Letter to the editor,
I fully support NDP Horgans’ decision to establish an independent scientific advisory panel to make recommendations to the Minister of Environment and Climate Change Strategy on if and how heavy oils can be safely transported and cleaned up if spilled.
The double-hulled Iranian Oil tanker (constructed like the ‘safe’ B.C. oil tankers) that split and exploded in the East China Sea revealed many unpleasant surprises about the unique hazards of condensate spills and contamination, especially in regard to clean-up and their immediate and long-term effects on fish, sea mammals, and the dire economic costs of the environmental disaster.
B.C. has already experienced the devastating long-term results of numerous oil spills via the railway, and marine shipping. There is no financial compensation for those who lose their employment and food-sources.
The potential for a diluted bitumen spill poses a significant risk to our inland and coastal environment and could devastate thousands more of marine harvesting jobs, destroy local and First Nations food security, and obliterate the successful Supernatural B.C. tourist-trade.
Big oil is in such an obnoxious hurry to push the KinderMorgan pipeline project through, however, they are not going to be the taxpayers who pay the cleanup costs and suffer the loss of long-term reliable revenue from a poisoned resource. They don’t live here.
Until the B.C. NDP regulates the transportation of bitumen in law, protecting B.C.’s environment, it is impossible for anyone—including Notley, Trudeau or Clark—to know if the NDP is proceeding illegally or unconstitutionally - despite what is reported in the media.
Yours sincerely,
Susan Eyre, Yahk, B.C.