LandKeepers News Archive
Pipeline Opposition Heightens on Anniversary of Exxon Valdez Spill
March 24 2010 | News Articles | Kitimat Northern Sentinel
Dear sir,
In the early hours of March 24, 1989, the residents of the small community of Cordova, Alaska, awoke to their worst nightmare. The supertanker Exxon Valdez had run aground on Bligh Reef, and was gushing North Slope crude from a gash in the hull.
In all, some 40 million litres of crude oil spilled into Prince William Sound, killing 22 orcas, 250,000 sea birds, 2,800 sea otters, 1.9 million salmon and 12.9 billion herring.
The images of the Exxon’s oily victims being hauled from the water remain seared into our collective consciousness as one of the worst environmental catastrophes in North American history.
Twenty-one years later, Canadians have an opportunity to prevent precisely this kind of disaster from befalling our own precious coast.
If built, the Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline would see 225 oil tankers, many of them VLCCs (Very Large Crude Carriers), leave Kitimat each year. They would travel along Douglas Channel then navigate the Channel’s tricky entrance, passing close by Gil Island, where BC Ferry Queen of the North ran aground and sank in 2006.
Two hundred and twenty five tankers per year, every year, for the life of the pipeline. Is that a risk we want to take?
If BC suffered a spill equivalent to the Exxon Valdez, the oil would line the shores from Prince Rupert to Seattle, Washington, including the renowned Great Bear Rainforest.
This is an area of unparalleled beauty and diversity that has captured the imagination of people around the world.
Huge trees well over a thousand years old create the forests that are home to grizzly bears, eagles, wolves, wild salmon and the beautiful spirit bear (Kermode). One major spill, and we could lose much of what makes this place special.
Two decades later, the sea otters, harlequin ducks, and killer whales have still not fully recovered in Alaska’s Prince William Sound. Herring have essentially been wiped out. To this day, oil can still be found lurking beneath the surface of the region’s shoreline and beaches.
On the anniversary of the Exxon spill, we must ask ourselves if we are prepared to weather a disaster such as this on our coast. Are we prepared to risk losing the rich and diverse coastal ecosystem that is so vital to the cultures, ecosystems and local economies of the northwest?
Enbridge’s tar sands pipeline and tanker project represents the same old way of thinking that resulted in so much pain and hardship for the people of Alaska.
In 20 years, I hope to be celebrating the anniversary of a permanent ban on tankers in our northern waters, not commemorating the demise of our coast.
If you could have stopped the Exxon Valdez oil spill, don’t you think you would have at least tried?
Nikki Skuce
Smithers, BC
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