Robson Bight fuel cleanup irks chief
Matthew Kruchak, Times Colonist
Published: Sunday, August 26, 2007
The Chief of the Namgis First Nation is upset with the way the fuel spill in Robson Bight Ecological Reserve waters was handled, saying his community was shown a lack of respect by officials.
Chief Bill Cranmer said he was provided with little information about the barge that spilled logging equipment and diesel fuel into ecological-reserve waters on Monday.
In the treaty they’re currently negotiating, Robson Bight is at the south end of their claim, he said.
“They didn’t really talk to us right from the start,” he said. “It made us a little bit angry.”
B.C. Parks staff notified the community Monday and have been working with them since the spill, said Kate Thompson, spokeswomen for B.C. Ministry of Environment. The command team has been providing updates too, she said.
But for Cranmer, updates aren’t enough. He wanted someone from the First Nation to be part of the process.
“We have a lot of knowledge of the area,” he said.
“We’d also like to know what’s happening and what could be improved.”
But Thompson said they had the necessary response groups in place. “The First Nations were notified and they had what they needed on site.”
Cranmer would like to see a response team set up on the North Island to deal with future spills because response time was poor, he said.
“Just imagine if there was a bigger spill; it would be a disaster.”
B.C. Parks was on site immediately but various crews had to travel from Port Hardy, Nanaimo and Victoria, Thompson said.
Cranmer said he had people inspect the site and take photos of the barge owned by LeRoy Trucking.
“It looked like the barge shouldn’t have been in the water,” he said, after inspecting a photograph. “It was just a rusting hulk of a barge.”
LeRoy Trucking, which owns the now submerged equipment, which included a fuel truck, is organizing and paying for the cleanup.
Transport Canada is continuing to look into potential violations of the Canada Shipping Act.
Officials said they’ve moved from the spill-response phase to the monitoring process because of the high evaporation rate of diesel fuel.
An overflight of the site was made yesterday and quarter-sized droplets of diesel fuel were spotted rising to the surface and evaporating, said Dan Bate, spokesman for the Department of Fisheries and Oceans and the Canadian Coast Guard.
They were being released slowly at a rate of four an hour, he said.
It is likely that the tanks imploded on descent, releasing the fuel, which evaporated on the water’s surface, officials reported.
Environment Canada, the Ministry of Environment and the Canadian Coast Guard are reporting that no sheen or oil made it to the shoreline.
The 26-year-old ecological reserve was created to protect pods of northern resident killer whales that gather in the area over the summer.
Fisheries and Oceans Canada have reported that whales in the area appear to be behaving normally and protective booms were removed because they may affect the natural behaviors of the whales.
According to the Ministry of Environment, reports of distressed birds have been received but none of the sightings have been confirmed.
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Is Robson Bight ‘protected’ in word alone?
Two levels of gov’t need to fix commercial ‘safety’ loopholes
Michael Smyth, The Province
Published: Thursday, August 23, 2007
Dr. Lance Barrett-Lennard, the Vancouver Aquarium’s resident killer-whale expert, spent yesterday nervously counting orcas at the site of Monday’s barge accident around the protected waters of Robson Bight.
To his relief, he found all the whales accounted for and none exhibiting signs of immediate distress from the diesel fuel that spilled into their environment. “They appear to be fine — for now,” he said.
But as marine mammal toxicologist Peter Ross explained, breathing and swallowing the diesel can have immediate, though unapparent impacts — such as lung irritation — and worse effects later, such as infection and disease.
Most of the light sheen of fuel had evaporated by yesterday afternoon, though, yielding hope that B.C.’s most iconic and beloved animals had escaped the danger.
But the entire episode left Barrett-Lennard wondering just how “protected” Robson Bight really is.
The bight contains a broad pebble beach where the whales gather and exhibit the extraordinary behaviour of rubbing their bodies along the gravelly bottom. It’s one of the few places in the world where they do this and it makes perfect sense that it should be strictly protected.
Just one problem: Robson Bight is a provincial ecological reserve, while the movement of commercial shipping and fishing vessels through the area is a federal responsibility. The two levels of government have a committee to work out the jurisdictional overlap, but that doesn’t always prevent haphazard interventions into the whales’ sanctuary.
During the commercial fishing season, for example, up to 100 boats enter the bight to compete with the whales for salmon.
And, while the province does a good job of keeping kayakers and whale-watching tourist boats out of the bight, there is considerable tolerance for tugs and other commercial vessels to duck into the area, for safety reasons in poor weather or because of heavy two-way marine traffic in Johnstone Strait.
That has many critics alleging that commercial vessels abuse the “safety” loophole: Imagine a “safety-first” cruise ship entering the area, while giving oohing-and-aahing passengers a free killer-whale show, and you get the idea.
The bight is also sheltered from the strait’s strong currents, tempting tug boats to cut in close to shore for “safety” while simultaneously riding a convenient back-eddy to cut their journey short and save on gas.
It begs the question: Is Robson Bight protected or not?
Meanwhile, NDP environment critic Shane Simpson wonders why the government doesn’t have a local quick-response team and on-site oil-spill kits for emergencies such as Monday’s.
“If they did, you might have contained the spill within three or four hours instead of a day,” he said.
The bright side — if there is one — is that the accident should put pressure on governments to respond to some obvious problems.
Confrontation 