US National Transportation Safety Board staff examine a ruptured pipe from the Enbridge oil spill in August, 2010. The photo was released by the NTSB May 21, 2012. (NTSB)
The United States National Transportation Safety Board today released more than 5,000 pages relating to its investigation of the 2010 of the Marshall, Michigan, Enbridge pipeline rupture and oil spill.
The NTSB release says it is adding the documents to the “public docket” on the case.
About 11:17 a.m. EDT on July 26, 2010, Enbridge Energy Partners was notified of a leak on a 30-inch diameter crude oil pipeline (Line 6B) in Marshall, Michigan. The pipeline had ruptured 17 hours earlier and spilled about a million gallons of crude oil into the immediate area resulting in extensive environmental damage to Talmadge Creek and the Kalamazoo River.
Fifty-eight photographs and 170 documents totaling more than 5000 pages are in the docket. The information being released is factual in nature and does not provide any analysis.
Additional material may be added to the docket as it becomes available. Analysis of the accident, along with conclusions and its probable cause, will be determined at a later date.
This is a document release only; no interviews will be conducted.
More than 800,000 gallons of heavy bitumen crude spilled from the pipeine near Marshall in Calhoun County, Michigan. NTSB spokesman Peter Knudson said Monday the NTSB expects to reach a conclusion on the spill sometime this summer.
On May 10, Enbridge announced it would spend $1.6 billion to upgrade and replace portions of the pipeline through Michigan and Indiana. The broken pipeline, however, would be decontaminated and “abandoned in place.”
Oil slick in Grenville Channel (Gitga`at First Nation Guardians)
The Gitga’at First Nation at Hartley Bay report that a large oil slick has been spotted in Grenville Channel near Hartley Bay. It is believed that the oil is coming from the USAT Brigadier General M.G. Zalinski, a U.S. army transport ship that sank in 1946 with 700 tonnes of bunker fuel on board.
A news release from the Gitga’at says the oil spill is between between two and five miles (four to eight kilometres) long and 200 feet wide (70 metres) inside the Grenville Channel.
A Canadian Coast Guard vessel from Prince Rupert is expected in the area sometime this afternoon.
The Gitga’at are sending their own Guardians to take samples and have chartered a plane to take aerial photos of the spill, the release says.
“If this spill is as big as the pilots are reporting, then we’re looking at serious environmental impacts, including threats to our traditional shellfish harvesting areas,” says Arnold Clifton, Chief Councillor of the Gitga’at Nation. “We need an immediate and full clean-up response from the federal government ASAP.”
The USAT Brigadier General M.G. Zalinski was carrying Bunker C when it sank. The First Nation says the Canadian government has been saying it would remove the oil and munitions from the ship since 2006, but with no results.
“Right now we’re focused on getting a handle on the size of the spill and the clean-up that’s required,” says Clifton. “But this incident definitely raises questions about the federal government’s ability to guard against oil spills and to honour its clean-up obligations. As a result, our nation has serious concerns about any proposal to have tankers travel through our coastal waters, including the Enbridge proposal.”
The spill is just the latest in a series of spills of bunker oil and diesel coming from the Zalinski and the BC Ferry Queen of the North, which sank in 2006. Despite government assurances of clean-up, both wreckages continue to leak fuel, fouling the marine environment, and heightening the fear of future oil spills.
The Gitga’at depend on the ocean for 40 per cent of their traditional diet.
According to Wikipedia, the Zalinksi was enroute from Seattle to Whittier Island, Alaska, when it struck rocks at Pitt Island on Grenville Channel 0n September 26 1946, 55 miles (88 kilometres) south of Prince Rupert. The ship sank within twenty minutes, while her crew of 48 were rescued by the tug Sally N and the passenger steamer SS Catala. According to a report in The Vancouver Sun on September 30, 1946, at the time of her sinking she was transporting a cargo of at least twelve 500-pound (230 kg) bombs, large amounts of .30 and .50 caliber ammunition, at least 700 tonnes of bunker oil, and truck axles with army type tires.
Oil was first spotted leaking in Grenville Channel in 2003 and the wreck of the Zalinski was identified later that year by a remotely operated undersea vessel.
Hartley Bay is the entrance to Douglas Channel where tankers will go to Kitimat for the proposed Northern Gateway pipeline and three liquified natural gas projects.
The BBC, reporting from the Ocean Sciences Meeting in Salt Lake City, says Norwegian scientists are becoming concerned about dumping huge amounts of tailings in the country’s fjords.
Reporter Jonathan Amos in Scrutiny for Norwegian fjord rock disposal says for decades some Norwegian mining companies have been using pipes at 23 sites to dump tailings as far down as 200 metres in Norway’s deep fjords. Companies are seeking permits to do more dumping.
However, there have been no major scientific studies of the consequences of dumping tailings into the deep fjords. Now the Norwegian Institute for Ocean Research (Niva) is embarking on a three year study to look at the consequences of tailing dumping on the deep ocean bottom.
The BBC quotes Prof Andrew Sweetman, a research scientist with Niva as saying,
The mining companies send these tailings down a long pipe, down below the euphotic zone, below 200m, and essentially smother everything on the seafloor…
All the animals that live in the sediments that provide food for larger invertebrates and fish, for example, will be killed off.
Potentially, you are also going to kill off a lot of deep water corals.
And you can get extremely turbid water columns, and it can stay turbid for long periods of time. So, it’s a big deal”
Amos also quotes Lisa Levin, from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California, as saying that the Norwegian tailings story was a classic example of an activity being undertaken without fully understanding its consequences.
British Columbia once had the richest, longest-lasting, sustainable oil economy on the planet.
That’s almost all gone now. While the environmental movement loves to quote Joni Mitchell’s “You don’t know what you’ve got til it’s gone,” the collapse of BC’s oil economy is perhaps the best example in history of what Mitchell meant in her song. Big Yellow Taxi.
British Columbia even supplied much-needed oil to Alberta.
The collapse of that oil economy is a cautionary tale for BC in the debate over the Northern Gateway pipeline. That’s because a pipeline breach near a key river or a tanker disaster on the BC coast would kill the last remnants of a commodity that made BC oil-rich for thousands of years.
The collapse of that oil economy is a lesson for Alberta and for the entire world.
It should be a lesson for Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Natural Resources minister Joe Oliver and Environment minister Peter Kent, but it’s one that they will ignore.
The collapse of that oil economy is a lesson that should be taught ( but isn’t) by the departments of economics, business and politics at oil-patch academic central, the University of Calgary, which trained Stephen Harper and produces those self-satisfied commentators who can’t see anything beyond the Rockies and their own pet economic theories.
The collapse of the BC oil economy is proof that Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” much loved of conservative economists is actually a deathly hallow in the hands of all those who are too greedy to care or who don’t bother to see what is actually in front of their blinkered eyes.
Much of the testimony at the Northern Gateway Joint Review hearings at the Haisla Recreation Centre on Tuesday, January 10, 2012, was about that economic collapse. Much of the testimony in Terrace, at the Sportsplex, on Thursday, January 12, 2012, was about that economic collapse.
The national and international media that came to cover that story didn’t realize what they were hearing. Only a couple of stories mentioned the ancient oil economy in BC but just in passing. It is probable that the members of the Joint Review Panel didn’t understand either, but it may be by the end of the hearings, once the panel has heard the story over and over, they may begin to realize how important it is.
(That is one reason that all the testimony before the Joint Review Panel is important. It’s the old story of hitting the donkey over the head with the two by four. The conservatives in the government, in the universities and the media who say repeat testimony isn’t needed are wrong. Sometimes a story has to be told numerous times before the powers that be realize, hey this is important. )
This isn’t about petroleum.
Nor is it about salmon oil or whale oil.
It’s about a small, some say ugly (compared to the magnificent sockeye salmon), member of the smelt family, a very distant relative of the salmon, the oolichan.
(There are several spellings. Euclachon is the usual academic spelling. One rare spelling is “hooligan.” That’s the one that spell checks and auto corrects prefer. Oolichan is the preferred spelling on the northwest coast, and thus that is what this article will use).
It was trade in oolichan oil and oolichan grease that sustained that economy in what is now British Columbia for thousands of years before the coming of Europeans.
Poster celebrating the oolichan released by artist Roy Henry Vickers
Trade in oolichan oil and oolichan grease created the “grease trails,” the trading routes leading from coastal British Columbia throughout the province and across the Rockies into Alberta.
Drive many of the highways in northern British Columbia and, like other parts of North America, where highways follow “Indian trails,” you are likely driving on a grease trail.
Archaeological evidence suggests that the grease trails, the trade in oolichan oil and grease may have begun as early as 5,000 years ago. By 2,000 years ago, the First Nations of British Columbia had a vibrant trading culture, with goods exchanged throughout the province, south to what is now the United States and north to Alaska.
Just as trade and industry in the Old World prompted the creation of infrastructure, the oolichan trade blazed trails and lead to technological developments such as suspension bridges and improved canoes.
The culture of BC First Nations has been disrupted for the past two centuries by smallpox and other diseases, creation of the reserves, by government and church paternalism, by the assimilation of the Indian Act, by residential schools and general acculturation. Despite those horrendous challenges, the oolichan-based trade has, left a multi-millenial legacy of expertise in trade negotiations. That is one factor in the current debate over the Northern Gateway pipeline. Ignorance of history is why the oil-patch and the Harper government have underestimated the First Nations in the current controversy.
Rich fish of the Pacific
The oolichan’s scientific name is Thaleichthys pacificus, “rich fish of the Pacific,” with oil making up to 15 per cent of its body content. That was the source of the rich oil economy.
Another name for the oolichan is “candle fish,” because often a dried oolichan was used as a candle by early European settlers.
The Gitxsan First Nation, now embroiled in a dispute after one chief signed a deal with Enbridge, traditionally called the oolichan the “fish for curing humanity.”
Oolichan grease/oil is rich in omega and other oils now in demand around the world. It is likely that the oolichan grease/oil countered the tendency to depression and Seasonal Affective Disorder caused by the rainy, overcast climate of coastal British Columbia, since omega oils are now recommended as anti-depressant.
Oolichan (James Crippen photo via Wikipedia Commons)
Properly managed, renewable in a way whale oil could never be, the oolichan could have been a multi-billion dollar industry, providing wealth to First Nations and export dollars for all of modern British Columbia.
It never happened.
When the Europeans arrived in British Columbia, they ignored the knowledge of the First Nations, ignored the oolichan. First the economic attraction was the sea otter, then it was the forests and the salmon, and then mining and hydro-electric developments. All the time the oolichan was out of sight and out of mind and becoming collateral damage of other industrial development.
The Kitimat River was one of the richest sources of that rich oolichan oil resource.
Samuel Robinson
Haisla Chief Samuel Robinson, who is 78, told the Joint Review Panel: “We used to fish… for oolichans which is now no more because of pollution in the river for the last 30 years. But the river is not dead yet. The salmon still go up there; that’s why we have to protect it. I know we can’t do much about the oohlicans now, but the salmon still go up there.
“Up the river, we spend our days there, harvesting oohlicans. In my childhood days, you didn’t need a net, you didn’t need hook, and you didn’t need anything. You can pick the oohlicans out of the water. In fact you could walk across to the other side. That’s how plentiful it was when we were thriving. [Now] No more oolichans.”
The oolichan stocks across northwestern North America have been declining for a century. No one, except First Nations knew or cared about this valuable, ugly little fish. Thirty years ago the pace of decline increased with the industrial development in the years following the Second World War. By the new millennium, the oolichan population was crashing from Oregon to north of Kitimat. The only viable stocks left are in the Nass and Skeena Rivers and those stocks are in trouble.
Endangered species
The oolichan in the Fraser River had completely collapsed by 2003. There was little, if any, media coverage. Compare that to the coverage of the collapse of the Fraser River sockeye run. Major headlines and now a Royal Commission investigating why.
In March, 2010, in California, Oregon and Washington, the U.S. National Marine Fisheries Service declared the oolichan to be a threatened species.
In January, 2011, I was tipped by three independent informed sources that the Canada’s Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada would soon declare the oolichan north from the US border up to the Skeena and the Nass as an endangered species. At a meeting of non-aboriginal recreational fishing guides that same month that there were also worries expressed that climate change might be affecting the remaining viable oolichan stocks in the Skeena and the Nass. There is no recreational, tourist oolichan harvest, by tradition it belongs to First Nations. The guides had no direct economic stake in the oolichan, but those guides knew very well from experience that the oolichan is a key indicator species in the collapse of all fish stocks in the rivers that they love and which sustain their business.
This crisis was out of sight, out mind with most of British Columbia and ignored by the rest of Canada.
I was unable to get any interest in this “scoop” from any of the national news organizations among my freelance clients. (One admittedly budget strapped editor told me “we’ve done fish from BC.”) Compare that with the ongoing coverage for decades of the cod crisis on Canada’s east coast.
The day the decision came out, in May, 2011 the oolichan was just one of the several species mentioned in the national news round up of new threats to the environment. Here is what COSEWIC news release said:
The Eulachon or ‘candlefish’, so-called because of its exceptionally high oil content and historical use as a candle, was assessed for the first time at this meeting. This small fish was once a cultural mainstay of many First Nations groups of coastal BC and the origin of the famous ‘grease trails’ that linked coastal and inland communities. Since the early 1990s, many traditional fisheries for this species have seen catastrophic declines of 90% or more, and the species is facing extirpation in many rivers. The cause is unclear but may be related to reductions in marine survival associated with shifting environmental conditions, by-catch, directed fishing and predation. Only the Nass River still supports a fishery but even here numbers have declined. The Nass / Skeena Rivers population of Eulachon was assessed as Threatened. Further south, the Central Pacific Coast and the Fraser River populations have experienced even greater declines resulting in an Endangered designation for both populations.
In the national media, only the Mark Hume of The Globe and Mail looked closely at the oolichan collapse, much later, in a story on May 28,. 2011 How to bring back the Eulachon?
In his testimony, on Jan. 10, 2012. Haisla Chief Counsellor, Ellis Ross said: “I was too young to go up the Kitimat River before the oolichan was wiped out. I missed out in that teaching.
“Hundreds of thousands of tonnes of oolichans annually, these are the stories that are passed down to me now. It’s not about this is where you go to fish; this is where your fishing camp is. It’s about this is where it used to be. This is what we used to do… “
Haisla chief counsellor Ellis Ross testifies before the Joint Review Panel at Kitamaat Village, Jan. 10, 2012. (Robin Rowland/Northwest Coast Energy News)
Ross testified he has being going through the archives and records of the Haisla dealings with the federal and British Columbia governments. “All the assertion letters that council has sent out in the last 40 years in trying to determine what the Haisla Nation goal was. And it all had a common theme: protect the environment; bring back the environment. It always had that.”
He spoke of traditional knowledge and teaching. “Don’t disrupt the environment. Don’t spill any kerosene or gasoline into the river. Don’t litter in the river. Respect not only the oolichan and the river itself, respect your neighbours because once you are done with a fishing spot, you are going to process your oolichan and somebody else is going to move into that spot. So leave it the way you got it.
It’s a crime
“So as I was telling you, I missed out on all that, and it’s a crime. It’s an
absolute crime.
“The last story I got from the Kitimat River was my dad with Ray Green Sr. going up there after everybody else gave up on the Kitimat River. They tried to harvest oolichan so they could boil it into oolichan grease, but the end product smelled like effluent coming from the Eurocan Mill, so they thought it was just a product of the water itself. So they went inland a few hundred yards and dug a hole and tried to get the groundwater out of that and try to see if they could boil the oolichans using that. The result was the same.
“After that, there was no point because a run that estimated to be in the hundreds of thousands of tonnes annually got reduced to maybe 50 individual oohlicans per year. And I know that because we’re trying to struggle every year to find oolichan so we can test them for taint. If that’s not a signal to Kitimat, if not B.C. and not to Canada, something’s wrong. I don’t know what that is.
“If that was a commercially viable product, the whole country would have been up in arms demanding some sort of report and accountability from DFO. Nothing. We got nothing. Nobody came to our aid.
Ross told of the story of how the Haisla first came to the Kitimat region, how other First Nations were afraid of a giant monster that guarded the channel. When the Haisla reached the Kitimat River estuary it turned out the “monster” was, in fact, so many gulls that they appeared as one huge body when they took to wing.
“I can’t imagine that,” Ross testified. “If there’s thousands upon thousands of seagulls doing that at a distance of maybe greater than seven miles viewing it, imagine how much oolichan was in the river that those seagulls are feeding on.”
“The personal experience I have with the Kitimat River in 2003-2004 was going down to Vancouver to meet with the Minister of Environment. So we were trying to save what was left of the Kitimat River, we were trying to save what was left of the oolichans.
“So the pulp and paper mill couldn’t reach its intended targets in terms of effluent dumping and emissions so what was the provincial government’s solution; let’s amend the permit, let’s make it larger so they can reach their targets. They didn’t say anything about making the company reach those targets, fulfil its obligations, they just said let’s make the permit bigger.
“Well, we told the provincial government ‘If that happens, if you do that against our wishes we’re going to court’. The Minister at the time had the gall to put it back to us and say, ‘Okay, the company has already said that if they’re forced to abide by these permit conditions they most likely will have to close down. How will Haisla feel when you guys are the ones to blame for this pulp mill shutting down, how will you explain that to your people that working inside Eurocan’.
“And we said, ‘Go ahead and do it, I’m pretty sure for the six people out of 500 working in Eurocan mill we can find other opportunities for them’. Six people, and you look at every industry in Haisla territory over the years it was always started by Haisla people but they were slowly squeezed out for one reason or another.
Promises of jobs
“It’s all based on promises that we’ll come in, we’ll give you employment, we won’t affect the environment, we’ll listen to your wishes. Basically saying whatever they could to get their project approved and then guess what, less than 10 years later we find out that it was all a lie; they just said what they could just to get that permit, their certificate, whatever it was.
“I was born in 1965 and by the time I was old enough to start joining the fishing party to go up the Kitimat River by 1975 it was starting to decline. It didn’t take long; it didn’t take long at all. Salmon weren’t far behind it. There’s a reason why that state-of-the-art hatchery was built right beside the Kitimat River not long after. There’s a reason for just about everything that happened to Haisla in the last 60 years and it’s all directly linked to industrial development.
“So instead of getting taught how to fish for oohlicans, how to process oohlicans, how to boil for oohlicans, how to collect the right wood for burning for the oolichan pot, how to skim the grease, how to bottle it, no, I’m taught how the government issued permits that took it all away.”
In 2010, West Fraser shut the Eurocan mill, killed 500 jobs in Kitimat and walked away, leaving their mess in Kitimat for the current and future generations, aboriginal and non-aboriginal alike to deal with. That is the deathly hallow of the invisible hand.
On January 12, 2012 , in Terrace, Chief Counsellor Don Roberts, of the Kitsumkalum First Nation appeared before the Joint Review Panel. In wide ranging testimony Roberts also spoke about the his First Nation’s concerns about the oolichan:
“The oolichans are from the Bering Sea, that’s where they come from. The food chain that they’re feeding up there is not researched. We’re not up there. But they feed something — they probably feed that same fish that’s migrating in here.
“The oolichan then come across the north end of Haida Gwaii and enter the coastal rivers.
“About six weeks ago, I heard on CBC they were talking with the elders
over Haida Gwaii. The pod of killer whales that never went south, they’re wondering
why. But a pod, about 40, with a bunch of pups, what they’re doing is feeding on that herring. They’re feeding on the oolichan.
He described about how after leaving Haida Gwaii. the oolichan come out of Grenville Channel and enter the Skeena River.
“This is where the oolichan hang out…This is a hundred fathom area, and they hang off [this] drop-off there, 100 fathoms, and they start moving in there in November and they just hang around there. They come from the Hecate Strait.
“Right now, we are in January. They’re still down in here yet. Probably if you go down there you’ll start seeing the life activity around there because the fish got to hold out there until the eggs are ripe and they start getting used to the [reduced] salinity in the water. Because way out in the ocean there, it’s almost 100 percent salinity…they’ll hold out here all of February, then move in.”
(The oolichan are in a zone where the fresh water from the rivers reduces the salinity of the ocean. This is where the oolichan adjust before moving inland, up river)
“In Grenville Channel, there is clam and cockle digging is from mid-October to March. The clams and cockles food harvest is always eaten with oolichan grease.
“Again, we are showing the importance of oolichan. It’s used as a main part of our culture. It’s used in everything…we eat it with salmon berries, now we’re eating it with the seaweed back then and the clams; every dish.
Food chain
At the mouth of the Skeena, “all the Chinook salmon are all in there but they all migrate in there. Everything that hits the Skeena all comes in here. All these tributaries all feed in salmon. The oolichans come in these deep channels and they start feeding into the Skeena. All the cods and all the halibut, everything comes in there, everything.
“When the oohlicans come in you can go down there and the halibut are there. And if you go there they’re [the oolichan] not there, you’ve got to dig really hard to get a halibut this time of the year. And after the oohlicans make their run in then you go out there again and they’re there.
“There’s the the sea prunes. I don’t know what Canada calls it, but that’s what we call it. They grow all along form Chatham Sound to Hecate Strait. It’s a delicacy. You pick it, you steam it, you peel that black off, the cells, the spine, and you dip it in oolichan grease and soya sauce, and you’ve got a dish.”
Roberts showed a map to the Joint Review Panel. “This is the map that the government showed us where the pipeline is going to run — the steamships are going to run, Enbridge. Kitimat all the way up there, come down, propose to go down here or propose to go out here. But all this area I’ve been talking about, there’s a — there’s the Skeena River right there. They [the oil tankers] just run right by it.
“All the halibut grounds are out here, right around all out there, you’re running right over it. All the seaweed grounds are all right there, all the way down here for the other Bands. All the way down. Abalone, the sea cucumbers, and the oolichan come right through there, the head of the food chain.”
That is the danger that First Nations and others fear, the destruction of the northwestern food chain.
New poster
This weekend, the distinguished aboriginal artist, Roy Henry Vickers, originally from Kitkatla, near Hazelton, now based in Campbell River, a member of the Order of Canada and Order of British Columbia, recipient of the Queen’s Jubilee medal, whose work has been Canada’s gift to world leaders including Bill Clinton and Boris Yeltsin, and can be seen at Vancouver International Airport, publicly issued a poster, free for reproduction: “Oolichan Oil, not Alberta Oil.”
Since the declaration that the oolichan are an endangered species, those of aware of the issue in British Columbia have waited to see if the government of Stephen Harper will do anything, anything at all, to restore the oolichan stocks. After all, oolichan sustained the oil economy of British Columbia for at least two millenia, probably more.
Harper has not only done absolutely nothing about the oolichan, his government is ordering even more drastic cuts to the staff and resources of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans along the British Columbia coast. (The BC government also has some responsibilities for the oolichan as well since they divide their time between the ocean, which is federal, and the rivers which, except for the salmon, are provincial jurisdiction. The BC Liberals haven’t done anything either.)
The reason there is no trust for the Harper government in northwestern British Columbia, even among many northwestern conservatives, is that northwestern British Columbia is ignored not only on the oolichan issue, but on halibut allocation, the export of raw logs, the possible danger of farmed Atlantic salmon in southern British Columbia to the wild stocks in the north, the cutbacks at DFO and the Coast Guard. It appears to many here that Stephen Harper is perfectly prepared to sacrifice northwestern British Columbia for the sole benefit of Alberta and the bitumen sands.
The decline of the forest industry, while on one hand devastating, at least for now, for the economy of British Columbia, is slowly beginning to restore some of the rivers to health.
Imagine if the rivers were fully restored, and the oolichan came back to the sustainable, harvestable, economic levels that drove the BC economy for up to 5,000 years.
Along with salmon, herring and halibut, an oolichan harvest would provide all of British Columbia, First Nations and the rest of the province, with many hundreds more on-going jobs than the miniscule handful of permanent jobs this province will get along the Northern Gateway Pipeline route. It’s an ideal hope, of course, but an oolichan harvest would provide jobs and support the economy without the dangers of a major pipeline breach killing the river or an inevitable tanker accident, caused by human error (as all major shipping accidents are caused by human error) destroying the coast.
It appears that the Harper government is absolutely determined to put all of the Canadian economy in to one oily basket, the bitumen sands, and is refusing to consider any alternatives, especially any sustainable alternatives with the “green” label.
The great distances in northwestern BC mean people have to drive. The world economy will be dependent on petroleum for the time being and efforts to find viable, economic alternatives are mostly half hearted and sometimes even blocked for ideological reasons.
So, one has to be pessimistic. Stephen Harper, Joe Oliver and Peter Kent have made it crystal clear that the Northern Gateway pipeline will go ahead, no matter what and likely no matter what the Joint Review Panel says. So far in the hearings not a day has gone by without at least one witness telling the panel they believe the hearings are rigged in favour of Enbridge and the Conservative government.
The lesson for Alberta and Stephen Harper from the collapse of BC’s rich oolichan oil economy is that short sighted, blinkered thinking will lead inevitably to disaster. One has to wonder if Alberta cares whether there will be any petroleum left seven generations or seventy generations from now for all the non-burning uses such as petrochemicals and plastics.
Unfortunately, in sacrifice to the petro-economy and the deathly hallows of the invisible hand, the oolichan may actually go extinct, rather than creating a new, viable, oil-based economy for British Columbia.
Sources
Drake, Allen and Lyle Wilson, Eulachon A fish to cure humanity Vancouver, Museum Note No. 32, UBC Museum of Anthropology
Henley, Thom River of Mist, Journey of Dreams Rediscovery International Foundation, 2009
Scientists from the University of California at Davis and NOAA studying herring spawning beds in San Francisco Bay after the Costco Busan oil spill. (UC Davis)
A 53,569 gallon (202,780 litre) spill of bunker oil in San Francisco Bay in 2007 had an “unexpected lethal impact on embryonic fish,” according to scientists from the University of California at Davis and the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration who spent two years on follow-up research after the spill, looking at the effects of the spill on Pacific herring.
One significant finding from the study is that different oil compounds, for example crude or bunker oil, likely have different effects on vulnerable environments.
On November 7, 2007, the container ship Cosco Busan hit the San Francisco-Oakland Bay bridge, breaching two fuel tanks and sending the bunker oil into the bay. Television images of the accident were seen around the world.
Damage to the Cosco Busan. ( PO 3 Melissa Hauck/US Coast Guard)
The oil spill polluted the nearby North Central Bay shoreline spawning and rearing habitat for herring, described by the study as “the largest coastal population of Pacific herring along the Continental United States.” The spill happened a month before the herring spawning season.
The herring from the estuaries of San Francisco Bay migrate in large schools up the Pacific Coast to the Bering sea, and are food for whales, other mammals, salmon and birds. After two years at sea they return to the spawning grounds.
The study also notes: “Herring are a keystone species in the pelagic food web and this population supports the last commercial finfish fishery in San Francisco Bay.” It adds: “Although visibly oiled shorelines were cleaned, some extensively, only 52% of the oil was recovered from surface waters and land or lost to evaporation. The amount of hidden or subsurface oil that may have remained near herring spawning areas is unknown.”
The study, Unexpectedly high mortality in Pacific herring embryos exposed to the 2007 Cosco Busan oil spill in San Francisco Bay, was published Monday, Dec. 26, in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The study suggests that even small oil spills can have a large impact on marine life. Gary Cherr, director of the UC Davis Bodega Marine Laboratory and lead author of the study says, “Our research represents a change in the paradigm for oil spill research and detecting oil spill effects in an urbanized estuary.”
That’s because the study builds on research following the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster in Prince William Sound, Alaska, which released 32 million gallons (121 million litres) of crude. The Exxon Valdez spill also happened close to the herring spawning season and studies since then have shown mortality and abnormalities in the fish in Prince William Sound.
The San Francisco study shows that the bunker oil accumulated in naturally spawned herring embryos. At low tide, the oil then interacted with sunlight in the shallower regions of the estuary, killing the embryos. A control group of herring, fertilized in a laboratory and place in cages in deeper water, were protected from the combination of oil and sunlight but still showed “less severe” abnormalities.
“Based on our previous understanding of the effects of oil on embryonic fish, we didn’t think there was enough oil from the Cosco Busan spill to cause this much damage,” Cherr said. “We didn’t expect that the ultraviolet light would dramatically increase toxicity in the actual environment, as might observe in controlled laboratory experiments.”
One reason may be that crude oil, the kind spilled by the Exxon Valdez, is naturally occurring liquid petroleum. Bunker oil is a thick fuel oil distilled from crude oil and used as a fuel on ships. Bunker oil can be contaminated by other, unknown substances. In the case of the Cosco Busan, the bunker oil was relatively low in sulfur compared to some other bunker fuels but the embryos showed higher than expected levels of sulfur compounds.
Scientists from the University of California at Davis and NOAA studying herring spawning beds in San Francisco Bay after the Costco Busan oil spill. (UC Davis)
The scientists analyzed the levels of oil-based compounds in the caged herring embryos at four oiled and two-non oiled sub tidal sites, all at least one metre below the surface. Naturally spawned embryos from shallower areas were also studied.
In November, 2007, the spilled oil was visible in the areas chosen for the study. By the time the herring eggs were incubating, oil was not visible in the contaminated areas, except for some tar balls found on shore.
The researchers began the study in February 2008 . At the time, three months after the spill, the caged embryos showed non lethal heart defects, typical of exposure to oil spills. The embryos in the shallower sub tidal zones showed the same heart defects but also had “surprisingly high rates of dead tissue and mortality unrelated to the heart defects.”
“The embryos were literally falling apart with high rates of mortality,” Cherr said.
Normal herring embryos are translucent and colourless when they hatch, except for the pigment around the eye and melanophores (pigment cells) along the gut. The the brain, spinal cord and axial muscle from embryos from the oiled sites were not as clear. Those embryos had no heart beat and the skin tissue was disintegrating.
No toxicity was found in embryos in unoiled sites, even those close to major highways. The researchers concluded that the high death rates did not seem to be caused by natural or man made causes unrelated to the spill.
In 2009, when the scientists concentrated on the role of sunlight, the study showed that the embryos had death rates characterized by loss of tissue similar to the embryos from the year before, but possibly caused by undetected compounds from the oil spill.
In 2010, the scientists again looked at embryos from the oiled and unoiled sites. By that time, the hatching rates from the oiled sites were similar to the “relatively high hatching rates” for the unoiled areas. However, there was a “significant incidence” of heart problems among embryos from the oiled sites.
The scientists conclude that while the Exxon Valdez spill did show oil poisoning fish in the early stages of life, they say case wider research is needed beyond that done for in the case of the Exxon Valdez because the Cosco Busan
1. Highlights the difference in effects on fish from exposure to oil of differing composition (i.e. Crude vs bunker)
2. Shows the role of sunlight, interacting with local conditions (such as shallow water) can have significant affects on toxicity.
3. Shows the need for more study of the toxic effects of different oil compounds
4. The study has shown the “exceptional vulnerability of fish early stages to spilled oil.”
The conclusion adds “Although bunker oil typically accounts for only a small fraction of oil in ships, so spills may be small relative to those of crude oil, it may carry a potential for disproportionate impacts of in ecologically sensitive areas.”
Both Ellis Ross, Chief Counsellor of the Haisla Nation and April McLeod, president of the Kitimat Valley Naturalists expressed concern abut the findings of the study, especially with the Joint Review Hearings on the Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline scheduled to begin a few days.
The numerous environmental critics of the Northern Gateway pipeline have pointed out that there is no way of knowing what would happen to an area like the Kitimat River, estuary and Douglas Channel is there was a bitumen spill. Enbridge has filed documents with the Joint Review Panel that include simulations of a spill. The new San Francisco study shows that any oil spill could have unforeseen effects.
Plans call for at least three new terminals to be built close to the Kitimat River estuary, not just the controversial Enbridge terminal for bitumen, but at least two for the liquified natural gas projects, KM LNG and BC LNG and in all three cases ships would normally be fueled by bunker oil.
The Kitimat estuary has been industrialized for 60 years since the building of the Rio Tinto Alcan smelter, but still has large areas teeming with fish and wildlife, so the estuary is somewhat in the middle between the heavily urbanized estuaries of San Francisco Bay and the more pristine Prince William Sound.
Ross pointed to the collapse of the oolichan in the Kitimat River as a strong indicator of potential problems. He recalls that in the early stages of the Eurocan paper mill the Haisla Nation was told there would be no effect on the oolichan, but soon after the mill began operations, the oolichan population collapsed. That is why, Ross said, the Haisla are wary of the plans and want to see more and stronger studies done on the effects of bitumen and other oil compounds in the region.
Other comments were unavailable due to the holiday. They will added as received.
Kitimat River estuary on Dec. 17, 2011, showing a Rio Tinto Alcan transmission tower. (Robin Rowland/Northwest Coast Energy News)
According to Wikipedia, the US National Transportation Board found that the Cosco Busan accident was caused by
the pilot’s degraded cognitive performance from his use of prescription medications, despite his completely clean post accident drug test,
the absence of a comprehensive pre-departure master/pilot exchange and a lack of effective communication between Pilot John Cota and Master Mao Cai Sun during the accident voyage, and
(COSCO Busan Master) Sun’s ineffective oversight of Cota’s piloting performance and the vessel’s progress.
Other contributing factors included:
the failure of Fleet Management Ltd. to train the COSCO Busan crewmembers (which led to such acts of gross negligence as the bow lookout eating breakfast in the galley instead of being on watch) and Fleet Management’s failure to ensure that the crew understood and complied with the company’s safety management system;
the failure of Caltrans to maintain foghorns on the bridge which were silent despite the heavy fog;
the failure of Vessel Traffic Safety (VTS) to alert Cota and Sun that they were headed for the tower. VTS is legally required to alert a vessel if an accident appears imminent, yet they remained silent;
the malfunctioning radar on the COSCO Busan, which led Captains Cota and Sun to use an electronic chart for the rest of the voyage. Although Coast Guard investigators found the radar to be in working order, they did not examine it until days after the accident (allowing time for faulty equipment to be fixed, which is not uncommon after a marine accident)
Captain Sun’s incorrect identification of symbols on the electronic chart;
the U.S. Coast Guard’s failure to provide adequate medical oversight of Cota, in view of the medical and medication information he had reported to the Coast Guard.
This photograph from the geomorphology report shows how bedrock spread lead to catastrophic landslides along a 2.5 kilometre scarp (photo lower centre to upper right) and a 1.3 km scarp (photo distance) on the ridge above Parrott Creek. The yellow dashed line delineates the landslides’ headscarp. The arrow shows the direction of movement.
A retired geomorphologist for the BC Forest Service, who lives in Smithers, says a break in the Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline, triggered by a landslide, is “inevitable” given the highly complex terrain that the pipeline will cross.
James Schwab bases his peer-reviewed paper on his 30 years experience in northwestern British Columbia.
“The unstable mountainous terrain across west-central BC is not a safe location for pipelines. Eventually a landslide will sever a pipeline,” he says. He calls for investigation of a safer, alternative route for the pipeline.
Schwab’s report says the Nechako Plateau appears relatively benign, but, he says, large landslides have occurred in volcanic rock overlying other older volcanic and sedimentary rock.
Along the Morice River, the report says sediments have historically experienced landslides. Road construction and wildfires have reactivated these landslides. The proposed pipeline corridor crosses an historic earth flow west of Owen Creek, moving sediment along Owen Creek and moving sediments near Fenton Creek and Lamprey Creek
At Gosnell Creek, Schwab says, shifting channels on active alluvial fans pose road maintenance challenges at present and, he says, pipelines will likely bring similar challenges crossing these fans. The report says the creek banks are unstable at Crystal Creek and Gosnell Creek pipeline crossing points.
The report says the volcanic bedrock of the Hazelton Mountains is “inherently unstable” and geological surveys show there were many landslides in prehistoric times. Three more recent documented large landslides within the Bulkley Range of the Hazelton Mountains have severed the natural gas pipeline since its construction in the early 1970s; large landslides have also impacted forest roads and highways.
He says that gravity is deforming the slopes in the volcanic bedrock found in the Kitnayakwa, Clore and Bernie watersheds and the report calls for a thorough geotechnical investigation to determine the stability of the bedrock and hill slope in areas before the pipeline is built. “Avoidance of these unstable hill slopes is generally the preferred engineering development option,” the report says.
The report examines where the pipeline corridor crosses through a mountainside to the southeast of the Clore Canyon.
The highly fractured bedrock in the canyon is undergoing active mass erosion. unstable rock reaches up to about 1200 m above sea level and extends around the mountain into an adjacent tributary valley. This bedrock along the north and west side of the mountain is extensively gullied and contains many landslide scarps and an actively moving landslide.
The active instability of the eastern mountain slope places major constraints on development, Schwab says.
Schwab says the Kitimat Ranges are characterized by steep narrow valleys, which create “colluvial-fluvial fans … at the base of most steep gully channels in the Hoult Creek and Upper Kitimat watershed.” The steep gullies extend from the mountains in to the valley or directly into Hoult Creek or the Kitimat River.
Many of these high-energy systems in the Kitimat Ranges experienced debris flows during extreme rainstorms in the fall of 1978 and the fall of 1992. Debris flows commonly occur under seemingly normal storm events during summer convective storms and fall frontal rainstorms.
Debris flows are powerful landslides that can damage or rupture pipelines, the report says.
Hunter Creek, a large active alluvial fan, has historically pushed the Kitimat River across the valley, Schwab’s report says. In 1992, road and levée construction caused a catastrophic channel change.
The Kitimat trough, on the road between Terrace and Kitimat, is actually a fjord uplifted by ancient geological forces. The valley has deep deposits of sediments both from ocean and land, left by glaciers, which have produced landslides from prehistoric times to the present day.
Recent large flow slides occurred at Mink Creek (winter 1992-93) and Lakelse Lake in May and June 1962. A large submarine flow slide occurred in sensitive marine muds at the front of the fiord-head delta at Kitimat Arm in April 1975.
These recent landslides serve to show the continuing sensitivity of the glaciomarine sediments in the Kitimat Trough and the marine sediments on the fan-delta at the fiord-head of Kitimat Arm. Natural and human caused factors such as increases in surface load, removal of lateral support by stream bank undercutting or excavation, vibration by heavy equipment, earthquake shock, high water pressures and interruption of intertidal drainage can trigger these landslides. Thus, the potential exists for landslides to occur during pipeline construction and in the future.
This large swampy area on Lakesle Lake is the location of the May 1962 flow slide. Highway 37 crosses the landslide depletion zone. (The highway was closed for several days after the 1962 slide.) The provincial park is in the middle left of this photo from the report.
Schwab says the pipeline will encounter the glacial sediments during construction at Cecil Creek, Deception Creek, Wedeene River, Little Wedeene River, along the west side of Kitimat Arm and along Chist Creek. He says that even minor erosion along those creek banks can expose the glacial sediments, which are then displaced by as the sediments are exposed. “Pipelines crossing glaciomarine sediments must therefore avoid areas that lie within potential flow slide depletion zones as landslides will break or disrupt pipeline service.”
The executive summary of the report concludes by saying.
Landslides travel long distances and damage linear infrastructure such as pipelines. Six large rock slides occurred in west central B.C. since 1978, five of these since 1999, and four since 2002. Three of the six rock slides severed the natural gas pipeline (Howson landslides in 1978 and 1999, and Zymoetz landslide in 2002). Damage to linear infrastructure commonly occurs in run out zones many kilometres from the initial landslide. This has occurred with recent landslides in west central B.C.; the longest traveled in excess of four kilometres along a slope of 9°. Therefore, the potential for damage to pipelines extends to unstable terrain and potential landslides that start well outside the construction corridor.
The Bulkley Valley Research Centre, based in Smithers, is a not-for-profit organization that aims to improve the knowledge of resource sustainability by facilitating what its website calls “credible research projects.”
This report was corrected on Oct. 25, changing the headline, correcting the main link to the Bulkley Valley Research Centre that was not visible due to a coding error and adding a link to the geomorphology report news release.
This photograph from the geomorphology report shows how bedrock spread lead to catastrophic landslides along a 2.5 kilometre scarp (photo lower centre to upper right) and a 1.3 km scarp (photo distance) on the ridge above Parrott Creek. The yellow dashed line delineates the landslides’ headscarp. The arrow shows the direction of movement.
