Oil spill clean-up could take five years: study
Posted September 10, 2014 11:44 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) – As crews head out on the water today to simulate an oil spill on Burrard Inlet, we’re learning more about what would happen if there was ever a pipeline rupture into the Fraser River.
A new study from Kinder Morgan, the company behind the $5.4-billion Trans Mountain pipeline project, suggests the environmental damage would be great.
It predicts if there were to be a spill; the clean-up would take up to five years.
But, Christianne Wilhelmson with the Georgia Strait Alliance says the time estimation is irrelevant.
She says that is because there is no such thing as an oil spill clean-up.
“We can have good response we can have equipment trained personnel and so on to mitigate, but it is impossible to clean up a spill if you are lucky you will get 15 to 20 percent of the oil recovered.”
If a spill does occur, what time of year it happens would play a key factor.
The study shows if it was in the spring or summer, the oil could be carried as far as the Strait of Georgia to the Gulf Islands.
Conversely, a winter spill would mean the oil would pool along the shoreline.
Either way, Wilhelmson says the damage would be immense.
“Fraser River is our most important Salmon bearing stream. What will that do to fisheries? What will that do to local communities? The impact economic and ecologically are devastating.”
Kinder Morgan concluded that ducks, geese, otters and minks would be greatly affected.
The study was based on releasing over a million litres of diluted oil just below the Port Mann Bridge.
