Energy
Energy Development-Oil and Gas, Wind Farms, Hydro Projects
Three humpback whales have zeroed in on a school of herring near the point where Whale Passage spills into Caamano Sound. The largest of the three dives, its great spine arcing gracefully above the surface of the water before disappearing into the depths, vanishing only momentarily before remerging headfirst its great jaw slung open, to scoop up the hundreds of fish that have been corralled and pushed to the surface by this 10-tonne marine mammal.
It’s a fitting backdrop to our meeting with Janie Wray, who with her husband Hermann Meuter, has been studying whales in the tangle of passages and narrows where Douglas Channel spills out of the Coast Mountains of British Columbia central coast.
“We came up because there wasn’t much known about marine mammals around here. It’s a very rich area,” says Wray, who monitors the feeding and a migratory patterns of humpbacks, resident and transient Orcas, minkes and other species that occupy this astoundingly beautiful and rugged part of B.C.’s coastline.
While forestry once dominated the environmental debate in the Great Bear Rainforest, the central coast is facing another challenge; the insatiable demand for fossil fuels and other energy sources that are now posing a serious threat to the marine and terrestrial ecosystems of the north and central coast.
The threat is happening on several fronts. Proposed pipelines connecting the Alberta oil patch with a deepwater port in Kitimat are coming hand-in-hand with a quiet but determined effort by the provincial and federal governments to lift a moratorium on tanker traffic along the province’s coast. In addition, an American-based corporation is playing the “green energy” card with a proposal for a massive wind turbine farm on Banks Island. A boom in proposals for independent run-of-the-river hydro-electric projects threatens to turn B.C.’s public freshwater river resource into a goldmine for private companies. Private power producers are eying up hundreds of pristine streams and rivers on the coast, including the Nascall, Klinaklini and the Europa. The push to meet the province’s growing energy needs and to create a surplus for export to energy-hungry America could come at grave cost to the environment.
Of immediate concern is tanker traffic on the coast. The question is: can tankers as long as several football fields safely ply the same treacherous waters traveled by humpbacks, Orcas, greys as well as Dall’s porpoises and white sided dolphins, not to mention myriad species of salmon and other anadromous fish?The pressure is real. Already Encana is importing tanker loads of condensate, a toxic chemical used to liquefy oil from the tar sands, to Kitimat – in violation of the tanker traffic ban. Enbridge wants to build two pipelines between the tar sands and Kitimat, one to transport 150,000 barrels of condensate per year, the other to export 400,000 barrels of oil per day. Kinder Morgan is also planning a pipeline to export crude oil. If these projects go ahead, more than 300 tankers could be traveling our coastal waters annually; this despite the fact that Canada’s federal government imposed a moratorium on tanker traffic in 1972 and that the Canadian public remains averse to lifting the ban.
History tells us that with this volume of tanker traffic, the questions is not “if” but “when” a major spill on the scale of the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster that dumped 41 million litres of crude oil into Alaska’s Prince William Sound will happen. Statistics indicate that between 1996 and 2006, there were 205 tankers spills worldwide, and that’s counting only the spills that were more than seven tonnes. The proposed shipping route to and from Kitimat along Douglas Channel and around both the east and west sides of Gil Island, is rife with shallow reefs and narrow passages. It makes Prince William Sound, site of the Exxon Valdez disaster - seem like child’s play in comparison. As a U.S. Coast Guard captain said at the time about the Exxon Valdez debacle; “these are not challenging waters. A kid could have driven a tanker through there.” Still, a major disaster unfolded in this Alaskan sound and the surrounding marine ecosystem is still recovering. On B.C.’s still relatively pristine central and north coast, an astoundingly rich ecosystem is hanging in the balance. Half of the fish caught in B.C. migrate through or originate in the waters between Vancouver Island and Hecate Straight. A single oil spill can decimate out-migrating salmon smolts and juveniles as well as returning adults, with untold cascading impacts on the species that depend of healthy salmon returns. Loons, grebes and other sea ducks are highly vulnerable to oil as they spend much of their time floating on the surface and live in shallow inter-tidal zones where oil from a spill tends to collect. Marine mammals can see their food sources wiped out, as was the case with the Exxon Valdez spill that resulted in 11 Orcas dying from starvation.
The question of industrial-scale wind farms also deserves close scrutiny. Katabatic Power, a San Francisco-based company, is proposing a huge wind farm in the middle of a conservancy on the north end of Banks Island that was established less than three years ago as part of the Great Bear Rainforest agreement. Though the proponent would
have the public believe that Banks Island is a desolate biologically impoverished place, the opposite is true. This wild outer coast island is home to more than 20 salmon stream systems, nesting migratory sandhill cranes, packs of wolves that roam the beaches and estuaries, not to mention a host of marine species. Along with the wind farm would come a 100 kilometer-long power line connecting Banks Island with the grid in Kitimat that would require a 50-metre right-of-way to be cut through several other nature conservancies. Despite the green washing, wind-generated power on this scale comes at a cost.Clearly energy development and demand is putting enormous pressure on the Great Bear Rainforest. When other countries are looking beyond fossil fuels for other sources of power and focusing more on conservation and reducing demand, our government is facilitating the further development of conventional oil and gas development as well as poorly conceived mega-wind power projects. Once the pipelines get built and power line grid is extended to outer coast islands and Great Bear Rainforest rivers and streams, there will be no turning back the clock and the energy floodgates will be open.