Tsleil-Waututh says spill demonstrates response deficiencies
Posted April 11, 2013 11:34 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
NORTH VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) – Suncor Energy insists a leak from its plant in Port Moody on Saturday only involved a soybean-based product.
But local First Nations say it illustrates how ill-prepared municipalities are in dealing with spills.
Suncor says 225 barrels of the biodegradable agent leaked from a tank, two litres of which ended up in Burrard Inlet.
What angers Carleen Thomas of the Tsleil-Waututh Nation is that it took four days for her community to be notified.
“The point is, it doesn’t matter how much spill material is ending up anywhere. We have no process, we have no plan to deal with spills. First nations and municipalities aren’t included in an emergency response plan,” she explains.
The band is strongly opposed to the twinning of Kinder Morgan‘s pipeline to Burnaby. They’re concerned about increased tanker traffic and the risk that poses to Burrard Inlet.
She says this latest scenario forces people to ask two major questions.
“Who gets to decide what is an acceptable level of a spill, and who gets to decide who will be contacted about a spill?”
Suncor says the agent is not classified as environmentally hazardous.
