Editor:
The Vancouver Airport Fuel Facilities Corporation (VAFFC) continues to claim its proposal (to have super tankers ladened with up to 80 million litres of hazardous jet fuel travelling 15 kilometres upstream on the Fraser River) would get tanker trucks off our roads and that if the project is not approved, the number of tanker trucks needed is going to grow to ridiculous levels.
Considering the tragedy of the Lemon Creek toxic and flammable jet fuel spill facing the residents and the environment around Lemon Creek, Slocan and Columbia rivers, why are there hazardous tanker trucks on our roads to supply YVR? Tanker trucks are arguably one of the worst methods of transporting petro-chemicals due to the health and safety risks they pose to the public and the environment.
A month after the spill, people near Lemon Creek are reporting, that "the water still smells and tastes of jet fuel." According to the Castlegar News, the jet fuel spill slick flowed from Lemon Creek to the Slocan River, to the Kootenay River and the Columbia River. Only time will tell what the long-term pollution effects on the people and environment in the area will be.
Currently about 80 per cent of the jet fuel for YVR is delivered through an existing pipeline from Burnaby. A publicly available legal document, produced on behalf of the pipeline operator, states the existing pipeline capacity would be able meet the needs of about 24 million YVR passengers. Currently YVR has about only 17 million passengers annually and its growth has stagnated in the last five years.
This future deficit of seven million passenger could be easily resolved if the existing pipeline is utilized more efficiently. Apparently, jet fuel enters the pipeline at 850psi of pressure, but trickles into YVR at only 30psi. The pipeline operator has offered to simply upgrade the fuel pumping system to provide 100 per cent of YVR's future jet fuel needs for a long, long time.
This would mean the VAFFC could have avoided the use of tanker trucks with minimal effort, a decision worth questioning. Yet the director of the VAFFC, Adrian Pollard, says that public safety and the environment are their top concerns.
However, VAFFC's own spill frequency estimates for proposed Fraser River super tanker terminal predicts spills of nearly four times the size of the Lemon Creek spill at 120,000 litres every 32 years and 6,000 litres every six years, on the average, over the 60-year life of the project.
VAFFC has shown it does not have public and environmental interest at heart now or in future. We must protect our communities and valuable ecosystem of the Fraser River estuary from reckless, self-serving and unnecessary risks. There are safer, more reliable and environmentally friendlier jet fuel transportation solutions using VAFFC's pipeline only options that will keep tanker trucks off our road and supertankers out of the Fraser River estuary.
Let's start with using existing pipeline resource efficiently.
Scott Carswell
Director
VAPOR Society
