Oil spill in Burnaby a harbinger for all of B.C.

<P>Early Tuesday afternoon, a pipeline running under a Burnaby street was ruptured, sending a geyser of oil spouting into the air.</P>
<P>Even though the leak was quickly detected and the pipeline shut off, and emergency personnel arrived at the scene and attempted to contain the oil, an estimated 232,000 litres of oil spewed into the Burnaby neighbourhood -- coating houses, resulting in evacuations and ultimately flowing into Burrard Inlet, where it is being described as a major environmental disaster.</P>
<P>This spill has shocked the residents of Greater Vancouver. How could something like this happen? What impact will it have on the inlet? Who is responsible?</P>
<P>It's not the first time these questions have been asked about oil spills. Turn the clock back seven years -- to August 2000 -- and let's look at the northeastern B.C. community of Chetwynd.</P>
<P>About 100 kilometres up the Pine River, an oil pipeline operated by the Pembina Pipeline Corp. has just ruptured, dumping oil into the river.</P>
<P>Unlike in Burnaby, emergency response teams are hours away, and when they do arrive at the site, they do not have the staff or equipment to adequately contain the oil.</P>
<P>The resulting spill is the largest inland pipeline leak in Canadian history, resulting in one million litres of oil being discharged into the Pine River, contaminating the water system of Chetwynd, closing a number of nearby wells, and killing countless fish and animals. Although Pembina Pipeline ultimately spends more than $30 million to clean up the oil, the river ecosystem is permanently changed.</P>
<P>Those of us living in Vancouver did not have to deal with the upper Pine leak. We are dealing with the Burrard Inlet leak. Somehow it is more immediate, more devastating, when it happens in your own backyard.</P>
<P>In B.C. today, oil spills are inevitable. There are more than 25,000 kilometres of oil pipelines across B.C., with big plans to build more.</P>
<P>Even more disturbing are plans to run oil tankers up and down the north coast to service these pipelines. While there are no figures on the number of leaks in B.C. pipes, a study of the oil industry in Alberta found that between 1980 and 1997 an average of 674 pipeline failures occurred each year. While not all would be as dramatic as the Burnaby or Pine River spills, many would -- but they wouldn't necessarily be front-page news.</P>
<P>The statistics for tanker spills are even more frightening: Environment Canada predicts that if the pipeline and tankers proposal go ahead, every year there would be at least 100 small spills, 10 moderate spills and one major oil spill. And one "catastrophic" spill -- think Exxon Valdez -- every 15 years.</P>
<P>The Burnaby spill should give all British Columbians pause.</P>
<P>How quickly do we want our oil and gas industry to develop? What laws do we want in place to make sure that accidents like this one, or like the Pine River spill, don't happen? How can we protect our coastal ecosystems so that they won't be irreversibly damaged by the inevitable spills?</P>
<P>Do we want the federal government to lift the existing moratorium on tankers in northern B.C. -- as it is considering?</P>
<P>Given how difficult it is to contain oil in an urban area, with quick detection and a rapid emergency response, imagine dealing with a major oil spill each year in an isolated stretch of treacherous ocean, where help is hours, if not days, away.</P>
<P>The Burnaby oil spill represents a serious health and safety threat to the residents of Burnaby and communities along Burrard Inlet. It will have a lasting impact on the ecology of these areas.</P>
<P>The public is right to demand answers about how the spill happened and how future spills can be prevented.</P>
<P>The reality is that our federal and provincial governments are considering allowing tanker traffic on the North Coast and more pipelines across the province; if we allow those to go ahead, we will face major spills and environmental devastation on a regular basis.</P>
<P>Dismissing this spill as a one-off disaster will not make that fact go away.</P>
<P>It's time to demand a new approach to regulation of the oil industry, where strong laws, like a legal moratorium on tanker traffic in the north, adequately protect our health and the environment.</P>
<P>Margot McMillan and Andrew Gage are staff lawyers with West Coast Environmental Law.<BR>&nbsp;<BR></P>