There are places one can sit and consider the past and future with equal clarity. On this October day, Harold Steves, 79, an outspoken environmentalist and Richmond city councillor, looks from the riverbank at the end of Richmond’s Rice Mill Road.

Directly in front of him is the Fraser River, and directly below his feet lies Highway 99’s George Massey Tunnel. Given a $22-million seismic upgrade a decade ago, it was said by then-B.C. transportation minister Kevin Falcon that the tunnel was safe and a future twinning would eliminate the twice-daily commuter bottleneck.

But if today’s B.C. government has its way, work will start late this year on a massive $3.5-billion bridge, financed through a Public-Private Partnership (P3), to be completed by 2022.

Which means a stiff toll to pay off private creditors in the years ahead. Which will also mean that the perfectly safe, perfectly good tunnel will be removed.

Which could then allow that section of the riverbed to be dredged three to six metres deeper. Which will jeopardize migrating Fraser River salmon. But which will also provide sufficient draft for 300-metre ships to load coal and liquefied natural gas (LNG) at expanded riverside facilities in Delta, Surrey and Richmond. Which will encroach on adjacent Agricultural Land Reserve (ALR) farmland.

And which — given the incredibly explosive potential of LNG — will put tens of thousands of riverside residents at risk of becoming “human kebobs,” says Eoin Finn, a well-known LNG opponent who has been researching the industry for three years.

Steves peers up past a riverside cottonwood, imagining a humungous bridge directly overhead, and says to me: “There are so many thing wrong with it, it boggles the mind. It’s not just a threat to the Metro Vancouver Regional Plan. Or to the salmon. Or to ALR farmland. Or to local people.”

“Despite what Christy Clark says, the reason for the bridge has little to do with removing congestion,” Steves says. “A twinned tunnel would solve that. But Port Metro Vancouver doesn’t want a twinned tunnel. It doesn’t want any tunnels. It’s not about congestion. It’s about ships. The bridge has got everything to do with Port Metro Vancouver’s plans to industrialize the Fraser.”

“The bridge has got everything to do with @PortMetroVan’s plans to industrialize the Fraser.” https://t.co/N2AvLRMavx #bcpoli #bcelxn17 #YVR pic.twitter.com/leThGDYk3u

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) April 24, 2017

A Sudden Change in the Plan

I’m holding an emailed 11-point “Rationale” from the transportation ministry communications office dated Nov. 8, 2016, setting out the reasons for a new bridge over the Fraser River. (Despite repeated requests, neither Transportation Minister Todd Stone nor Port Metro Vancouver would be interviewed about the bridge plan.)

The statement is full of platitudes and exaggerations about the urgent need to eliminate the Massey Tunnel’s traffic snarls and purported seismic deficiencies. And it is clearly meant to gain support from frustrated commuters for an expensive highway bridge. There is not one word about tolls. Not one word about Port Metro Vancouver’s desire for Massey Tunnel removal and subsequent dredging so bigger ships can pass upriver. Not one word about the environmental consequences of this.

The bulleted 2016 list contains, in fact, this Orwellian rationalization for rejecting the widely supported and relatively inexpensive 2006 plan to twin the tunnel: “Twinning the tunnel was not an endorsement of a new tunnel, but rather an acknowledgement of the need to increase the capacity of this vital crossing.”

So “twinning the tunnel” has come to mean, in BC Liberal newspeak, building a 10-lane, three-kilometre-long, $3.5-billion toll bridge — almost seven times more than the 2006 estimate for twinning the tunnel and improving Hwy 99, according to a Vancouver Sun report at the time.

The machinations that led to this shift of provincial policy would not have been known if a coalition of environmental activists, calling themselves Fraser Voices, hadn’t begun seeking information about secret B.C. government communications, beginning in 2012, between Port Metro Vancouver, the Surrey Fraser Docks and their powerful shipping allies intent on opening up the river to huge Panamax vessels and the Fraser shoreline to industrial expansion.

But when the environmental group first asked for Freedom of Information access to government emails about how the twinned tunnels abruptly became the big toll bridge, researchers were told there weren’t any. They didn’t exist.

Among the Fraser Voice’s activists is Doug Massey, who at 83 can still get mad. “When I first heard the tunnel was going to be removed,” he says, “it got my Irish up.” After all, it was his father, George Massey, who spent years as a Delta MLA pushing for the crossing that now bears his name.

And Doug Massey knew that after the seismic upgrades were completed in 2006 the tunnel was in excellent shape. In fact, the 57-year-old tunnel is identical in construction to one built under Holland’s Maas River 74 years ago, and said to be good for 50 more years.

So, he wondered, what was really behind the push to replace his father’s tunnel? With help from investigative researcher Susan Jones and Kevin Washbrook of Voters Taking Action Against Climate Change, he began digging, and found that B.C. government emails did exist in the records of recipients like Transport Canada.

Sitting in his crammed home office in Tsawwassen, Massey starts handing me dozens of pages of emails.

The critical one is dated Feb. 2, 2012. The email schedules a meeting in the office of an assistant deputy minister in the province’s transportation ministry. On the invitation list were a senior ministry engineer, the CEO and a manager from Surrey Fraser Dock, and a “bridge engineer” from the company that did the earlier seismic studies on the tunnel. Port Metro Vancouver’s “Container Capacity Improvement Program” was also included.

The subject of the meeting, according to the ADM, was “options and considerations around the George Massey Tunnel and a sustainable navigational channel.”

That was more than seven months before Clark announced the government wanted to replace the tunnel and began public consultations and more than 19 months before she announced the bridge plan.

Shippers certainly supported the bridge option. And by September 2012 Transport Canada was being advised that industry and government stakeholders favoured removal of the tunnel. “This is what members have been telling me,” wrote Ruth Sol of WESTAC, an association of transportation companies, unions and governments, to Transport Canada. “George Massey tunnel needs to be replaced — to increase its capacity and the draft above the tunnel so larger ships can access the facilities on the Fraser River.”

Massey says the emails and reports he and his associates uncovered show Port Metro Vancouver and Surrey Fraser Docks were gathering information on the bridge height and channel depth required to allow LNG tankers and Panamax cargo ships to reach expanded port facilities on the Fraser River long before the provincial government announced the bridge plan.

On Dec. 4, 2012, still more than nine months before Clark announced the plan to replace the tunnel with a bridge, Port Metro Vancouver managers were setting out their goals in an email. Any new crossing should allow 15.5 metres of depth based on expected shipping needs in the next 50 years, and 18.5 metres based on a 100-year life expectancy, the port’s dredging expert noted. The current tunnel is 12 metres deep. PMV also wanted a bridge to be 65 metres above the Fraser, to allow ships to reach expanded port facilities on the Fraser.

Massey notes that the email exchanges reflect the port’s expansion plans. “We need to consider future terminals such as VAFFC, Lehigh, and possible terminal at our Richmond properties,” writes one PMV manager in an email about port plans along the Fraser River. (VAFFC is the planned Vancouver Airport Fuel Facilities Corporation jet fuel terminal and Lehigh refers to Lehigh Hanson’s plans for a bulk terminal.)

And an email from March 2013 makes Port Metro Vancouver’s desire clear: “Option No. 2: Replacing the tunnel with a new bridge in the same location. Not publicly confirmed yet, but this is (Port Metro’s) preference.”

Seven months later, Clark announced a new bridge.

Massey sees the decision as a betrayal of the public interest.

“I’m very upset that they they’re using the excuse the tunnel’s in disrepair. Or seismically dangerous,” he says. “No, it’s full speed ahead, damn the torpedoes! Build the bridge! It won’t be named after my father. I know that. He’d have hated the idea of removing a good tunnel for the bridge. It’s all about industrializing the lower Fraser. With taxpayers and commuters footing the bill.”

‘It’s a Boondoggle’

“I don’t think we’re getting the full picture,” says Claire Trevena, the NDP’s transportation critic. “It’s a boondoggle — with a starting price of $3.5 billion. What’s the rush for doing it? There’s been no cost-benefit study. No environmental study. No explanation about how it’s going to be funded. No consideration that if you build a toll bridge, you don’t want people riding transit. You want them in cars, paying $3.50 tolls.”

Her suspicions are propelled, she explains, by the fact that Kevin Falcon declared in 2006 that with the seismic repair work completed “The tunnel’s good for 50 years.” And he assured commuters that with the planned twinning of the Massey Tunnel and a new fast bus lane, Highway 99’s rush-hour congestion would be a thing of the past.

“The bridge is a big political bauble for Christy Clark. She announced it before the last provincial election. And construction was supposed to start before the 2017 provincial election,” says Trevena. “It makes no sense. Twinning it would cost a fraction of a mammoth new bridge. What are they going to call it? The ‘Christy Clark Bridge’?”

Story update:

The Vancouver Fraser Port Authority — formerly Port Metro Vancouver — issued a statement after this article was published.

It says the province consulted the port on proposed designs because it’s responsible for navigation on the Fraser River and “is required to ensure any overhead or underwater structures do not impede current or future shipping.”

“We provided information and data on vessels that currently or may use the river in the future, including considering whether or not the tunnel is removed in favour of a bridge,” the statement said.

“We prefer the bridge option because it will address a significant bottleneck for the movement of goods and people in the region and may provide more flexibility for trade,” the statement said. “However, it is ultimately the decision of the province as to which option to pursue.”

Ships are increasing in size to cut costs and environmental impact, the port said, “but removing the tunnel in favour of a bridge will not significantly change the size of ships that are able to use the channel for a number of reasons.”

The port authority said dredging to allow larger ships “would be prohibitively expensive” and “the width of the river does not allow very large vessels to turn.” Underwater pipeline crossings are also a barrier to ships with deeper draughts, the port said.

The new bridge will not have “a significant impact on the size of ships” using the Fraser River, the statement said.

Image: Artist's rendering of the Massey Bridge. Photo: B.C. Government

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Canada’s major ports handle more than 300 million tonnes of cargo every year. They’re how we import products like cars and TVs and how we export commodities like grain and oil. Yet many of us have likely never thought of how the country’s 18 Canada Port Authorities (CPAs) are run — until now.

The way that decisions are made at Canada’s ports are coming under increasing scrutiny from environmentalists, who take issue with ports operating as both a promoter and regulator of trade.

The boards of directors of Canada’s port authorities determine what terminals receive approval for construction, and thus what types of commodities end up leaving the harbour.

Take Port Metro Vancouver (officially known as the Vancouver Fraser Port Authority), for example. It’s the largest port authority by tonnage in the country: in 2015 it facilitated the exchange of 138 million tonnes of cargo.

In September 2012, Fraser Surrey Docks — one of 28 marine terminals located at Port Metro Vancouver — announced plans to export eight million tonnes of thermal coal mined in Montana and Wyoming to Asian markets every year.

Paula Williams co-founded the advocacy group Communities and Coal in May 2013 in response to potential health effects and climate impacts stemming from such exports.

While Port Metro Vancouver’s CEO has readily admitted the port authority has never encountered such considerable opposition to a proposal before, the terminal’s proposal is still slated to go ahead (there are multiple lawsuits filed against it over alleged lack of consultation).

“At times, I’ve felt powerless, even though I remained hopeful,” Williams says. “You really start to see the machine that you’re up against.”  

Port Users Nominate Board of Directors

That’s because seven of the 11 people who serve on the board of directors for Port Metro Vancouver are nominated by port users. In other words, the businesses that reap financial benefits from port-related transactions have a majority of the say in who gets recommended as a board member to the federal minister of transportation, who makes the final selection.

The other four spots are filled with selections by: 1) the 16 municipalities within Port Metro Vancouver’s jurisdiction; 2) the province of British Columbia; 3) the three prairie provinces; and 4) the federal transport minister (without recommendation from the port user group).

The selection process is spelled out by 1998’s Canada Marine Act, which established port authorities as federal not-for-profit corporations mandated with the three-pronged task of facilitating trade, consulting with communities and protecting the environment. Today, Canada Port Authorities serve as landlord, regulator and property developer.  

Fox Watching the Hen House

Kathryn Harrison, a political science professor at the University of British Columbia, expresses concern over the board nomination process, as there’s no requirement for the ports to seek representation from First Nations, environmental or public health groups.

“The nomination process really exemplifies for me the degree to which this port authority has been envisioned as an agency that pursues the interests of industry,” she says. “It has a coordinating role, so you’ve got to have all the industries represented. But think about it: now you have a board primarily made up of those industries overseeing regulation of themselves.”

Peter Hall, director and professor of urban studies at Simon Fraser University and expert on port institutions, says that while ports can introduce widespread consultation, it makes little difference if they don’t have “the right people” at the final decision-making point.

That said, Hall states that he doesn’t believe a locally appointed board should decide on what a port trades, as that should remain the responsibility of provincial and federal governments. But who’s represented at the table has to change, he says, as does the mandate that “all cargo is by definition good.”

“There is this presumption the [Canadian Port Authority] in your city or region should say yes to everything because it’s presumed to be in the interests of Canada,” he says. “In that sense, it’s more difficult for local interests of any type to say ‘no, we’d rather not have that.’”

Hall adds the port industry is made up of a series of oligopolies and the current board composition is “not at all good” at dealing with tough environmental and social questions. Rejigging the composition to allow for more regional municipal representation would help.

“In the long run, we shouldn’t worry so much about these very big, financially successful port authorities just being able to get as much business as they can,” he says.

“We should be worrying about their long-term social and environmental commitments because there is capacity to do that. I don’t think we’re in any danger of destroying the golden goose. I think we’re actually much more in danger of a crisis of political legitimacy.”  

Promoter or Regulator of Trade? Both.

Other port authorities have suffered from poor optics over the years: in 2011, the RCMP started investigations into an allegedly corrupt nomination process at Montreal’s port authority that involved the Prime Minister’s Office. Former Conservative cabinet minister Lisa Raitt came under fire in in 2009 for an expense scandal during her time as CEO of the Toronto Port Authority. Halifax’s port authority has faced criticism from a former port chairperson due to its loss of a major container customer. The list goes on.

While UBC’s Harrison agrees there’s an urgent need to reform the nomination process for the board of governors — which would require an Act of Parliament to amend the Canada Marine Act and the issuing of new letters patent to Canadian Port Authorities — she says port authorities also suffer from mixed mandates, in which they serve as both a promoter and regulator of trade. The goal of regulating business, she says, can come into conflict with the port’s reliance on income from projects to fund its operations.

Such a narrow focus on economic benefit, without fully considering environmental and social impacts, also concerns Andrew Gage, staff lawyer at West Coast Environmental Law.

“If you view coal as a normal and legal commodity, then you can’t understand how someone would limit its export,” he says via e-mail. “If you view coal as a product that, due to its central role in fossil fuel pollution and climate change, plays a crucial role in killing people and destroying property, then your answer may be different.”  

Bill C-43 Allowed Ports to Destroy Documents

Those tensions were exacerbated in 2014 with Bill C-43, the 475-page budget implementation omnibus bill that, among many other things, authorized the sale of federal land to port authorities. Such lands, now leasable to private industry, are no longer covered by the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act and Species at Risk Act. In the same section of the bill, port authorities were empowered to establish rules that would allow them to physically destroy documents.

Such an amendment carries extra weight given that the year prior, the Vancouver-based organization Voters Taking Action on Climate Change uncovered documents via an Access to Information request that showed an uncomfortably close relationship between Port Metro Vancouver and National Public Relations, the firm that also represents the Coal Alliance (which Fraser Surrey Docks is a member of).

Throw in the fact Port Metro Vancouver has been facing serious problems with organized crime — a Vancouver Sun investigation published in May 2015 revealed that over two dozen longshoremen are affiliated with the Hells Angels and associates — and Harrison suggests a serious overhaul is needed.

“If there are concerns being raised about organized crime operating in ports as a way to smuggle drugs, that’s not the time to be passing legislation authorizing the destruction of documents and reducing transparency,” she says.  

Lobbying Activity Flies Under the Radar

Topping it all off is that employees of Canada Port Authorities aren’t subject to the federal Lobbying Act, which means the public can’t find out which individuals or businesses are meeting with Port Metro Vancouver board directors. While Harrison doesn’t perceive any nefarious intent behind the omission, it’s yet another sign for her that the governance model hasn’t kept up with the changing times and expectations of transparency.

In 2010, the federal commissioner of lobbying issued an advisory opinion confirming that communication between shared governance organizations — a category that port authorities belong to — and “federal public office holders concerning its mandate, operation, funding and other related matters is not a registrable activity.”

Robyn Crisanti, director of public affairs at Port Metro Vancouver, notes the port authority has met with a number of federal ministers since the beginning of the year and there’s a lot of interest in the port’s activities.

“We’re very aware of what our marching orders are and we follow them,” she says.  

Grappling With the Long-Term Questions

One of the key tasks of the Canada Port Authorities, Crisanti says, is to do long-term planning: “It’s this thing of looking quite far into the future and trying to assess where Canada’s going to go in terms of trade and trade deals and things of that nature.”

For projects such as the G3 Terminal Vancouver — which if approved will annually transport eight million tonnes of grain — this can be a fairly straightforward task. While the economics may vary, there’s no doubt the world will require grain for the foreseeable future.

But it’s a different story when it comes to exports like coal and petroleum products. Canada has signed international agreements, notably the G7 commitment to phase out all fossil fuels by 2100 and the Paris Agreement to limit global warming to two degrees Celsius, both of which could seriously impact future investments in terminals that export energy products.

According to Gage of West Coast Environmental Law, Port Metro Vancouver “can consider whether fossil fuel specific infrastructure being built on port lands may become ‘stranded assets’ as the world moves away from a fossil fuel economy, as well as any potential liabilities that may be associated with fossil fuel infrastructure.”

This is where it all circles back to the board nomination process and underlying mandate.

Williams of Communities and Coal suggests that it’s currently not beneficial for the port authority to reject a project such as the Fraser Surrey Docks expansion given its modus operandi to facilitate trade, especially given that a majority of governors are commissioned under the “user pay-user say” principle.

However, Williams suggests the experience that Port Metro Vancouver went through with the controversial Fraser Surrey Docks proposal was a good learning opportunity, something Crisanti confirms (the Canada Port Authorities hired external consultants to review the permitting process and launched a new process last July). But there’s much more to be done, Williams says.

“If any change is going to come about, it’s got to be federally mandated,” she concludes. “It has to come from above.”

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Canada’s largest port has given the green light to a proposed controversial facility on the Fraser River that would unload U.S. coal destined for energy-hungry Asia.

Despite facing significant environmental and health concerns, Port Metro Vancouver said in its decision, released last Thursday, that the proposed coal transfer facility at Fraser Surrey Docks poses no unacceptable risks.

The $15 million project could handle at least four million metric tonnes of coal per year delivered by the Burlington Northern Sante Fe Railway Company. It will then be loaded onto barges at the Surrey facility and transferred to ocean-going carriers at Texada Island, prior to export.

Referring to environmental studies and mitigation efforts, Jim Crandles, Port Metro Vancouver’s director of planning and development, was quoted as saying “we are confident that the project does not pose a risk to the environment or human health and that the public is protected.”

Disappointed opponents, however, said there are many unanswered questions about local and regional impacts of building and operating the facility.

Those include coal dust and diesel exhaust exposure in local populations, fire risks associated with storing coal in open barges in local communities, noise impacts, emergency vehicle access constraints, and impacts associated with transporting coal in open barges on the ocean.

“If it goes ahead, this decision means more U.S. coal trains travelling through our communities,” Kevin Washbrook, director of Voters Taking Action on Climate Change, told DeSmogBlog in an email Friday. 

“It means more coal being shipped to Asia to be burned, and more emissions into our atmosphere, at a time when we absolutely, positively need to cut back on those emissions. All to run uncovered, football field-length barges of U.S. thermal coal down the world’s richest salmon river.”

Washbrook, who has compared Big Coal to Big Tobacco and its efforts to obscure the risks of smoking in order to keep making huge profits, added the decision will be challenged through the local air quality permitting process, during the coming municipal elections in November and in court.

Simon Fraser University health sciences professor Tim Takaro said the project runs contrary to public health.

“Coal is a fuel of the last century,” Takaro says. “We have to stop using it sometime and here’s a great opportunity to apply society’s ‘brakes,’ join communities in the U.S. that have refused to ship this same product, and think of the future generations who will inherit the messes we make.”

The Port Metro Vancouver decision comes shortly after the Oregon Department of State Lands rejected a proposal to export 8.8 million tons per year of coal to Asia from the Port of Morrow in Boardman.

But as DeSmogBlog noted on Thursday, the Long Beach City Council had just approved a proposal to export coal and petroleum coke, which is a tar sands by-product, to the global market, mainly Asia, to the tune of 1.7 million tons per year.

Last November, the Winnipeg Free Press reported a group of concerned citizens, environmentalists and scientists asked Port Metro Vancouver officials to delay any expansion of coal-exporting facilities, saying public input was required and climate change problems would be increased as a result of the projects.

Among those who signed a letter opposing any coal port expansion were David Suzuki, Naomi Klein and James Hansen, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, the first scientist to warn the U.S. government of the potential dangers of unmitigated climate change and who described coal-fired power plants as “factories of death.” 

Image credit: Coal power plant pollution via Shutterstock.

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When it comes to shipping coal, it looks like the Vancouver Port Authority is taking a page out of the U.S. coal lobby's books. In an effort to combat negative public opinion about coal and the proposed expansion of coal exports through Fraser Surrey Docks, the port authority has hired public relations firm Edelman Vancouver to revamp its image.

Edelman is the largest public relations firm in B.C. and the company has a history of both pushing coal exports and disregarding public opinion. Until recently, the firm represented the pro-coal organization Northwest Alliance for Jobs and Exports, one of the largest groups in Washington state pushing for an increase in coal exports.

Edelman was fired by the Northwest Alliance after Lauri Hennessey, Edelman vice-president and spokesperson for the alliance, was recorded at an industry conference disparaging the people of the Pacific Northwest and calling the opposition “wacky” and “weird.” At the same conference, Hennessey acknowledged climate change in her address, but argued that the coal mined in the Powder River Basin in Montana and Wyoming — the source of the coal that would be shipped through Fraser Surrey Docks — wouldn’t have any adverse effects on the climate.

Edelman has now designed an ad campaign called Port Stories on behalf of Port Metro Vancouver. The ads have got it all: hardworking Canadians, poignant family moments and sweeping statements about how the port has shaped Vancouver as a city. There’s only one thing missing: any mention of coal.

Public documents also show that in April of 2012, the Port Authority hired American law firm McKenna Long & Aldrige to lobby on its behalf south of the border. The registration form, which indicates Port Metro Vancouver has been taken on as a client, says McKenna Long & Aldridge will push for “any regulations or inquiry of the U.S. Maritime Commission regarding possible cargo diversion from U.S. ports to Canadian or Mexican ports.” 

Tightening regulations on greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S. mean coal producers south of the border are looking for the quickest way to get their product to market. With fierce opposition to proposals for new coal shipping facilities in the U.S., producers are turning north to Vancouver.

This means that, while purporting to take public opinion into account when making the final decision on the port expansion, the Vancouver port authority has powerful lobbyists working in Washington to push for the very thing many citizens are opposed to in B.C.

The port of Metro Vancouver is the largest port in Canada, trading more than $53 billion per year in goods. According to a company statement, the port would like to be “embraced as a member of the community,” but its conduct around proposals to ship U.S. coal through Vancouver has proven a thorny matter.

Laura Benson, coal campaigner with the Dogwood Initiative, says that until the conflict of interest between the port’s role as a regulator and its position as a proponent of coal export is resolved, the public is facing an uphill battle.

“If the port were truly a corporation, then it would be fair game for them to be hiring PR companies and the biggest and best lobbyists.”

But because the port is also responsible for deciding on the proposed expansion of the Fraser Surrey Docks, Benson says, the conflict is essentially written into its mandate. She says it doesn’t have to be this way.

“There are all sort of models of ports around the world run in a much more responsible way.”

In order to put a stop to dirty coal use for good, port reform needs to be on the agenda, Benson argues.

Benson also stressed the need to continue to build a cross-border movement to oppose coal exports.

“I do think that we’re looking at a desperate industry,” she said. “Their window of opportunity is closing, and if we are successful in blocking thermal coal out of our port, this could be a turning point.”

Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons

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Port Metro Vancouver’s newly released environmental impact assessment of the Fraser Surrey Docks coal export proposal was criticized today for failing to adequately consider public health, the environment and community safety. 

“Unlike our chief medical officers, Port Metro Vancouver has once again refused to fulfill its duties to protect the public interest with this faulty assessment,” said Laura Benson, director of Dogwood’s Beyond Coal campaign.

Last week, the region’s chief medical health officers warned the assessment doesn’t adequately address the health impacts of the proposed coal terminal.

“Having looked at the document, it does not meet what we consider the very basic requirements of a health impacts assessment,” Dr. Patricia Daly, Vancouver Coastal Health Authority chief medical health officer, told the Vancouver Sun.

The health authorities have called for a comprehensive health assessment to address concerns over coal dust, increased diesel emissions and noise since last spring. They offered to have a direct role in the assessment, but were rebuffed in a letter from Port Metro Vancouver.

Four municipal councils, including Surrey, have also expressed environmental and health concerns about the proposal, while five municipal and regional councils have passed resolutions opposing the proposal — including Metro Vancouver and, most recently, Fraser Surrey Docks' home city of Surrey.

Location of Fraser Surrey Docks via Google Maps.

The proposed facility is intended to handle coal from the Powder River Basin in Wyoming. The coal would arrive at Fraser Surrey Docks by train, then be loaded onto barges bound for Texada Island before being transferred onto ships destined for Asia. 

Benson says Port Metro Vancouver’s assessment focuses solely on the Fraser Surrey Docks terminal, leaving out impacts associated with increased transport of U.S. coal by rail through White Rock, Surrey and Delta and with transferring coal off barges at Texada Island.

Proposals to build similar coal terminals on the west coast of the U.S. have faced tough opposition in part due to health concerns. Three proposals have been withdrawn.

The U.S. proposals have required public hearings, whereas Port Metro Vancouver has not held public hearings on the Fraser Surrey Docks proposal. Up against a groundswell of opposition, in mid-September the port agreed to conduct the environmental impact assessment, not required under law.

There will now be a public comment period on the environmental impact assessment, but Benson says it is unclear what affect the comments will have on the port’s decision. The port will not be posting a public record of comments received, but several community groups are collaborating to catalogue public comments at RealPortHearings.org. The 30-day comment period will end on December 17.


Image credit: Jeremy Buckingham MLC via Flickr

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