How would an Enbridge leak or spill affect BC’s coast?

PRINCE GEORGE (NEWS1130) – The environment minister says he’s not impressed with what he’s hearing at the public meetings into the proposed Northern Gateway pipeline project.

“We have concerns about the level of detail of mapping around the terrain of the pipeline and also [Enbridge’s] ability to detect any leak in a fast and responsive manner” says Terry Lake. “Of the leaks the company has had, the vast majority were not discovered by their automatic systems.”

As final hearings on the project resume today in Prince George, News1130 is finding out what typical spills could look like if the mega-project goes ahead, specifically, tanker traffic carrying the bitumen that would piped to the coast from Alberta.

Fish, shellfish, migrating whales, sea lions, and even turtles and corals could all be affected, according to an interactive map from the David Suzuki Foundation looking at different scenarios.

“We initially put this together during the first round of debate on lifting the offshore oil moratorium around 2005-2006. We were very happy that moratorium was kept in place and we are hopeful that more people will understand, visually, what can happen when varying amounts of oil from different types of spills gets out into the environment,” says Jay Ritchlin, Director General for Western Canada at the David Suzuki Foundation.

With a model used by the oil industry — taking tide, current and seasonal wind information — the interactive map shows how spills of varying sizes and types would play out on the coast.

“It runs the model using those different parameters because, of course, diesel acts differently than crude oil [which] acts differently than some kinds of lighter, more processed oil. At the end of a time period, it shows where the currents would take it and, at the very end, the affected coastlines,” explains Ritchlin.

Pop-ups then show information gathered by the Suzuki Foundation about what sorts of plants and animals are in that particular region and what sort of employment that part of the environment provides.

Ritchlin notes these are not worst-case scenarios. “We were very careful about that; these are very typical scenarios ranging from a diesel spill to a major tanker collision that spills massive amounts.”

“It just gives you an idea that in all sorts of conditions, from the day-to-day operations up to the tragic occurrences, you have an impact from these products when they spill into our oceans,” he explains.