Dear Editor:
It’s not just the impact of the pipeline route, but the impact of tanker traffic from the end of the pipeline to the open sea on people, sea life, salmon runs, tourism, and pollution from potential spills that must be taken into account.
The extra oil brought in by an expanded Kinder Morgan pipeline should not increase tanker traffic in Vancouver Harbour, but be piped down to U.S. customers and closer to the open sea.
It must be clear that any increased tanker traffic in sea narrows will bring more pollution, spills and sea life disruptions regardless of any advanced tanker technology. On top of it, even minor accidents or spills in narrows can easily disrupt the oil delivery as well.
It would be smarter to spend more resources for better routing of pipelines to avoid any increased tanker traffic in sea narrows and danger of major losses due to oil delivery disruptions.
Five to 15 per cent of all large vessels are believed to break the law by discharging waste oil into the oceans. There will always be some operators trying to save money by illegally dumping raw sewage and bilge oil and water in sea narrows.
The local facilities – beaches, sea walks, marinas and fishing areas will be gradually destroyed by excessive pollution from unnecessary large oil tanker traffic.
Chances of any oil spill will be exponentially increased. It will be virtually impossible to completely clean up due to products spilled. Toxicity of diluted bitumen on sea life can increase 50-fold when illuminated with natural sunlight.
The diluted bitumen is hard to contain and collect for it’s not floating but sinking to bottom where its degradation becomes very slow. Bitumen’s high toxicity will start killing all sea life. The beaches will be closed to swimming indefinitely.
Total collapse of healthy living in Great Vancouver should be expected after any bigger diluted Bitumen oil spill.
The Kinder Morgan pipeline expansion project is testing British Columbian’s people intelligence by offering them to take huge risks with minimum benefits.
Bede Kosman
North Vancouver
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