{"id":7708,"date":"2015-04-30T06:00:26","date_gmt":"2015-04-30T11:00:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=7708"},"modified":"2015-04-30T06:00:26","modified_gmt":"2015-04-30T11:00:26","slug":"four-things-we-may-never-know-about-the-vancouver-fuel-spill","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=7708","title":{"rendered":"Four Things We May Never Know About the Vancouver Fuel Spill"},"content":{"rendered":"

Four Things We May Never Know About the Vancouver Fuel Spill<\/a><\/h3>\n

Total volume, how the Kits coast guard would respond, and two more big\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Late Saturday afternoon,\u00a0Transport Canada officially\u00a0cleared<\/a>the MV Marathassa\u00a0to leave Canadian waters, weeks after the ship spilled an undetermined amount of fuel into Burrard Inlet.<\/p>\n

As it exits the Salish Sea, the bulk carrier leaves angry mayors, a combative coast guard, a distrustful public and many, many questions in its\u00a0wake. Here are four things we don’t know — and may never know — about what happened in English Bay.<\/p>\n

1. What is the total spill volume?<\/strong><\/p>\n

In his first press conference after the spill, Cmdr. Roger Girouard of the Canadian Coast Guard stated the volume of the spill\u00a0was 2,700 litres. He reiterated this point during subsequent media appearances, and Industry Minister James Moore echoed his\u00a0comments.<\/p>\n

Vancouver city manager Penny Ballem disputes the claim. In a recent presentation to Vancouver’s city council, she pegged the real volume somewhere between 3,000 and 5,000 litres.<\/p>\n

Then there’s the amount recovered. The day after the spill, Cmdr. Girouard reported cleanup crews\u00a0had recovered about 1,400 litres of fuel. A few days later, Coast Guard Commissioner Jody Thomas\u00a0said cleanup crews recovered 80 per cent of fuel spilled\u00a0within 36 hours.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

According to the president of a B.C. oil spill prevention and response planning firm, recovering between 10 and 15 per cent of conventional oil spilled in seawater is a\u00a0“best case” scenario<\/a>. Bunker C fuel — the product spilled in English Bay — is not conventional: it is\u00a0denser, more viscous and heavier\u00a0than conventional crude. Unlike conventional oil, bunker C fuel\u00a0is\u00a0not certain to float<\/a>nor does it weather and dissolve as easily.<\/p>\n

On average\u00a0only five to 10 per cent of the bunker C fuel\u00a0will evaporate within 24 hours. Instead it breaks into tarballs and settles lower in the water column — sometimes as far\u00a0as one to three metres\u00a0below<\/a>\u00a0the\u00a0surface.<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Four Things We May Never Know About the Vancouver Fuel Spill Total volume, how the Kits coast guard would respond, and two more big\u00a0 Late Saturday afternoon,\u00a0Transport Canada officially\u00a0clearedthe MV Marathassa\u00a0to leave Canadian waters, weeks after the ship spilled an undetermined amount of fuel into Burrard Inlet. As it exits the Salish Sea, the bulk […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[5051,5053,5049,1426,5052,655,5050,1340],"class_list":["post-7708","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-energy-2","category-environment","tag-burrard-inlet","tag-english-bay","tag-fuel-spill","tag-misinformation","tag-mv-marathassa","tag-propaganda","tag-transport-canada","tag-vancouver"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7708","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7708"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7708\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7709,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7708\/revisions\/7709"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7708"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7708"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7708"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}