Drawing the tanker line

Today, five pipelines are proposed from Alberta to the B.C. ports of Kitimat and Prince Rupert. But in the rush to welcome all this new development, the government seems to have forgotten what was feared back then - that in B.C.'s remote northern waters, a dead drifting tanker probably can't be saved in time to prevent an environmental catastrophe.

When Alaska started shipping crude oil south in supertankers, former B.C. Liberal leader (later a federal cabinet minister) David Anderson pressed for a moratorium to keep the vessels out of Canadian waters.

Although Canada never adopted a formal ban on tanker traffic as Mr. Anderson requested, the United States did agree to route Alaska tankers down a corridor 160 kilometres west of Vancouver and Queen Charlotte Islands.

It wasn't until 1988, however, that the U.S. Coast Guard and the Canadian Coast Guard formalized the concept, by agreeing to a voluntary tanker exclusion zone about 100 kilometres offshore.

The TEZ was established after Canada did a study to determine what would happen if a tanker became disabled on B.C.'s remote northern coast and started to drift.

The drift study found only 25 tugs between Alaska and Washington that were big enough to assist a stricken super tanker. And only two - both in Anacortes, Wash. - were available for emergency dispatch.

The Canadian Coast Guard simulated the drift track of a 100,000-deadweight-tonne tanker under various scenarios. It calculated that it would take tugs 18 hours to reach a tanker off Estevan Point, midway up Vancouver Island, 37 hours to reach Cape St. James, on the southern tip of the Queen Charlottes, and 54.5 hours to reach Langara Point, on the north end of the Charlottes.

The threat was clear. If a big oil tanker became disabled inside the TEZ, it would drift ashore long before any tug could tow it to safety.

In 1989, something much worse than the drifting tanker scenario happened, when the Exxon Valdez strayed off course and hit Bligh Reef, spilling 40.9 million litres of crude into Alaska's Prince William Sound.

Canadians watched the environmental disaster unfold with a sense of horror, knowing Alaska's rich marine environment was much like B.C.'s, but also with a feeling of relief, thinking it couldn't happen here because tankers like the Exxon Valdez were excluded from our waters.

That was then.

Under the Liberal provincial government, which has been promoting the expansion of ports in Kitimat and Prince Rupert, big tankers loaded with condensate, liquefied natural gas and crude oil are increasingly plying B.C. waters, crossing the TEZ in the process.

B.C. leaders defend the practice by saying there never was a formal ban on tanker traffic, so they aren't breaking any rules.

Technically, that is correct, but the exclusion zone has been rigorously respected by the coast guards of two nations and by the international shipping fleet.

Responding to e-mail questions from Charles Campbell of the Dogwood Initiative, a Victoria-based environmental think tank, Transport Canada communication officer Sara Hof said the TEZ "is monitored continuously by Marine Communications and Traffic Service, a branch of the Canadian Coast Guard."

She said "charts are marked boldly with 'TEZ' " and mariners are routinely reminded of it in notices and sailing directions.

Ms. Hof, ignoring deliberate East-West crossings, said "there have been no TEZ incursions during the past 15 years."

By encouraging tanker traffic to cross the TEZ, the B.C. government has put the pristine west coast at increased risk, and it has done so without public discourse.

Mr. Campbell says it is ridiculous to suggest a loaded oil tanker going from Alaska to Washington is a risk to the coastline, but one going from Kitimat or Prince Rupert to Asia is not.

"The closer they are to our shores, the more hazardous they are," said Mr. Campbell, whose organization is asking for an oil tanker ban on B.C.'s north coast.

Crude oil tankers (34 last year) go through southern waters to a terminal in Burnaby, but they follow a route around the tail end of the TEZ that is close to rescue tugs and was left open to allow traffic into Washington ports.

It is the rugged, pristine, remote B.C. coast - including the shoreline of the Great Bear Rain Forest - that the Dogwood Initiative doesn't want to see exposed to tanker traffic.

Mr. Campbell says 14 condensate tankers have been allowed into northern B.C. ports since January, 2006, and if the proposed pipelines to Alberta's tar sands are built, 320 tankers a year will soon be transiting B.C.'s most remote waters.

When the Canadian Coast Guard established the TEZ in 1988, it clearly saw a risk to the environment. Why can't the B.C. government see that risk now?