Eulachon picture courtesy of NOAA

Everybody loves a good storyteller and I’m no exception.

Last week, I listened to some of the live streaming of the Enbridge hearings from Kitimaat, the First Nations village a few clicks outside the company town of Kitimat in northwest B.C.

It was the tail end of the first day and the Haisla’s Chief Councillor, Ellis Ross, was telling how Kitimaat was founded and the stories of betrayal over the years.

Now I’ve been to nearby Kitimat, and my memories are of a blue-collar town dominated by the blazing hot furnaces inside Alcan (now Rio Tinto Alcan);  the Eurocan Pulp and Paper mill spewing God knows what (now closed); and touring around Methanex  (also closed).  To be honest, I never even saw the native Indian village, on the east side of the Douglas Channel.

I’ve always known Kitimat and nearby Prince Rupert as shippers of the “dangerous and the dirty”.  If Enbridge has its way, shipping bitumen and condensate through the long fiords embracing the Northwest Coast will continue that tradition, managing to combine the  worst of both worlds: the dangerous (for the environment) and the dirty (heavy oil).

But Chief Ellis Ross and other members of the Haisla Nation took us back eloquently to the time before the “dangerous and the dirty”, before pollution wiped out the eulachon runs and when whales chased herring all the way up the Douglas Channel.

Here are three short stories from the testimony of Chief Ellis Ross, from the past, the recent past, and a possible future. His dad’s hereditary title was Haanatlenok, the founder of Kitamaat and it was a place no one wanted to live in at first, in the old days, he told the hearing.

“Everybody else is terrified to come to this territory. “Why? Because there’s a monster living at the head of the Kitimat River. Everybody knows it so everybody clears away from here, steers away.

 

“Well, Waa-mis and his hunting party are the only ones brave enough to come here and check it out and they find out it’s not a monster.

 

“It’s thousands upon thousands of seagulls all rising in unison every time an eulachon run goes up the river and then landing again to feed on the eulachon. That’s what everybody thought was a monster.

 

“I can’t imagine that. If there’s thousands upon thousands of seagulls doing that at a distance of maybe greater than seven miles viewing it, imagine how much eulachon was in the river that those seagulls are feeding on.”

Eulachons, or oolichans, are small fish with a really  high oil content that are an important part of the First Nations diet and heritage.

Here’s one of his Chief Ellis’s less happy stories, that came from when he was working for a marine company out of Kitimat trying to clean up a small oilspill.

 ”A tugboat down at one of the docks sank, dumping all its diesel into the water,” he recalled.

 

“Well, we were called in, because we were the representative for Burrard Spill (a spill response company) for our region. Optimal conditions; the water’s calm, you’re working off the dock, you got every gear that you can think of, you can pack it down.

 

“We still couldn’t pick that diesel up. In fact, most of it got under the dock and it took a year for it to all leech out, but we spent a couple days down there trying to do what we could, basically mopping it up.

 

“When we were done with the absorbent pads and booms, the first thing we found out is that, actually, nobody wanted to deal with that product.

 

“Our company had an agreement with the pulp and paper mill to burn the product in their furnace, natural gas furnace, so the higher-ups agreed to it, but when we got to the door, their workers refused us.

 

“So we were stuck outside the pulp and paper mill with these bags and bags of booms and absorbent pads. So they came down with a condition. You guys can burn it in our furnace, but you guys have got to pack it up there yourselves.

 

“So covered in diesel, soaking wet, stink, and nobody wanted to come near us, we had to do it ourselves. Nobody would touch that.”

The Eurocan pulp and paper mill closed down in 2010 and since then, the herring and the whales have started to come back to Douglas Channel. Here’s Chief Ellis’s third story, from just last year:

“Last summer around midnight during the summer I could hear a whale. Now, I spent a better part of 10 years getting close to whales on my charter boat job, so I understood how to get close to humpbacks and great whales and killer whales.

 

“Well, midnight I hear this whale and it’s right outside the soccer field.  So my wife’s house is right down the soccer field, it’s waterfront, but I can hear this whale, and I can’t understand why it’s so close. Something’s got to be wrong.

 

“So I walk down there with my daughter, my youngest daughter, and I try to flash a light down there, and quickly figured out it’s not in trouble, it’s sleeping. It’s resting right outside our soccer field.

 

“You can’t imagine what that means to a First Nation’s that’s watched his territory get destroyed over 60 years. You can’t imagine the feeling. Then to see a herring run return.

 

“And not based on anything we’d done. There’s nothing that the federal government did that brought that back. There’s nothing that we did as a First Nations that brought that back. It was just a simple exercise of closing an effluent mill that was dumping a product that shouldn’t have been dumped in the first place.

 

“And how did they get there? Well they promised that there’d be lots of jobs. Well that didn’t work out too well. They promised there’d be no negative impact on the environment. That worked out worse than the jobs promise did.

 

“It’s a cliché to make promises and then break it to First Nations, but in our territory it happened over and over and over again.

He concluded his testimony against Enbridge’s Northern Gateway Project this way:

“At the very least, the very least, in assessing this project, please, just don’t regard Haisla as just this collateral damage ensuring that this product gets to Asia. Don’t just consider the economics.

 

Take what you’ve heard here. Take their pain and their emotions and apply that to your decision-making. Apply it like it was happening to your own family. Apply it like it’s your heritage because, quite frankly, it is.”

See my earlier posts:

* Enbridge releases tanker plans for Kitimat

* What if a tanker heading for Kitimat hit another vessel

* What if a containership ran aground on Nootka Island

* Tug escort rules vary in B.C.

(Posted by Alison Bate on January 21, 2012)

Monday, Oct. 31, 2011

By Alison Bate

Talks between the maritime employers and dock foremen in British Columbia are deadlocked, the organisation representing employers said Friday (Oct.28)

“Nothing’s happening. We’re at an impasse, ” said Greg Vurdela, vice president of marketing for the B.C Maritime Employers Association.

He also accused dock foremen in Local 514 of the International Longshore Warehouse Union of “dirty tricks” in delaying ship handling at the end of the third-quarter.

Foremen aren’t supposed to work more than 624 hours in a quarter, but nearly always exceed that, according to Vurdela. If they weren’t bargaining, at the end of this September they would have brought in more foremen, as usual. Instead, a group of foremen decided to stop at 624 hours.

This meant one cruise ship left late, one container ship lost an entire graveyard shift and several vessels loading logs bound for China were delayed a couple of days.

The 450 dock foremen in ILWU Local 514 traditionally finish negotiating after the main longshore unions have settled their contract.

In this case, the main ILWU longshore contract was settled – with great fanfare – in May. It was heralded as a historic deal, covering eight years and involving approximately 4,500 workers in five ILWU Locals in Vancouver, New Westminster, Vancouver Island, Prince Rupert and Stewart.

The Canadian government was heavily involved in the talks, appointing two federal mediators even before both contracts ran out on March 31, 2010. For a while, the mediators batted back and forth between the main longshore negotiators and negotiators for the foremen in ILWU 514.

However, Vurdela said although the federal mediator hasn’t officially booked out, the last talks involving ILWU 514 were held Sept. 15 and nothing much happened then or has happened since.

“We’ve made our final offer, and the negotiating committee is not willing to address it.”

Vurdela claimed there were several sticking points involving wages, benefits and languages changes that when added up meant the ILWU 514 folks wanted a richer settlement than the main longshore agreement.

He said foremen make on average, including benefits, about $200,000 a year, and a significant number make $250,000.

“I’m left not understanding why guys who make $250,000 are not signing onto this,” he added.

ILWU Local 514 has not returned email or phone requests for comments to date.

© Alison Bate, 2011.

UPDATE: Agreement finally reached (Jan.31, 2012 press release)

Oct. 19, 2011

By Alison Bate

Seaspan’s Vancouver Shipyards came second to Halifax’s Irving Shipbuilding in the
big contract deal announced today.

In a nutshell:

Seaspan workers celebrate winning big government contract at their North Vancouver home on Nov.2, 2011

2nd: Seaspan Marine Corp, British Columbia. $8 billion to build non-combat vessels.

Out of luck: Joint venture between Quebec’s Davie shipyard, SNC-Lavalin and Daewoo (technology).

Seaspan CEO Jonathan Whitworth put a brave spin on it immediately after the announcement: “While we felt we were more than capable of building the combat ships, we are honoured to have been chosen to provide non-combat vessels for the men and women of the Royal Canadian Navy and Coast Guard,” he said in a press release.

Seaspan's Jonathan Whitworth

MORE INFO:
* Jubilation greets $8-billion shipbuilding contract for B.C.

* For background on Seaspan, read my article “Kyle Washington: Prince of Tides

* Government of Canada Press Release

Two articles I wrote shortly after the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Centre have just been reprinted in a 10-year retrospective.

The first one, Armada rescues trapped New Yorkers, was based on extensive phone interviews with tugboat owners with Reinauer Transportation and Moran Towing, as well as officials with U.S. Coast Guard Activities New York and Vessel Traffic Services New York.

The second article Escape from the 91st Floor followed an interview with Claire McIntyre – a staffer with the American Bureau of Shipping – and described her dramatic escape from the north tower of the World Trade Centre.

Both articles were printed in Seattle-based Marine Digest magazine, a magazine I edited at one time, which has since changed its name to Cargo Business News. The articles are also on this website under Maritime.

Related 9/11 boat rescue links:

* List of 9/11 Rescue Boats

* Moran Crews Cited for 9/11 Evacuation Endeavors (Sep. 2005)

*Who Was in Charge of the Massive Evacuation of Lower Manhattan By Water Transport on 9/11? (Sep.2002)

© Alison Bate, 2011

May 30, 2011

If you like looking at pictures of ships, which for some obscure reason I do, it’s always fun to pop over to some of the photography and ship-tracking websites and see what’s around. I was trying to avoid writing recently, and stumbled across this photo of a ship I sailed on a few years ago.

Photo of the 800-foot CSCL Felixstowe by Philip Gilston (See his website at http://pgilston.smugmug.com/)

I was asked a ton of questions after I returned from sailing across the Pacific on the CSCL Felixstowe. Here, in no particular order, are some of my fond memories:

1. What was the food like?

Wonderful, if you like curries. Fortunately, I do. Chief cook Ignacio (Nick) Villanueva had an exhausting job, cooking for 25 of us every day, helped only by messman Lorenzo (Laurence) Ramos.

Nick often ended up cooking separate meals for the Indian officers and Filipino crew. Indian officers don’t eat beef and some don’t eat pork, while the Filipinos didn’t like spicy Indian curries.

A typical lunch for the Indian officers included a freshwater fish called Tilapia, potato and cauliflower curry, rice, salad and melon. Meanwhile, the Filipinos had grilled beef, rice, bitter gourd and melon.

On Sundays, Jina Noronha, wife of first officer Rodney Noronha, often helped out by cooking biriani for the Indian officers, along with raita, a delicious yoghurty dip.

“We measure our time left in birianis. I’ve got two birianis left,” said Capt. Alfred Gomez, who was signing off shortly.

2. Did you drink every night with the Captain?

Capt. Gomez was a staunch Catholic who discouraged drinking and held Sunday prayer meetings with rip-roaring singing to boost crew morale and camaraderie.

“I see it as the only way. Instead of getting soaked in alcohol, you are getting soaked in God’s word,” he said. To this day, I can’t hear “This is the day that the Lord has made” without choking up.

Rum rations for the crew are long gone, replaced by strict anti-alcohol and drug policies. Although beer was allowed off-duty, it was quietly frowned upon. I drank three beers while on board, and even then felt guilty.

The best tales from the captain’s table came during lunchtime, when the captain, chief engineer Anil Sharma and third officer Praveen Prabhu traded stories.

The Suez Canal is nicknamed the Marlboro Canal, and if you don’t pay the pilot with cartons of cigarettes, they won’t move the ship. One time the captain finally got a pilot who said he didn’t take cigarettes.

“I’ll just have coffee,” he said, then but then promptly added tea, butter and a huge list of other demands.

“Better you take the cigarettes,” said the captain, finally.

3. Was it risky, a woman sailing with all those men?

Rodney and Annette Noronha on the bridge

The two wives, two kids and myself were all Supernumeraries, an archaic-sounding word also applied to actors who appear on stage but have no lines to speak. Pretty accurate, in this case. I was the Fifth Supernumerary.

4. How long did the trip take?

The ship was pretty fast, with a cruising speed of 24 knots (nautical miles an hour), so it only took 11 days to sail from LA/Long Beach to Qingdao in northeast China.

We sailed the Great Circle route, skirting the Aleutian Islands off Alaska before arching across the Pacific to Qingdao – more than 5,800 nautical miles in all.

A Super Hurricane northeast of the Philippines delayed us a day and at Qingdao, we hit fog. So we arrived in Shanghai at dawn 13 sailing days (14 days by date) after leaving Long Beach.

5. Did you get seasick?

Streaming across the Pacific

The worst times came southeast of Japan, as we hit the aftermath of a Super Hurricane called Dianmu. That night I was lying in my bunk sweating and headachy as the ship pitched back and forth like a bucking bronco. Winds at the time reached Force 8, but we missed the worst of the hurricane.

6. Can I sail on a containership, too?

Containerships don’t usually take passengers, so I was very lucky. The crew is too busy most of the time to look after passengers and there are also insurance complications.

Bulk carriers have more leisurely schedules, and are more likely to take passengers, but they are still not cheap. Several companies cater to freighter travel, though. Check out Freighter Travel and Seaplus.

7. What cargo did you carry?

Actually, a lot of empty 40-footers! We left California with 1,768 empty containers and just 225 full ones, carrying mainly waste paper and scrap metal.

The transpacific trade is notoriously imbalanced: ships loaded with consumer goods arrive in the U.S. from Asia and often return empty.

8. What did the crew do all day?

Second officer Praveen Menon and third officer Praveen Prabhu

Typically they’d slump exhausted or bored watching DVDs or listening to music in their cabins. A hard-core of pingpong fanatics got together regularly in the little on-board gym. My personal memories are of playing the Memory Game on the bridge with little Annette.

Time and again, as we sailed across the Pacific, my desire to idealize the crew’s way of life received a cold dose of salty water from those that lived this life daily. I was looking for adventure while the captain and crew were looking for their floating office to run as smoothly as possible.

Second officer Praveen Menon laughed when I asked if being at sea was a romantic life. “No, I don’t think so. Maybe in a passenger ship, but not a merchant ship. They have the atmosphere to be romantic, but here the atmosphere is not romantic at all. It’s purely work.”

9. Did the crew speak English?

Yes, they all spoke English. Captains and officers are required to speak English if they trade in international waters, and the Filipino crew had learnt English at home.

10. What flag did the ship sail under?

It was all very convoluted, but typical for international shipping. I sailed with 20 Indian officers and Filipino crew on a ship built in South Korea, registered (flagged) in Cyprus, owned and managed by a Canadian company and operated by a Chinese state shipping line.

Just heard that the main dockworkers’ union in Vancouver and other B.C. ports have reached a watershed eight-year deal.

The contract between the International Longshore Warehouse Union Canada and maritime employers ran out more than a year ago. But that still leaves seven years on the new contract, an impressive length, when you consider that previous contracts lasted for only three years.

More details can be found at Maritime Magazine’s website.

See my previous story B.C. longshore casuals take a beating published in Fall 2009 for more background about the union.

UPDATE (Jan. 11, 2011): View Enbridge’s current marine response plan

Better late than never, I’ve been plugging my way through the marine side of Enbridge’s application to bring supertankers into B.C.’s northwestern waters.

Last weekend, I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry when I saw Enbridge’s huge advert in The Vancouver Sun claiming its Northern Gateway project would make “B.C.’s North Coast safer for all vessels”.

The company must be cursing the timing of the terrible oil spill now reaching the shores of Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana and Florida.

Enbridge’s proposal doesn’t involve an oil rig, but the spill demonstrates yet again what oil response experts have always said: once the oil is in the water, you’re hooped.

Anyway, this weekend I downloaded Volume 8A of Enbridge’s proposal to the National Energy Board – the volume dealing with marine transportation.

A lot of the info is simply background filler, and despite being 152 pages long, details are very sketchy.

For example, talking about the type of tankers to be used, Enbridge’s report notes: “At this stage of the project, there is limited information regarding marketing plans, trade routes, or details of potential charterers or their tankers and, as a result, specific plans or technical documents of the design ships cannot be provided.”

However, here are some the key parts of the plan, as described in the report.

How much extra traffic?

About 220 vessels per year would travel through Douglas Channel, an increase of 86 per cent compared to current traffic to Kitimat. At Wright Sound, the project-related tankers would cause a 13 per cent increase in reporting traffic. And at the Prince Rupert MCTS station, project-related tankers would cause an increase of 3 per cent for the total reporting traffic.

What route would the tankers take?

The tankers would use one of three main routes:

1. The Northern Approach (for tankers arriving from or departing to Asian ports). 158 nautical miles. Via Haida Gwaii through Dixon Entrance, Hecate Strait, Browning Entrance, Principe Channel, Nepean Sound, Otter Channel, Squally Channel, Lewis Passage, Wright Sound and Douglas Channel.

2. The Southern Approach (Direct) (for tankers arriving from or departing to west coast ports south of Kitimat) 98 naut. miles. Via Queen Charlotte Sound, Hecate Strait, Caamaño Sound, Campania Sound, Squally Channel, Lewis Passage, Wright Sound and Douglas Channel.

3. The Southern Approach (via Principe Channel), (in weather conditions where Caamaño Sound cannot be used) 133 naut. miles. This route goes via Hecate Strait, Browning Entrance, Principe Channel, Nepean Sound, Otter Channel, Squally Channel, Lewis Passage, Wright Sound and Douglas Channel.

What kind of tankers would be used?

Tankers calling at the Kitimat Terminal would, most likely, be chartered. They would all be double-hulled, due to international regulations requiring all tankers in international trade to be double hulled by 2010.

Most likely, Aframax or Suezmax tankers would carry condensate and the larger VLCC (supertankers) and Suezmax tankers would carry export oil cargo.

Pilots, escort and harbor tugs

Local pilots would board and assist all incoming and outgoing tankers. During good weather and in daylight, helicopters might be used to lower pilots onto the tanker.

A close escort tug would be used for all laden and ballasted (empty) tankers, beginning at the pilot boarding stations (Triple Island and proposed sites in Browning Passage and Caamaño Sound) to and from the marine terminal. The close escort tug would normally be positioned approximately 500 metres astern of the tanker, or as directed by the shipmaster or pilot during transit.

* A tethered tug, in addition to a close escort tug, would be used for all laden tankers in the Confined Channel Assessment Area (CCAA). The tug would be tethered to the stern of the laden tanker at all times, ready to assist with steering or slowing down.

* Three or four tugs for berthing and two or three tugs for unberthing the tanker. One of these tugs could also provide escort services.

Rescue tugs

At least one of the escort tugs would be equipped to provide ocean rescue capability and would be available to any ship in distress along the north coast of British Columbia.

Tanker speed

Average tanker speeds close to shore would be 8 to 12 knots: eight to 10 knots in confined areas and 10 to 12 knots in straight channel areas such as Principe Channel and Douglas Channel.

Navigation aids

Radar would be installed along important sections of the Northern and Southern Approaches to monitor all marine traffic and provide additional guidance to pilots and other vessels in the area.

* See my earlier post: What if a tanker heading for Kitimat hit another vessel?

(Posted: June 8, 2010 by Alison Bate)

My article over the battle for the Arctic is now on the web:
Global players jockey over Arctic shipping routes (Nov. 2009)

A second story about the strong ties between Prince Rupert, B.C. and Memphis, Tennessee has also gone online:
Prince Rupert looks towards Memphis (Nov. 2009)

By Alison Bate
First published in Maritime Magazine, Fall 2009

UPDATE: Eight-year contract approved on Vancouver docks (May 4, 2011):

Vancouver longshore worker Karen Crossan (pictured) stood in the ghostly dispatch hall looking vainly for work on tonight’s graveyard shift.

“I’m bored and I am broke,” she said, after learning there was no work that night, yet again. “There were 150 jobs for the afternoon shift, but only a few casuals got out.”

Crossan only comes in from Port Coquitlam twice a week nowadays looking for work, as it’s usually a wasted 40-minute trip each way. She last worked ten days ago.

In the first eight months of 2009, she clocked less than 300 hours work as a B Board casual in International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 500. This year, B Board casuals like Crossan will be lucky to make $30,000, compared with an average $70,000 last year.

The recession has hit the dockworkers in British Columbia hard, with work hours down by 600,000 hours or 17.6 per cent – the equivalent of 400 full-time jobs.

Container work has taken the biggest dive, and Vancouver’s Local 500 has seen a 23 per cent drop in work hours from January to the end of August 2009, year-on-year.

While full union members are surviving, the 1,200 casuals have suffered dramatically, especially on the lower boards. In Vancouver, A Board casuals get preference over those on B, C, T and OO Boards and the numbers speak for themselves.

According to Gordie Westrand, president of Local 500, last year’s A Board easily averaged $87,000 last year. This year, they’ll be lucky to make $50,000.

T Board casuals last year made about $30,000 last year; this year, maybe $2,000 or $3,000. The way things are going, Westrand predicted it could be 2020 before they become full union members. As for the OO Boards, they made $15,000 to $20,000 in 2008. This year, a pitiful $51 to date.

“There’s just despair,” Westrand told Maritime Magazine. Some regulars on the C Boards, who have been coming to the dispatch hall for the last four years only worked one day last month. They can’t afford to pay rent, and have run out of employment insurance. He said one guy has been forced to live in his car as he can’t pay his rent any more.

“I’ve been down on the waterfront for 44 years and seen some of the worst recessions. The 1975 one lasted from mid-April to mid-September. But this one has already lasted longer: from January until now (September),” he added.

Crossan realizes she’s luckier than most, with money still coming in from her husband, a full union longshore worker. But even these union members aren’t getting the work they like.

“Lots of the guys are having to do jobs they haven’t done for 20 years. I feel for them,” she said.

Tom Dufresne, president of ILWU Canada, said the union took on 700 new workers about two years ago and trained them to handle the boom. Now there’s no work for them.

The union is also preparing to negotiate its contract with the BC Maritime Employers Association, with talks due to start Dec.1. The contract expires March 31. “I think it’s going to be an interesting round of negotiations,” said Dufresne.

Over on Vancouver Island, work hours are down 17 per cent this year compared with 2008. Unlike Vancouver, they don’t handle container traffic, and never really benefited from the boom.

Brett Hartley, president of ILWU Local 508, said that the downturn in the forest industry and closure of many mills has caused a steady decline in work in the last ten years. There were about 400 union members in 1999; now there are 115 union members. At the beginning of this year, there were also 60 to 70 casuals but Hartley is not sure what the numbers are now.

“They’ve been taking a beating,” said Hartley. “Some of them have been hit twice.” A lot of mill workers became longshore casuals when mills closed or took down time, and are now suffering again.

The Vancouver Island local is based in Chemainus but uses a telephone dispatch system to cover its vast area. Workers may live in Victoria and travel to work in Port Alberni three hours away, an increasingly expensive proposition.

Currently, the biggest source of work is handling raw log exports at Port Alberni, Nanaimo and Island Timberlands’ terminal, south of Nanaimo.

It’s dangerous work and some people disapprove of raw log exports, but Hartley said it was happening anyway. Logs were being towed or barged to U.S. ports and exported to China, Korea and Japan from there. The union intervened, and now at least its members are getting the work in B.C.

At Cowichan Bay, the export of Western Forest Products lumber has really slumped. Full ships carrying 21 to 24 million board feet of lumber used to sail tor the eastern U.S. every month. So far this year, only four vessels have arrived and they left half-empty.

“It’s not a pretty picture,” Hartley concluded. “The difficult part from our view is that this scenario has been going on for a number of years. It’s always been a scramble.”

© 2009 Maritime Magazine

By Alison Bate

When a ship gets into trouble off the remote west coast of Vancouver Island, there are very few rescue services around.

The province relies on a commercial tug in the area being able to help out. Currently, major seagoing tugs carry electronic tracking devices so they can be located in real-time on computer charts. This information is provided to US and Canadian Marine Vessel Traffic Services to refer to if there is an emergency request for tug assistance. This is known as a “tug-of-opportunity”.

Apart from the fact that there may not be a tug capable of holding a large ship cruising by at the right time, there are several other flaws in this arrangement.

As consultant Stafford Reid points out in a recent report: “This arrangement also assumes that the tug has a place to harbour its tow (logs, barge), and that the environmental conditions for rescue do not put the crew in danger.”

“Lastly, the tug-of-opportunity relies on the captain and crew to have the training, skills, and equipment to ‘snag’ a vessel and to keep it ‘at station’ until additional assistance arrives or a place of refuge decision can be made on where to tow the vessel.”

In his report, Major Marine Casualty Risk and Response Preparedness in British Columbia, Reid looks at what might happen if a 67,000-deadweight container ship carrying 5,000 containers lost engine power during a severe storm off the west coast of Vancouver Island.

He notes that containerships often travel within 20 to 30 nautical miles offshore, and there is no guarantee that a tug coming to the rescue would actually be able to fix a line and hold the vessel at a steady state (at station) in severe storm conditions.

If the vessel did run aground, it might release 1,500 metric tons (11,500 barrels) of heavy bunker fuel oil and 800 metric tons (6,100 barrels) of marine diesel. In addition, 500 containers might fall overboard.

Nootka Island lies off Vancouver Island, to the west of Gold River, and spill response in such a remote, exposed area would be difficult. Although heavy surf would help clean up the oil naturally in exposed regions, a lot of semi-protected environments, created by small islands and reefs, would be affected. Birds and mammals, including marbled murrelets and sea otters, would be at risk. It’s an area with strong First Nations interests, which would also need to be respected.

Reid says that containers that fall overboard are a pollution and navigation hazard in themselves, and several are likely to have hazardous material products inside.

“There is no salvage plan for British Columbia on how to track and remove floating and/or stranded containers – let alone any cargo materials released from any damaged containers,” warns Reid.

As well, although B.C. has set up a Marine Chemical Emergency Response regime for dealing with hazardous materials, it has not been adopted or tested by industry or the federal government.

He says the gaps in B.C.’s oil spill response regime have been studied several times, but nothing has been done to correct them.

“Since 1995, Canada’s west coast has only had a few near misses from drifting vessels, and as a result the public and political pressure in British Columbia quickly waned.”

Reid makes several recommendations aimed at decreasing the risk of a grounding of a major vessel. In the report, prepared for Living Oceans Society, he suggests:

* The Canadian shipping industry should share in the funding of the Neah Bay dedicated tug in Washington State as it confers a direct benefit to the industry and to the protection of British Columbia’s south coast. A dedicated rescue tug has been stationed either part-time or full-time at Neah Bay, on the Olympic Peninsula since 1999.

* A dedicated rescue (assist) tug should be considered for the central coast of British Columbia. The tug’s size, specifications, equipment and training should include salvage, cargo and bunker lightering, firefighting and other response capabilities.

Provincial and federal response set up differently

In his 144-page report, Reid also criticizes the complex web of agencies involved in handling any marine oil spill, saying it is inefficient, increasingly under-staffed and that agencies often work in totally different ways.

Typically, the Canadian Coast Guard is responsible (the lead agency) for a spill in the water, while the B.C. Ministry of the Environment is responsible for spills on land.

However, the way the federal and provincial agencies do business after an oil spill are not “on the same playing field.” This means that when spills in the water reach land, jurisdictional and communication problems can easily arise.

The B.C. Ministry of the Environment uses the same structure as in the U.S., known as the Incident Command System. In this method, all the parties involved, including the Responsible Party (ship owner/operator), work together in a unified, shared command structure.

Meanwhile, the Canadian Coast Guard uses a totally different system known as the Response Management System, where it is solely in charge of making decisions.

Reid warns that the lack of harmony and lack of a positive relationship between the province and federal governments could seriously undermine effective response to a vessel casualty or marine oil spill.

He adds: “It doesn’t serve industry nor coastal communities well to let complacency slip in. British Columbians should expect worldwide “best achievable” practices to be used both in vessel casualty prevention and response measures.”

Earlier posts:
What if a tanker heading for Kitimat hit another vessel?
Tug escort rules vary in B.C.

Download the report:
Major Marine Casualty Risk and Response Preparedness in British Columbia (large PDF file)