Study compares impact of jet fuel spill vs. bunker fuel spill: City of Richmond

VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) – As the City of Richmond continues to deal with the possibility of a jet fuel pipeline running to the airport, it’s putting bunker fuel and jet fuel side-by-side, looking at the impact of and response, to spills.

The city has issued a report which shows some of what’s been found seems to put jet fuel in a more favourable light, but the city still has major concerns.

The city’s manager of emergency programs finds spilled jet fuel would mostly be gone within a couple of days because it evaporates fairly quickly but a spill of bunker fuel would mean many years of monitoring and clean up.

Mayor Malcolm Brodie acknowledges the jet fuel may have less of an effect on the river, but says it doesn’t make him more open to having more tankers there.

“Because the tankers pose a great deal of risk, not just with the load that they carry with the jet fuel, but how they are fueled themselves, with the bunker fuel. If there’s an incident, there could be great danger to life around the Fraser River, and that comes from the ships on the river.”

Brodie adds the response to such a spill would be similar to what we saw when a freighter leaked bunker fuel into English Bay in April.

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