Huge Burnaby oil spill

Live Video of the Burnaby Gusher

Oil spill closes roads
Derrick Penner and Kelly Sinoski, Vancouver Sun, 24-Jul-2007

Oil pipeline accident causes spill in Burnaby, B.C.
CTV.ca New Staff, 24-Jul-2007

Huge Burnaby oil spill
Derrick Penner and Kelly Sinoski, Vancouver Sun, 25-Jul-2007

Black Tuesday in Burnaby’s Westridge
David Weir, Burnaby NewsLeader, 26-Jul-2007

From new home dream to oily mess
Denise Ryan, Vancouver Sun, 26-Jul-2007

Pipeline company to review survey maps, but says B.C. spill wasn't its map error
Terri Theodore, 680 News, 26-Jul-2007

Oil spill
Jonathan Woodward, Vancouver Sun, 27-Jul-2007

Cleaning up a gooey mess
Jonathan Woodward, Vancouver Sun, 27-Jul-2007

Clean up will take long time warns SFU professor
Michael McQuillan, Burnaby NewsLeader, 27-Jul-2007

Oily mess turning up around inlet
David Weir, Burnaby NewsLeader, 27-Jul-2007

‘Too early to point fingers in spill’
Wanda Chow, Burnaby NewsLeader, 27-Jul-2007

Tank farm too close to housing says advocate
Wanda Chow, Burnaby NewsLeader, 27-Jul-2007

Oil spill in Burnaby a harbinger for all of B.C.
Margot McMillan and Andrew Gage, Vancouver Sun, 27-Jul-2007

Residents forced out by oil spill start returning home
Jeremy Hainsworth, Globe and Mail, 28-Jul-2007

Beaches closed as 'big black globs' of oil spread north
Jonathan Woodward, Vancouver Sun, 28-Jul-2007

Pipeline map issue still murky after spill
Jonathan Woodward, Vancouver Sun, 31-Jul-2007

Burnaby oil spill will have long-term toxic impact: experts

Aerial view of the area of Inlet Drive and Ridge Drive where a Kinder Morgan crude oil pipeline was ruptured Tuesday afternoon. The geyser of oil coated roads, vehicles and homes.
CREDIT: Ian Lindsay, Vancouver Sun

Firefighters, reflected in oil, attend spill.
CREDIT: Andy Clark, Reuters

A contractor doing roadwork in Burnaby ruptured a pipeline sending a geyser of crude oil across the neighbourhood's roads, vehicles and nearby homes. The oil formed a slick on Burrard Inlet.
CREDIT: Ian Lindsay, Vancouver Sun

A contractor doing roadwork in Burnaby ruptured a pipeline sending a geyser of crude oil across the neighbourhood's roads, vehicles and nearby homes. The oil formed a slick on Burrard Inlet.

A 12-metre geyser of crude oil spewed from a broken pipeline in a Burnaby neighbourhood Tuesday, forcing people from their homes, contaminating the area and sending a thick, smelly torrent down storm sewers and into Burrard Inlet.

Cusano Contracting, doing sewer work for the City of Burnaby at Inlet Drive and Ridge Drive, punctured the pipeline with a backhoe around 12:30 p.m. Tuesday. The torrent flooded the yards of eight homes, which were ordered evacuated, while another 92 homes were placed on a voluntary evacuation list.

The pipeline is part of Kinder Morgan Canada's TransMountain Pipeline system. It carries oil from a pipeline terminal at the foot of Burnaby Mountain to a tanker-loading facility on Burrard Inlet, said Kinder Morgan spokesman Philippe Reicher.

Kinder Morgan Canada president Ian Anderson said pipeline operators shut off the flow of oil minutes after learning of the puncture, so only the oil already in the pipeline was spilled. He couldn't say Tuesday how much oil had been spilled.

Kinder Morgan Canada president Ian Anderson said pipeline operators shut off the flow of oil minutes after learning of the puncture, so only the oil already in the pipeline was spilled. He couldn't say Tuesday how much oil had been spilled.

However, witnesses said a fountain of oil sprayed the area for up to half an hour, soaking the contracting crew, a car that was driving down Inlet Drive and two firefighters who arrived at the scene. The oil poured into sanitary and storm sewers, before flowing into Burrard Inlet at the foot of Cliff Avenue.

Anmore resident Jesse Cathcart, who was driving west on Inlet when the rupture occurred, said work crews immediately blocked traffic and cars were turning around in the middle of the street in front of him.

"At first it looked like a water main had burst," Cathcart said. "Oil started running down the road."

Cathcart, an amateur photographer, pulled off to a side street and began to photograph the scene. "They eventually started piling up gravel to divert it, but there was tons and tons of this stuff pouring into the storm drains," he said.

"It was impressive," said Rebecca Lee, 27, who lives a couple of houses away. "It was shooting over the lamp posts and it was so thick. It was covering all the trees, I wanted to be in the middle of it all."

Burnaby Mayor Derek Corrigan said the city and contractors had followed all the proper protocols before going ahead with the work. He said he understood the contractors, who worked for the city, were given maps by Kinder Morgan showing they weren't likely to strike a pipeline in the area.

The contractors misjudged the pipeline by about three metres, city spokeswoman Susan Rae said.

"Obviously we're going to have a good look at the procedure followed here to ensure it won't happen again," Corrigan said. "We're going to have to sort out how the mistake was made."

However, Anderson said Kinder Morgan personnel had worked with the contractor to mark the pipeline's location and inspectors were on the scene a few days ago. Kinder Morgan officials, who shut off the pipeline remotely, were at the site Tuesday to work with the city to clean up the mess.

"We definitely know the construction crew had maps," Anderson said.

He said the company will shoulder the initial cleanup costs, but an investigation will decide who ultimately pays for the cleanup.

"We will be undertaking a thorough investigation of what has occurred," he added.

Crews from Quantum Environmental were expected to work through the night to mop up the oil, using a mixture of peat and sand.

Police closed Inlet Drive, the artery linking Hastings Street with Barnet Highway, to traffic. Traffic was rerouted to Gaglardi and Mountain Parkway overnight. The West Coast Express and CP Rail lines continued to operate.

Crews were working through the night to get Inlet Drive open in the morning, Rae said at a 9 p.m. press conference.

The RCMP, the Burnaby fire department and a hazardous materials team responded to the emergency and immediately evacuated about 30 homes.

Corrigan said as many as 100 homes could have been evacuated, but the evacuation zone was eventually reduced to eight homes.

Residents on Inlet, Ridge, Belcarra and Malibu drives and North Cliff Crescent were told to go to Confederation Centre near Hastings and Willingdon, where they were given hotel and food vouchers for the next two days while response crews begin the cleanup.

Rae said some residents had already gone home, but those who couldn't tolerate the smell could be put up at a hotel for two days, with the province picking up the tab. She said it could take up to a week to mop up the mess at the eight homes, where oil has covered the backyards, decks and children's playgrounds. Those residents were allowed to go back home Tuesday to get medications and pets.

Najuli Jessa, who lives near the scene, said she thought for a moment that oil had been struck in her back yard. "I thought, 'We're rich, we're rich.' I was jumping a little bit. It was like we were in Texas," Jessa said.

Jessa had been napping when the stink of the spill got her out of bed. "First we smelled something," said the Barnet Road resident. "Then my brother opened the door and saw something in the air."

She said the strong fumes made her nauseous and gave her a headache. She returned home briefly but decided to stay at the Best Western because of the stench.

Environment Canada spokeswoman Micheline Brodeur said the National Energy Board is responsible for regulating the environmental safety of oil pipelines, but Environment Canada may end up being the lead agency in recovery efforts because oil made it into Burrard Inlet. The oil-industry-funded response firm Burrard Clean Operations was called in to deal with the mess. Its crews placed floating booms to contain oil that spilled into Burrard Inlet.

Department of Fisheries and Oceans spokeswoman Donna Martin said coast guard crews were on standby to assist in the cleanup, but were not immediately needed.

Oil remaining in the sewers will be vacuumed up to prevent it from reaching the inlet.

Dan Gilmore of the B.C. Environment Ministry said at least two ministry emergency response officers were at the scene of the spill. "Their main role is to mitigate the damage," he said. Gilmore said the officers had not yet been able to determine the full extent of the environmental damage.

Corrigan said the bulk of the oil drained into the city storm sewers, but much had been pumped out before it reached Burrard Inlet.

depenner@png.canwest.com

A CRUDE OIL PRIMER

- Crude oil is made up of a wide spectrum of hydrocarbons ranging from very volatile, light materials such as propane and benzene to more complex heavy compounds such as bitumens, asphaltenes, resins and waxes.

- Crude oil also contains sulphur, which has to be removed before it is burnt because it forms sulphur dioxide, which contributes to acid rain.

- Oil, when spilled at sea, will normally break up and be dissipated or scattered into the marine environment over time. This dissipation is a result of a number of chemical and physical processes that change the compounds that make up oil when it is spilled.

- Dissipation does not occur immediately. The time this takes depends on a series of factors, including the amount and type of oil spilled, the weather conditions and whether the oil stays at sea or is washed ashore.

Source: International Tanker Owners Pollution Federation Ltd. website

© The Vancouver Sun 2007

The rupture of an oil pipeline running under a highway in Burnaby, B.C. sent a geyser of oil into the sky and led to contamination of homes and the nearby Burrard Inlet.

The oil gushed for an estimated 25 to 30 minutes on Tuesday before crews were able to staunch the flow.

Freelance videographer Shawn Soucy lives near the spill site in Burnaby, a Vancouver suburb.

"I smelled what I thought was diesel fuel," he told CTV Newsnet. "I didn't see a spill, but when I got to the backyard, I saw the spray, the geyser of oil, above my neighbour's roofs."

Soucy said, "I shot it for a good 15, 20 minutes and I smelled it for another five or 10."

There were two different plumes, and the spray went up more than 20 metres, covering surrounding trees, houses and a Honda Civic, he said.

A sickening stench hangs in the air.

"This is a major, major oil spill. This isn't a couple of gallons," Soucy said.

Kinder Morgan Canada owns the pipeline. Philippe Reicher, a company spokesman, said the TransMountain Pipeline transfers crude oil from Edmonton to Burnaby. The oil is stored there before being piped onto tankers for shipment.

Burnaby Mayor Derek Corrigan said Kinder Morgan worked as quickly as possible to turn the oil off after the rupture occurred.

Reicher said the city informed the company at 12:30 p.m. local time.

The spill appears to be an industrial mishap.

Soucy said workers "who were wiping the oil off themselves" told him a backhoe hit the 60-centimetre pipeline. Some video he shot showed an oil-drenched backhoe. He offered the workers the use of his shower.

Corrigan told reporters that the line burst after city crews were working on a road upgrade.

About 30 homes have been evacuated.

"A fireman came to the door. He hammered on the door and said, 'Get out quick. They've had a gusher up on Inlet Drive. You got to get out as quick as you can. Get your car and go'," said resident Bill Smith.

Corrigan told reporters that "out of an abundance of caution," up to 100 homes might be evacuated, in part because of the fumes.

Officials set up an evacuation centre to help people with food and accommodation.

Environmental concern

The oil did make it into nearby Burrard Inlet, which forms Burnaby's north boundary. Television images showed Canada geese on the shoreline right beside the oil-contaminated seawater.

"It's mainly an environmental concern at this point," Corrigan told Newsnet.

Booms were set up, and much of the oil that went into the storm sewer was collected in the pump station at the outfall, he said.

"Only the overflow ended up in the inlet. It's quite a system we have in place."

Vancouver's port and Stanley Park both sit on Burrard Inlet 17 kilometres to the west of the spill site. Vancouver's Mayor Sam Sullivan said the city would take "urgent action" to protect both sites.

Susan Rae, a public information officer, said the spill was contained. Contractors have been hired to begin the clean-up, she said.

The area is home to a diverse array of wildlife, including seals and waterfowl.

Gail Telfor of the Oiled Wildlife Society of B.C. said that crude oil is very toxic.

"If the birds preen it off or a mammal licks it off, it's going to make them terribly ill," she told CTV British Columbia.

In 2006, a much smaller spill contaminated 40 birds, leaving six dead.

Who's to blame?

The city is taking the position that Kinder Morgan didn't properly inform them about the pipeline's location.

"One of the guys who was there when he got sprayed, he was telling me was he was wiping himself down that the pipe was not where they thought it was," Soucy said.

A contractor was doing the work for the city.

"We were told that they were nine metres away from the pipe, and that when they dug, the pipe was in a different place than it was on a map," Corrigan said.

"We rely on the company to tell us where their pipelines are," he said.

Ian Anderson, president of Kinder Morgan, said, "I don't believe so" when asked if his company misinformed the city.

"We've been in contact with that contractor. ... Our understanding is that all the appropriate information was provided," he said.

Corrigan said he would have to sort it out between Kinder Morgan and the contractor "as to who's accurate about what we've been told to this point."

With reports from CTV's Jina You, David Kincaid, Heron Hanuman, Michelle Simick, Dag Sharman and files from The Canadian Press

A 12-metre geyser of crude oil spewed from a broken pipeline in a Burnaby neighbourhood Tuesday, forcing people from their homes, contaminating the area and sending a thick, smelly torrent down storm sewers and into Burrard Inlet.

Cusano Contracting, doing sewer work for the City of Burnaby at Inlet Drive and Ridge Drive, punctured the pipeline with a backhoe around 12:30 p.m. Tuesday.

The torrent flooded the yards of eight homes, which were ordered evacuated, while another 92 homes were placed on a voluntary evacuation list.

The pipeline is part of Kinder Morgan Canada's TransMountain Pipeline system. It carries oil from a pipeline terminal at the foot of Burnaby Mountain to a tanker-loading facility on Burrard Inlet, said Kinder Morgan spokesman Philippe Reicher.

Kinder Morgan Canada president Ian Anderson said pipeline operators shut off the flow of oil minutes after learning of the puncture, so only the oil already in the pipeline was spilled. He couldn't say Tuesday how much oil had been spilled.

However, witnesses said a fountain of oil sprayed the area for up to half an hour, soaking the contracting crew, a car that was driving down Inlet Drive and two firefighters who arrived at the scene. The oil poured into sanitary and storm sewers, before flowing into Burrard Inlet at the foot of Cliff Avenue.

Anmore resident Jesse Cathcart, who was driving west on Inlet when the rupture occurred, said work crews immediately blocked traffic and cars were turning around in the middle of the street in front of him. "At first it looked like a water main had burst," Cathcart said. "Oil started running down the road."

Cathcart, an amateur photographer, pulled off to a side street and began to photograph the scene. "They eventually started piling up gravel to divert it, but there was tons and tons of this stuff pouring into the storm drains," he said.

"It was impressive," said Rebecca Lee, 27, who lives a couple of houses away. "It was shooting over the lamp posts and it was so thick. It was covering all the trees, I wanted to be in the middle of it all."

Burnaby Mayor Derek Corrigan said the city and contractors had followed all the proper protocols before going ahead with the work. He said he understood the contractors, who worked for the city, were given maps by Kinder Morgan showing they weren't likely to strike a pipeline in the area. The contractors misjudged the pipeline by about three metres, city spokeswoman Susan Rae said. "Obviously we're going to have a good look at the procedure followed here to ensure it won't happen again," Corrigan said. "We're going to have to sort out how the mistake was made." However, Anderson said Kinder Morgan personnel had worked with the contractor to mark the pipeline's location and inspectors were on the scene a few days ago.

Kinder Morgan officials, who shut off the pipeline remotely, were at the site Tuesday to work with the city to clean up the mess. "We definitely know the construction crew had maps," Anderson said. He said the company will shoulder the initial cleanup costs, but an investigation will decide who ultimately pays for the cleanup.

"We will be undertaking a thorough investigation of what has occurred," he added.

Crews from Quantum Environmental were expected to work through the night to mop up the oil, using a mixture of peat and sand.

Police closed Inlet Drive, the artery linking Hastings Street with Barnet Highway, to traffic. Traffic was rerouted to Gaglardi and Mountain Parkway overnight.

The West Coast Express and CP Rail lines continued to operate.

Crews were working through the night to get Inlet Drive open in the morning, Rae said at a 9 p.m. press conference. The RCMP, the Burnaby fire department and a hazardous materials team responded to the emergency and immediately evacuated about 30 homes.

Corrigan said as many as 100 homes could have been evacuated, but the evacuation zone was eventually reduced to eight homes. Residents on Inlet, Ridge, Belcarra and Malibu drives and North Cliff Crescent were told to go to Confederation Centre near Hastings and Willingdon, where they were given hotel and food vouchers for the next two days while response crews begin the cleanup.

Rae said some residents had already gone home, but those who couldn't tolerate the smell could be put up at a hotel for two days, with the province picking up the tab.

She said it could take up to a week to mop up the mess at the eight homes, where oil has covered the backyards, decks and children's playgrounds. Those residents were allowed to go back home Tuesday to get medications and pets.
Najuli Jessa, who lives near the scene, said she thought for a moment that oil had been struck in her back yard. "I thought, We're rich, we're rich.' I was jumping a little bit. It was like we were in Texas," Jessa said.

Jessa had been napping when the stink of the spill got her out of bed. "First we smelled something," said the Barnet Road resident. "Then my brother opened the door and saw something in the air." She said the strong fumes made her nauseous and gave her a headache. She returned home briefly but decided to stay at the Best Western because of the stench.

Environment Canada spokeswoman Micheline Brodeur said the National Energy Board is responsible for regulating the environmental safety of oil pipelines, but Environment Canada may end up being the lead agency in recovery efforts because oil made it into Burrard Inlet. The oil-industry-funded response firm Burrard Clean Operations was called in to deal with the mess. Its crews placed floating booms to contain oil that spilled into Burrard Inlet.

Department of Fisheries and Oceans spokeswoman Donna Martin said coast guard crews were on standby to assist in the cleanup, but were not immediately needed. Oil remaining in the sewers will be vacuumed up to prevent it from reaching the inlet.

Dan Gilmore of the B.C. Environment Ministry said at least two ministry emergency response officers were at the scene of the spill. "Their main role is to mitigate the damage," he said. Gilmore said the officers had not yet been able to determine the full extent of the environmental damage. Corrigan said the bulk of the oil drained into the city storm sewers, but much had been pumped out before it reached Burrard Inlet.

depenner@png.canwest.com
ksinoski@png.canwest.com
With files from Catherine Rolfsen

© Vancouver Sun 2007

Burnaby firefighters use sand to stop a river of crude oil flowing down Belcarra Drive Tuesday after a road crew punctured an underground oil pipeline.
Colleen Flanagan/newsleader

The stench of crude oil hung heavy over a North Burnaby neighbourhood as crews continued the clean up effort Wednesday, one day after a backhoe hit an underground pipeline, sending oil shooting up to 12 metres in the air and a river of the black gold flowing downhill toward Burrard Inlet.

At the height of the emergency, as many as 100 homes in the area where Inlet Drive links the Barnet Highway with Hastings Street were under a voluntary evacuation notice as firefighters tried to stem the flow of oil into the inlet.

But by early evening, the evacuation notice was scaled back to the 11 homes most seriously affected on Belcarra Drive.

Meanwhile, crews worked through the night to clean the slick black mess from Inlet Drive in the hopes the major commuter route linking Port Moody with Burnaby could be reopened by Thursday morning’s rush hour.

At the same time, the cost of the disaster is being tallied – both in terms of property damage and environmental damage from oil entering the Burrard Inlet.

“It is bad – there’s no question about it. It’s millions and millions of dollars of damage that’s been done as a result of it,” said Burnaby Mayor Derek Corrigan.

“There’s some pretty serious property damage to some private home owners. There obviously is some additional damage that’s been caused to our inlet as a result of oil going downhill and into the inlet. Right now they’re doing an assessment of that with the B.C. ministry of the environment and federal ministry.”

The accident happened around 12:35 p.m. Tuesday as a crew from Cusano Contracting Inc. was working on a sewer line for the City of Burnaby. A backhoe was digging near the intersection of Inlet and Ridge drives when it struck a pipeline that was pumping crude from the TransMountain Pipeline terminus on Burrard Inlet to a tank farm on Burnaby Mountain.

The rupture sent crude shooting up to 12 metres in the air, covering the backhoe, a nearby car and the roadway. The oil was also shooting over the fence into the Westridge residential area. There are reports of at least one home on Belcarra Drive being covered in crude, and the cul-de-sac was turned into an oily mess.

“I smelled the smell of gas or oil in my home and the next thing I knew I heard a frantic knock on the door of my upstairs neighbour and it was a police officer telling us we had to be evacuated from our street immediately,” said Natalie Marson, who lives on Belcarra.

“It’s a pretty black slick at the end of my street,” she said when asked to describe the scene. “Belcarra is on a cul-de-sac and the trees and street are black with oil. It’s just not a very good thing.”

Emergency officials initially ordered the evacuation of roughly 30 homes on Belcarra, Sierra and Malibu drives, but the order was later expanded to cover up to 100 homes in the area because of health concerns about the fumes, before scaling it back to the 11 most seriously affected homes.

The evacuees were taken to Confederation Park Seniors Centre while the city lined up temporary lodging. It could be a couple of days before they are allowed to return home.

Corrigan was at a loss to explain how the accident happened. Kinder Morgan, which operates the pipeline, had provided the city and the road crew a map showing where the pipeline was supposed to be.

“The information that they had was that there wasn’t going to be a pipeline affected, and apparently there was in fact a pipeline there – they clipped it and that was what caused the oil geyser,” Corrigan said.

“Obviously we’re going to have a long, hard look at the procedures and protocols that were followed here to make sure something like this doesn’t happen again.”

He added the focus so far has not been on the investigation, but rather on clean up and mitigation.

“The priorities right now are the immediate and urgent circumstances and we’ll try to sort out afterwards where blame is apportioned,” Corrigan said.

On Tuesday, firefighters used sand to create mini dikes to hold back the river of crude flowing down Belcarra. They also raced to block off manhole covers and storm sewer drains in an effort to keep the crude from entering the storm sewer system and flowing out into the inlet.

Still, there was oil that reached the inlet as Burrard Clean rushed to get containment booms set up to control the growing oil slick. Within three hours of the rupture, oil was visible on the shoreline at the eastern edge of Barnet Marine Park, about 1.5 kilometres from where the crude likely entered the water.

Kinder Morgan has also hired Focus Wildlife to clean and rehabilitate any wildlife covered by the sticky, black crude oil. As of noon Wednesday, the organization had rescued five birds from the affected area.

It was approximately 30 minutes before the pipeline was shut down, but it’s still not known how much oil escaped from the ruptured pipeline.

dweir@burnabynewsleader.com

Black lawns glisten and oil-slicked trees shine nightmarishly in the sun while men in masks, gloves and white coveralls comb the streets, hauling hoses, cameras and clipboards.

They are here to mop up and flush out the crude oil that has coated this bucolic neighbourhood behind the police tape on Belcarra Drive, a few steps removed from Inlet Drive, where a Kinder Morgan pipeline was ruptured Tuesday.

Mario Siniscalchi and his wife, Sabrina, can't stay away. For two years they've been building their dream home, and now it's spattered with oil, one of the hardest-hit on Belcarra Drive.

The young couple was supposed to move in this Saturday with their four boys, Joseph, 9, Matteo, 7, Loreto, 3 and baby Stefano, 11 months. They planned to celebrate the occasion with Loreto's fourth-birthday party.

Now they don't know when - or if - they will be able to move in.

They are afraid for their health, their welfare, their future. Loreto knows he probably won't be getting a party. The family doesn't have much to celebrate now.

Tears stream down Sabrina's face. "This was our dream," she says, gesturing toward the spectacular view of Burrard Inlet from their back yard.

She stands on black, oil-soaked earth. "This is where I was going to grow
vegetables and have a play area for the boys, a place of beauty," she says, wiping away tears.

For two years the family has lived with Sabrina's parents, crammed into a two-bedroom basement suite while Mario supervised construction of the home, laying the wide-plank oak hardwood floors himself.

On Tuesday, Sabrina was at the home, supervising the final tile-cutting for the kitchen backsplash, when Loreto came running in from the front yard. "My son said, Mommy, there's water coming in the house.'"

Sabrina ran to the front door where she was drenched in oil from the rupture, the geyser shooting high in the air just metres from her door, beyond a low fence. The tile-cutter said the highway was exploding.

"It was like a volcano," she says. "I just started screaming."

Sabrina loaded her boys in the car and tried to drive away. She didn't get far.
The car was completely blackened by oil. "I was hanging my head out the window, trying to see.

"Look," she says, pointing to the delicate folds of the infant Joseph's small ear, "the baby still has oil in his ears, we can't get it out."

Her legs are still splattered with crude oil, even after a trip to the hospital where she was treated for headache, eye irritation and nausea, even after scrubbing with soap and hot water at the Best Western where they've been temporarily housed.

"This is a living nightmare," says Mario. "Who is going to help us? Who is going to take care of it?"

"I'm the sole income earner," adds Mario, an information technology specialist. "I worked my whole life for this."

Beyond the police lines, the smell of crude oil hangs thick in the air, acrid, eye-stinging. The road is covered in cedar sawdust to absorb the oil and provide traction for the trucks that rumble in and out.

Mario touches the delicate leaves of a 50-year-old Japanese maple, now tacky and black with crude.

For the Siniscalchis, there are so many questions, so much to take in. How will the oil be removed from the fresh cedar shakes on the front of the house? How much oil got into the drain tile? Will the front door, solid fir, a major investment at $5,000, have to be stripped and sanded? Can the soil be remediated?

And who will do it?

So far, says Siniscalchi, "Everybody's pointing fingers. Nobody's stepped up."

"Nobody but Bob Love, from Kinder Morgan," corrects Sabrina. "He put a rental car on his personal credit card for us. We couldn't drive our car, it was so covered in oil."

If the future is uncertain, the long-term prospects are even more worrying for Sabrina. "The oil sprayed like Pam," she says. She knows that she and the kids breathed it in. "Who can tell us if my baby is going to get cancer in 20 years?" she asks.

Out front, Mario Perossa, a hard-hatted crew member with the environmental clean-up group Veolia, doesn't mince words. "This is the worst I've ever seen for us as far as environmental disasters," he says. "It's a mess."

Contracted by the city of Burnaby, Perossa and his crew are mostly waiting right now. They're the ones who will be going in to take care of the houses, try to get them cleaned up.

But not yet. Insurance agents, environmental inspectors, government representatives and regulators all have to assess, record, photograph and evaluate the damage.

For all the experts circulating, precious few are talking to the Siniscalchis.

Outside the barricades, it's the silence and the lack of communication that's been most frustrating for the residents.

When the pipeline ruptured, 62-year-old Mario Lavorata was just sitting down to his regular lunch, some good Parma prosciutto on Italian bread and a glass of his homemade wine.

Lavorata, who lives on Barnet Road, a block south of the Inlet Drive oil slick, never finished the sandwich. "A man in an orange suit" had banged on the door, advising him to evacuate immediately.

Lavorata, his daughter Bianca, son Sam and wife Rosetta, returned in the evening but the stench of oil was so strong in the bedrooms they couldn't sleep.
"Nobody else has come," says Lavorata. He walks around the vegetable garden that fills his entire back yard, where pole beans stretch 10 feet into the air, and tomato plants rise at least seven feet. "The tomatoes are for sauce," he says.
"We make our own," says Bianca. "One hundred litres of it, from our own tomatoes."

Lavorata shows a leaf speckled with oil. "Everything is ruined. The tomatoes, the beans, the salad. I cut some salad for my dinner and couldn't use it."
Up on the deck, a thin film of oil, too sticky to rinse away with water, covers everything.

"S--- happens," shouts Sid Jacobson from a neighbouring balcony. Jacobson has heard there is a community meeting, but no one's been around to visit, assess the damage or offer him help cleaning up.

He shrugs. "WD-40 takes the oil off, but I'm not gonna go buy a box of it." Jacobson figures it will all get worked out eventually.

Eric Poole, who had to leave his home on Malibu Drive just north of where the rupture occurred, returned home on Wednesday to find worse than an oil-sprayed deck.

He reaches down to his back lawn and holds up a tuft of tabby-coloured fur, all that remains of his beloved cat Chatounette, who he believes was killed by a coyote overnight.

"The animals didn't get the evacuation order," he says bitterly.

Complying with what he assumed were official orders, Poole fled, returning only briefly later to collect a few things.

"We were told it was a mandatory evacuation, by two sources," he says angrily.

"It was a kind of hysteria, we were given to believe there was real danger."

Left outside in the shuffle were two beloved cats, Numero Dos and Chatounette.
When his partner Annie Bourret returned on Wednesday, she discovered one cat lost several houses away and the other missing. Tufts of fur in the backyard and evidence of a struggle led the couple to believe Chatounette was devoured by a coyote. Had they been there, Poole says, it would never have happened.

"I blame the hyper-vigilant reaction of the officials," says Poole. He has to shout over the sound of a news helicopter that circles overhead.

"We didn't need to be evacuated. It was disorganized, it wasn't mandatory, but Cliff Street was barricaded with police cars and everyone apparently had CYA syndrome. That's cover-your-ass-syndrome."

Burnaby Mayor Derek Corrigan disagrees. "I was very pleased with the response," he says.

Corrigan believes the response was what any city would hope for in an emergency situation. "We wanted to be sure there was no danger of fire. We didn't want them to blow up. We wanted to be sure.

"What we know now is that our emergency system works very well. Yesterday I gained a lot of confidence that our city is ready for any event."

Corrigan is particularly proud of how Burnaby residents stepped up to help each other. Wildlife experts were on the scene working along with officials. Public meetings were being organized to inform residents what to expect in the coming days, weeks and months.

But Mario Siniscalchi was frustrated no one has talked to him or his neighbours in person.

"I want somebody to let us know what they are going to do for us," he says.

"How is this going to get cleaned up? What are the long-term health effects going to be for my family?"

There may be more questions than answers right now but Corrigan is certain of one thing. "This is going to cost millions and millions of dollars, and it's not going to come out of my pocket, or Burnaby's pocket. Kinder Morgan is doing the assessment right now."

© Vancouver Sun 2007

BURNABY, B.C. (CP) - The neighbourhood sprayed by crude oil earlier this week will be perfectly safe to live in once the cleanup is done, a medical expert said Wednesday. Many residents aren't so sure.

Dr. Ray Copes, director of environmental health for the B.C. Centre for Disease Control, was asked if he'd buy a house in the neighbourhood. "Absolutely," he responded, adding he would have "no qualms" about it as long as the cleanup efforts go according to plan.

But resident Roy Gaspar said he's confused. On the one hand, officials are telling him it's OK for his family to return to their house, but on the other hand they've told him not to cut his grass or eat anything out of his vegetable garden.

"That's very disconcerting," said Gaspar.

"We just want to know whether it's safe. I want someone with a few letters after their name to come into my house and do a meter reading of some sort, test my yard.

"If my plants are no good to eat ... what does it say about the soil?"

Gaspar said he's not bringing his children home until he's got some better assurances.

His house is just four homes away from where an excavator working on sewer upgrades ruptured the oil pipeline, causing a plume of black crude to spew four storeys into the air, covering a wide radius with black, slimy goop.

Gaspar said he's been watching the cleanup crew in front of his home and has noted they're wearing hazardous materials outfits, complete with respirators.

He wondered whether he should have one.

Officials with the Fraser Health Authority moved into oil-spill zone Thursday to assess any health threats to residents and air testing was being done every half hour.

Copes said there's already been a lot of progress made in the cleanup.

"I think they've tackled first things first and they've probably been successful in reducing the amount of exposure that would occur by air," Copes said.

He said he saw air quality readings from the day of the accident and they showed that while the contamination was higher than usual for an average neighbourhood, it wasn't as high as a typical industrial work site.

He said the focus must now shift to ensuring the oil is cleaned from all surfaces in the neighbourhood. Children shouldn't be playing on the grass for a while yet, he added.

It's those kinds of unknowns and a lack of communication between officials and the neighbourhood that seem to be the biggest problem right now, Gaspar said.

Ian Anderson, president of Kinder Morgan, which owns the pipeline, said all the homes affected will be cleaned up.

"There's no indication at all that would suggest that any of these houses will require any form of demolition or reconstruction."

Kinder Morgan has been picking up the costs of the cleanup and housing people forced from their homes for now, but the company maintains it is not at fault in the spill.

Burnaby Mayor Derek Corrigan has suggested the rupture was caused because the pipeline wasn't properly located on the maps provided by Kinder Morgan.

Anderson said Thursday the company will review its maps, but said he's confident they're accurate.

"Those maps are GPS-developed maps, so locations are to the inch, to the centimetre," he said.

"It's a very detailed map so we just want to make sure we're absolutely clear that we're sharing all of that with the federal authorities that are undergoing their investigation."

Federal Environment Minister John Baird was at the scene again Thursday, inspecting the impact the spill had on wildlife in Burrard Inlet after some of the oil seeped into the ocean.

"We're conducting two investigations, one to identify what happened, to look at specifically what can be done to ensure that it doesn't happen again in Burnaby, in British Columbia or anywhere across the country," he said.

"We've got to. . . put out significant investigations and if necessary, lay charges as another element."

Baird said the federal government will make sure that whoever is responsible for the oil spill pays for the cleanup.

He also announced Thursday his government will spend $214 million to clean up 279 contaminated sites across Canada. The government wants to ensure Canadians aren't responsible for anything more.

About 600 metres of shoreline has been oiled by the spill, but B.C. Environment Minister Barry Penner said the crude doesn't appear to be seeping into the water any longer.

Janice Dickie, with the Wildlife Rescue Association, said about 10 birds have been spotted coated with oil in the Burrard Inlet, including two or three great blue Herons, which are listed as a vulnerable species in B.C.

Crude oil crept northwards with the tides in Burrard Inlet late Thursday and early today, coating boats and shorelines in the village of Belcarra, and prompting the closure of a public beach in North Vancouver.

Three days after some 232,000 litres of oil geysered into a a suburban neighbourhood and onto the shore, the mayor of Belcarra Ralph Drew says more could have been done to contain the spill.

"This is not a sheen. This is big black globs of oil," Drew said in an interview Friday. "The area is surrounded by parks and sensitive habitat areas, and this is very disturbing."

Workers clean the shores of the Burrard Inlet on Wednesday, a day after a pipeline ruptured during road construction on Barnet Highway in Burnaby.
Rafal Gerszak/CP Photo Pool

Waterfowl, marine life, seals and otters are put at risk, as well as the swimmers, not to mention "the hell of the mess," he said.

On the other side of Indian Arm, the beach on Cates Park has been closed by North Vancouver officials due to a sheen of oil.

Kayak tour company Takaya Tours has closed its Belcarra office and may close its rental office in Cates Park because of the risk to the kayaks, company officials said.

It wasn't immediately clear where the oil had moved to with the tides Friday morning. Officials with the Greater Vancouver Regional District, which manages the Belcarra Regional Park, could not be reached for comment.

The Transportation Safety Board and the National Energy Board are investigating how a Burnaby city contractor punctured the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain Pipeline on Tuesday. The city has said maps provided by Kinder Morgan were wrong by nine metres.

Kinder Morgan was reprimanded by the U.S. government for safety problems, and the California Department of Industrial Relations fined the company following an incident where a contractor broke a pipeline whose location was not properly indicated.

A Canada goose covered in oil from the spill in Burnaby is almost unrecognizable.
CREDIT: Bill Keay/Vancouver Sun

Two days after a pipeline in Burnaby sprayed crude oil over a residential neighbourhood, a pipeline operator still could not say Thursday whether maps his company provided to the contractor who damaged the pipeline were accurate.

The contractor, Cusano Contracting, has not commented. But Burnaby Mayor Derek Corrigan said earlier the maps showed the pipeline to be nine metres from where it was hit.

Kinder Morgan Canada president Ian Anderson said Thursday his company was still looking into the pipeline's exact location, using global positioning technology.

"It's a very detailed process, and we want to make it absolutely clear to authorities," Anderson said at the site of the accident on Inlet Drive.

He said Kinder Morgan has not "verified that [its maps are] inaccurate," he said, and he could not say when it will be able to answer that question.

Anderson refused to make the maps public, saying they were "under legal review" by investigating authorities such as the National Energy Board and the Transportation Safety Board.

But the head of a U.S. pipeline safety advocacy group wondered what the difficulty was.

"It ought to be fairly easy to know whether it was off by nine metres or not," said Carl Weimer, executive director of the Washington-based Pipeline Safety Trust. "Sounds like someone's blowing smoke."

A Burnaby-based company, meanwhile, said it can find the exact location of the pipeline in as little as half an hour.

Csaba Ekes, president of Terraprobe, said his company uses ground-penetrating radar to map underground structures. Depending on the depth of the pipeline, he said he could quickly pinpoint the pipeline's location and compare it to a map.

"In the geophysics world, it's a fairly big and obvious target," Ekes said. "Nine metres? We can do way better than that ... within an hour, we would have a very good idea of it."

Provincial and federal environment ministers have both vowed that they will make sure "the polluter pays" and taxpayers will not be on the hook for damages, which could run into the millions.

The maps may turn out to be crucial in determining who pays, since they could point to either Cusano or Kinder Morgan.

The burst pipeline sent more than 200,000 litres of heavy crude oil spewing into the air and flowing through the suburban neighbourhood and into Burrard Inlet via storm sewers. The contractor's work crew, several firefighters and some residents were caught in the spray.

However, Dr. Ray Copes of the B.C. Centre for Disease Control said air quality tests taken on the day of the spill showed crude oil components were present in the air at between one and eight parts per million -- less than the exposure in an average industrial work site.

Copes said people should avoid direct contact with oil and avoid eating contaminated vegetables. Kids can play outside but they should avoid going near any oil.

"It's outrageous to happen in any neighbourhood, so you can understand the concerns," he said. "But there's nothing that should keep people out of the neighbourhood."

Officials toured the affected area yesterday, where 80 staff were working on oiled roads and sponging oil off sensitive shoreline rocks.

Several ducks with oil on them have been taken to a wildlife recovery centre, said B.C. Environment Minister Barry Penner.

Penner said the National Energy Board and the Transportation Safety Board were both investigating what caused the breach.

Kinder Morgan has offered to pay for costs faced by some residents, including those of the 11 homes Corrigan said were uninhabitable.

"We are assuming all costs at this time," Anderson said. "At the end of the day, the ultimate cost will be tabulated and whoever is responsible will be assessed."

He said the 20 minutes it took Kinder Morgan to cut the flow of oil in the pipeline following the mishap was "optimal."

Penner noted that his ministry has so far invoiced CN rail for more than $200,000 for damage from a train derailment that spilled caustic substances in the Cheakamus River two years ago.

Kinder Morgan has been reprimanded by the U.S. government for safety problems, and the California Department of Industrial Relations fined the company following a similar incident which a contractor broke a pipeline whose located was not properly indicated.

jwoodward@png.canwest.com

-----

Kinder Morgan is still assessing affected properties after Tuesday's massive oil spill in Burnaby. While air quality is improving daily and the Barnet Highway is open again, cleanup crews are still dealing with tarry storm sewers, saturated soil and trees and oil-drenched wildlife

HUMAN HEALTH

The Fraser Health Authority conducted air sampling on the day of the spill, and plans to continue its testing.

The air quality was found to be worse in the oil-spill area than in other neighbourhoods, but is improving daily, said health authority spokeswoman Lisa Thibault. She said the headaches, nausea, and nose and throat irritation experienced by residents are temporary. "Long-term health effects as a result of being exposed to this oil are not expected," Thibault said.

Thibault said residents should not eat visibly contaminated produce from their gardens, and shouldn't let their children play near the oil.

People who have health concerns can call Burnaby environmental health on weekdays at 604-918-7683.

HOMEOWNERS

At least 31 homes on Inlet, Ridge, Belcarra and Malibu drives, Barnet Road and North Cliff Crescent were evacuated when the pipeline ruptured on Tuesday. Eighty adults and 16 children lived in those homes.

Burnaby Mayor Derek Corrigan has said 11 homes may be uninhabitable "for a long time," perhaps for weeks.

The Provincial Emergency Program paid for hotel bills for the first two nights. Kinder Morgan will now start paying the hotel bills of residents who can't return to their homes.

Kinder Morgan is conducting assessments of affected personal property and creating a cleanup plan. Meanwhile, it asks residents not to attempt to clean their homes or vehicles on their own.

The City of Burnaby is planning a second residents' meeting sometime next week.

OIL REMOVAL

Oil near storm sewers and drains is being sucked up by vacuum trucks, to reduce the oil that will enter sewers when it rains.

Kinder Morgan's estimate of the quantity of crude oil that gushed out: 232,000 litres, or 1,400 barrels of oil.

The company offered no estimate of the quantity of oil recovered to date.

City of Burnaby official Susan Rae said Kinder Morgan and its contractors will also be scraping up and removing oil-saturated soils, as well as taking down some trees and shrubs.

There was no estimate of the quantity of soil that will have to be removed from public and private property.

LOCAL TRAFFIC

The oil pipeline ruptured at about 12:35 p.m. on Tuesday on Inlet Drive, the road linking Hastings and the Barnet Highway, forcing the closure of a busy commuter route between Vancouver and the Tri-Cities region. At 6 a.m. Thursday, the Barnet Highway reopened to one lane in each direction. The City of Burnaby is asking drivers to use alternative routes, such as Gaglardi Way, because of high traffic volumes.

The City of Burnaby expects Inlet Drive will remain a two-lane route for perhaps another two weeks, because of a National Energy Board and National Transportation Board investigation of the oil rupture.

Belcarra Drive is also closed, because street crews are removing the road surface and repaving the street.

WATER AND WILDLIFE

On Burrard Inlet, crews have contained much of the spill using oil slick booms, and are skimming oil off the water and sponging oil off the rocks.

A temporary wildlife recovery centre has been set up at the Shellburn refinery on Hastings Street, at the north end of Kensington Ave. Kinder Morgan has hired a private company, Focus Wildlife, to care for affected birds.

Four oil-drenched Canada geese had been brought in by Thursday evening, said Wildlife Rescue Association executive director Janice Dickie, who is working on the effort. "Our lines at the Wildlife Rescue Association have been swamped with the public reporting [injured] wildlife as far away as North Vancouver, Lost Lagoon, Port Moody," she said.

© The Vancouver Sun 2007

Clean up will take long time warns SFU professor

Despite the beehive of activity, it could take quite some time before oil from Tuesday’s pipeline rupture is completely cleaned up.

Dirk Kirste, an earth sciences assistant professor at Simon Fraser University specializes in environmental chemistry and looks at how oil spills pollute and methods for cleanup. There’s a lengthy process that needs to be followed when there’s a spill, he said. And things become much more complicated when its occurs in a populated area.

“There are different aspects that have to be dealt with, each in their own way,” said Kirste.

Infrastructure like roads and sidewalks need to be mopped up and sometimes replaced. Often the oil can be scoured off hard surfaces with high-pressure water spraying, he explained.

“Those things tend to be easy to deal with because they’re an impermeable surface that oil doesn’t soak into,” said Kirste.

Natural surfaces are another story. With areas such as gardens and lawns, the soil will need to be dug up as deep as the oil has penetrated. According to provincial ministry of environment regulations, that soil can not be disposed of at a landfill site. Instead, it is taken to a special waste treatment site where the oil is removed.

“As they remove the soil they’re able to assess how far the oil has penetrated. The most susceptible areas are those where you have changes in conditions, where you go from a lawn to gravel or something like that,” he said.

Because its a highly populated area, Kirste believes it’s best if all soil surfaces that were covered by oil be removed.

“People are living there so the best approach is to dig it up and remove it.”

Trees, plants and bushes that were coated by the oil spray will have to be taken out. Although most will die on their own.

It’s possible some oil leached into the groundwater but Kirste said it’s not such a big concern. For starters, the soil in the Westridge neighbourhood is glacial till so it’s less permeable. And because the area is on a slope, oil that gets into ground water will likely come to the surface lower down the slope.

“It can certainly get into the groundwater but the good thing is we don’t use the groundwater for drinking or irrigation.”

Oil that sinks into the soil will likely start flowing down slope the next time there is a rainstorm.

The Burrard Inlet shoreline presents another challenge, he said. It’s very labour intensive clean up work with crews using oil absorbing “pom poms” to clean the beach inch by inch.

Oil contained in the booms must be removed as quickly as possible. That’s because the lighter molecules, which are much more toxic, are soluble in water. What’s remaining is more organic and sinks to the bottom.

• Response to the oil spill in Burrard Inlet was prompt because Burrard Clean is located in Burnaby on the grounds of the former Shellburn Refinery.

Burrard Clean is a consortium of various groups, including government agencies and petroleum industry companies like Chevron and Kinder Morgan.

As well, companies like Kinder Morgan all have staff trained to deal with Tuesday’s oil spill.

“If something similar were to happen here we have a full oil spill contingency plan that would go into effect. It’s actually a regulation requiring organizations like ours to have one,” said Ray Lord, spokesman for the Chevron Refinery in Burnaby.

“One of the scenarios we exercise on and drill is the pipeline rupture scenario. So we do have very highly trained individuals here on our emergency response team, who would be responsible for overseeing something like this. The same is true for Kinder Morgan.”

mmcquillan@burnabynewsleader.com

Oily mess turning up around inlet

Oil from Tuesday’s ruptured pipeline in North Burnaby is turning up on beaches around Burrard Inlet.

Thursday evening, officials in the District of North Vancouver closed Cates Beach after thumbnail-sized “tar balls” were spotted on either side of the boat launch. Tar balls have also turned up at New Brighton and Barnet beaches.

“That’s as far as we are aware at the moment,” said Craig Dugans, operation section chief with Burrard Clean.

And although the area affected by the environmental disaster appears to be growing, those who briefed the media Friday afternoon on the latest developments remained optimistic about the cleanup effort.

It’s estimated that 95 per cent of the oil that entered Burrard Inlet was contained in the area between the Shell and Kinder Morgan terminals, which is the main point of entry into the inlet of the oil. Oil also entered the inlet below the Kask Brothers plant on Barnet Highway. That oil is now staining the man-made beach, but most of it is considered recoverable.

But there is still no estimate how much of the 232,000 litres spilled made it into the inlet.

News that oil is turning up elsewhere may come as a surprise because in the days since a road crew working on Inlet Drive punctured the pipeline with a backhoe, officials have repeatedly said they had contained the oil that entered the inlet.

“In the oil-spill business, containment means that you have containment around the oil, but you’re still subject to the limitations of the containment boom itself and the tremendous forces that exist in nature and the hydrolics that exist [in the body of water],” Dugans said.

Tar balls are created when waves force water under the containment booms and little bits of oil are plucked from the underside of the boom and set adrift in the water currents.

“What we’re seeing is pretty typical of an oil spill,” Dugans said. “As long as there is free mobile oil on the water, the tar ball production will continue.”

Burrard Clean, which has been hired to clean up the oil on the water, has removed the oil that was floating on the surface between the two shipping terminals, and crews are continuing to clean the shoreline before that oil re-enters the inlet.

“Once it’s removed from the environment, then the production of tar balls will cease,” Dugans said. “So simply put, in the next couple of days there should be no more tar balls.”

Still, the damage may have already been done. Chief Ernie George of the Tsleil-Watuth Nation, which translated means people of the inlet, said he’s very concerned about the quality of the water.

“This inlet is very important to us -- it’s sustained us for thousands of years,” George said.

And for past three years, the First Nation has been trying to rehabilitate 15 different sites in the hopes of restoring some traditional clam beds.

“This spill puts it in jeopardy,” George said, adding the way the tide runs and the underwater topography of the inlet, it’s expected the mud flats where the clam beds are could be hard hit.

Still, there was good news Friday -- repairs to the ruptured pipeline were expected to be completed by day’s end.

dweir@burnabynewsleader.com

Sam Leung/pool photo

‘Too early to point fingers in spill’

A firefighter works on containing oil after Tuesday’s incident in Westridge.
colleen flanagan/newsleader

It’s too early to be laying blame in Burnaby’s oil spill, but pipeline safety is a “growing concern,” says a Bellingham, Washington-based pipeline safety group.

“It’s really too early to point the finger at anybody, I think, because until this whole thing about the drawings and the markings and stuff are clarified, it may be a lot of to-do looking at Kinder Morgan where in actual fact it was the excavator or the city that didn’t do their job,” said Carl Weimer, executive director of the Pipeline Safety Trust.

The group is an independent non-profit formed through a $4-million endowment that was part of the criminal fines levied by the U.S. Department of Justice following a 1999 pipeline explosion in a Bellingham park that killed two boys and an 18-year-old man.

Pipelines running underneath urban residential neighbourhoods are not uncommon, said Weimer, noting tank farms and refineries tend to be close by the urban areas they serve. On the Gulf Coast, American cities such as Houston and New Orleans “are just an amazing spider web of pipelines.

“In the northwest part of the U.S. and the southwest of Canada, they’re not quite as common, but we certainly have a lot of them.”

Many of the existing pipelines are now 40 to 50 years old and were installed in areas that were pretty rural at the time, but where neighbourhoods have grown up around them, he said.

In the U.S., he said, “lots of times there’s been a real struggle with local governments to put in place planning efforts that kind of protect people from pipelines and pipelines from people.”

The U.S. federal government is just starting a process with a number of communities, most, like Bellingham, which have been affected by pipeline issues, to introduce legislation for setbacks from pipeline right-of-ways to prevent development from happening too closely. Other development, such as hospitals and schools, would be set even farther back from pipelines.

And making consultation between pipeline companies and developers mandatory is being pushed in Washington state, Weimer said.

The pipelines have to go somewhere, he said. “I think there’s a general agreement that the pipelines are the safest way to move most of this stuff, ’cause the alternative is putting it in tanker trucks and having hundreds and hundreds of tanker trucks going on our highways.

“So pipelines are probably a good way to go, but we need to do everything we can to ensure the stuff stays in the pipelines and that’s a growing concern.”

In terms of protecting environmentally-sensitive areas like Burrard Inlet, Weimer questioned the distance between shut-off valves in the pipeline that ruptured. “Even if they closed the valves soon after the pipeline was hit, whatever’s between those valves is going to drain out.” Valves in areas close to marine areas should be closer together to reduce the impact of potential spills, he said.

Weimer said he was surprised that one of the factors in the Burnaby spill apparently involved the method used to locate where the pipeline was before the road contractor began excavating.

“Down here no one would dig on a pipeline based on a drawing or map. You would have a locating service come out and locate exactly where the pipeline was before you started doing any excavation.”

Burnaby Mayor Derek Corrigan has said a Kinder Morgan representative did come out prior to the accident to indicate the location of the pipeline. And according to reports Corrigan received from Cusano Contracting, the road crew was told pipeline was supposed to be nine metres away from the excavation site.

“We’ve never trusted the maps of pipelines as a way to ensure there is no damage to pipelines [when crews are digging],” Corrigan said. “We’ve always wanted representatives of Kinder Morgan or their predecessor to come out and check where those lines are.

“That’s why inspectors from Kinder Morgan come out – and it this case came out – to check where the line was, to give the contractor or city crews assurances they’re not working in the area of the line.”

This is not the first time a road crew hit an underground pipeline operated by Kinder Morgan. In November 2004, a similar accident in Walnut Creek, California killed five people when the ruptured pipeline exploded and filled a trench with fire, killing the workers in the trench. In that case, the location of the pipeline was not properly identified.

In fact, Kinder Morgan’s safety track record has not been a good one down south.

“Certainly a couple of years ago down here in the States, they were kind of the new poster child for having all kinds of pipeline problems,” he said.

Enough so that a couple of years ago the U.S. federal government took the unprecedented step of investigating a large part of the company “to find out if it was something within the culture of the organization or whether Kinder Morgan was just expanding so quick buying up old pipelines that they weren’t doing due diligence to make sure they were safe.”

The investigation has since concluded, but the Pipeline Safety Trust has been unable to get access to much of the results, Weimer said, noting that Kinder Morgan has since announced it is strengthening its pipeline safety management programs.

For pipeline safety advocates, getting access to information is often a difficult task that could be getting harder. Kinder Morgan was a publicly traded company that is in the process of becoming private which means it would not longer be required to release financial data to the public, including how much is spent on safety measures and maintenance, he said.

Weimer’s own experience is that pipeline safety information is far more easily available in the U.S. than in Canada.

“I can get my hands on a whole lot more records down here than I can in Canada. There’s hardly anything available about these companies’ track records, inspections, and spill data in Canada that down here we can get.

“As people start becoming more aware about pipelines that’s kind of the type of information you can use to judge whether the pipelines are safe in your area.”

The crude oil that spilled in North Burnaby after a pipeline was broken by a backhoe was headed to Kinder Morgan’s tank farm on Shellmont Street, which the company wanted to expand last year.

Meanwhile, two tank farms – Kinder Morgan’s and the Shell Burmount facility – are at the base of Burnaby Mountain and Simon Fraser University, with residential neighbourhoods immediately to the east and west.

A pipeline safety advocate questions why housing is located near the tank farm in the first place. Carl Weimer, executive director of the Pipeline Safety Trust, a Bellingham, Washington-based safety advocacy group, said of living near a tank farm: “It wouldn’t be my first choice.”

Crude oil pipelines are safer and tend not to explode like gasoline or natural gas pipelines, and some say the same goes for tanks on tank farms, he said.

With several different types of fuels being stored at the North Burnaby tank farms, he would have thought residential development would be kept away.

A small natural gas pipeline has a blast zone of 600 feet on each side, so there should be a quarter-mile swath where there shouldn’t be any residential, he said, and “certainly a tank farm would have a larger blast zone than that.”

He noted, however, that engineers have informed him it’s hard for a tank farm to actually explode.

In August 2006, Kinder Morgan proposed adding another tank to its Trans Mountain tank farm, holding 220,000 barrels, by 2009 and five additional tanks beyond that depending on market demand. The expansion would have taken place on the existing site which already has the required zoning. The proposed move was to take advantage of growing production from the Alberta oil sands.

After concerns raised by the public, last February Kinder Morgan applied to use three existing tanks at the north end of the Shell Burmount tank farm at 2365 Underhill Ave., just down the hill, instead. According to a City of Burnaby staff report, the use of the Shell tanks will defer the need for a new tank at the Trans Mountain tank farm. A separate application will be made in future if any additional tanks are required.

The existing tanks are connected to the Trans Mountain facility by two existing pipelines underneath Shellmont Street. Each tank has a capacity of 139,800 barrels, or 22,224 cubic metres. Of the three, one was used for storing crude oil until it was decommissioned in 1992, while the other two were used for refined petroleum products from 1992 until 2002 and 2006.

The Burmount facility property has been in use as a petroleum storage terminal since the early 1950s. The other Shell storage tanks on the site are used to store diesel fuel, gasoline and jet fuel.

Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain tank farm has been at 7815 Shellmont Street since 1952 where it was operated for many years by Trans Mountain Pipelines. There are currently 13 storage tanks on the 77 hectare (189 acre) site with a total volume of 1.7 million barrels of crude oil or other petroleum products, according to a city staff report.

The majority of the gasoline, diesel and jet fuel used in the Lower Mainland is delivered through the Burnaby Mountain facility, according to information provided to city hall by Kinder Morgan. Petroleum products from Alberta and northeast British Columbia are transported through the company’s pipeline to the tank farm which segregates and collects them before they are delivered to processing plants on the west coast.

Kinder Morgan Canada Inc., which purchased the facility as part of its purchase of Terasen Gas about three years ago, plans to increase pipeline capacity throughout Alberta and B.C.

wchow@burnabynewsleader.com

Early Tuesday afternoon, a pipeline running under a Burnaby street was ruptured, sending a geyser of oil spouting into the air.

Even though the leak was quickly detected and the pipeline shut off, and emergency personnel arrived at the scene and attempted to contain the oil, an estimated 232,000 litres of oil spewed into the Burnaby neighbourhood -- coating houses, resulting in evacuations and ultimately flowing into Burrard Inlet, where it is being described as a major environmental disaster.

This spill has shocked the residents of Greater Vancouver. How could something like this happen? What impact will it have on the inlet? Who is responsible?

It's not the first time these questions have been asked about oil spills. Turn the clock back seven years -- to August 2000 -- and let's look at the northeastern B.C. community of Chetwynd.

About 100 kilometres up the Pine River, an oil pipeline operated by the Pembina Pipeline Corp. has just ruptured, dumping oil into the river.

Unlike in Burnaby, emergency response teams are hours away, and when they do arrive at the site, they do not have the staff or equipment to adequately contain the oil.

The resulting spill is the largest inland pipeline leak in Canadian history, resulting in one million litres of oil being discharged into the Pine River, contaminating the water system of Chetwynd, closing a number of nearby wells, and killing countless fish and animals. Although Pembina Pipeline ultimately spends more than $30 million to clean up the oil, the river ecosystem is permanently changed.

Those of us living in Vancouver did not have to deal with the upper Pine leak. We are dealing with the Burrard Inlet leak. Somehow it is more immediate, more devastating, when it happens in your own backyard.

In B.C. today, oil spills are inevitable. There are more than 25,000 kilometres of oil pipelines across B.C., with big plans to build more.

Even more disturbing are plans to run oil tankers up and down the north coast to service these pipelines. While there are no figures on the number of leaks in B.C. pipes, a study of the oil industry in Alberta found that between 1980 and 1997 an average of 674 pipeline failures occurred each year. While not all would be as dramatic as the Burnaby or Pine River spills, many would -- but they wouldn't necessarily be front-page news.

The statistics for tanker spills are even more frightening: Environment Canada predicts that if the pipeline and tankers proposal go ahead, every year there would be at least 100 small spills, 10 moderate spills and one major oil spill. And one "catastrophic" spill -- think Exxon Valdez -- every 15 years.

[McMillan notes as a correction: "We said that the Env Cda stats were based on the proposed current levels of traffic but they’re actually based on levels of traffic in 1990s."]

The Burnaby spill should give all British Columbians pause.

How quickly do we want our oil and gas industry to develop? What laws do we want in place to make sure that accidents like this one, or like the Pine River spill, don't happen? How can we protect our coastal ecosystems so that they won't be irreversibly damaged by the inevitable spills?

Do we want the federal government to lift the existing moratorium on tankers in northern B.C. -- as it is considering?

Given how difficult it is to contain oil in an urban area, with quick detection and a rapid emergency response, imagine dealing with a major oil spill each year in an isolated stretch of treacherous ocean, where help is hours, if not days, away.

The Burnaby oil spill represents a serious health and safety threat to the residents of Burnaby and communities along Burrard Inlet. It will have a lasting impact on the ecology of these areas.

The public is right to demand answers about how the spill happened and how future spills can be prevented.

The reality is that our federal and provincial governments are considering allowing tanker traffic on the North Coast and more pipelines across the province; if we allow those to go ahead, we will face major spills and environmental devastation on a regular basis.

Dismissing this spill as a one-off disaster will not make that fact go away.

It's time to demand a new approach to regulation of the oil industry, where strong laws, like a legal moratorium on tanker traffic in the north, adequately protect our health and the environment.

Margot McMillan and Andrew Gage are staff lawyers with West Coast Environmental Law.

© The Vancouver Sun 2007

BURNABY, B.C. — Four days after work crews in B.C. ruptured a oil pipeline, the company that owns the pipeline says some residents are being allowed to return home and that remediation work on those sites in Burnaby is continuing.

As well, health officials will continue to monitor the area around Tuesday's spill to determine when it's safe for all residents who were evacuated to return to their residences.

About 234,000 litres of crude oil spilled from the ruptured Kinder Morgan pipeline.

Company spokesman Philippe Reicher says lawns, soil and trees have been removed from some of the residences.

He says six to 10 people remain out of their homes in what was a voluntary evacuation.

He says those people can stay away from their homes until they feel comfortable returning.

Mr. Reicher says about 70 per cent of the total oil spill volume has been recovered.

Further, says a release from the company, a shoreline assessment team is working with local regulators and First Nations to monitor oil that has seeped into Burrard Inlet.

Those groups will be working in concert to find appropriate ways to recover remaining oil.

However, a number of waterfront parks through the area have remained closed with oil appearing on their beaches.

Kinder Morgan says oil spots have been sighted from the air and are expected to be recovered within the next 48 hours.

Fraser Health Authority spokesperson Lisa Thibeault says the homes along the city's Inlet Drive will continue to be monitored by Fraser Health, the city of Burnaby and Kinder Morgan.

She said she believed residents of the 11 hardest-hit homes along the spill path were still out of their homes.

It has yet to be determined who is to blame for the mishap which could result in any number of lawsuits.

Ms. Thibeault says air testing in the area has been ongoing and the amount of volatile organic compounds present in the air has dropped significantly.

It was the threat of airborne contaminants which caused concern for many residents who attended a Wednesday public forum about the spill.

“Who is looking after these air effects? Who's looking after these toxins?” area resident Glynn Lewis asked at the meeting. “I think there needs to be a serious air quality assessment.”

Meanwhile, a number of oiled birds remain in the care of Focus Wildlife in Burnaby.

Janice Dickie of the Wildlife Rescue Association of B-C says there are now nine oiled Canada geese in care at the local animal rehabilitation centre as a result of the spill.

Ms. Dickie says the birds will need medical treatment after ingesting oil while preening their feathers. It's in their eyes and mouths, and their mucus membranes have become inflamed.

Ms. Dickie says once they're strong enough, the big birds will go through an extensive oil bathing process which could include using more than 11-hundred litres of soapy water per bird.

No bird deaths have been reported, Kinder Morgan says.

A clean up worker walks pass oil slicked rocks on the shore of Burrard Inlet Thursday afternoon. Thousands of litres of crude oil ruptured from a pipeline spill into the inlet Tuesday afternoon.
CREDIT: SAM LEUNG / CP FREELANCE/POOL

Workers from Quantum environment group search the beach in North Vancouver's Cates Park for traces of oil from the major oil spill across Burrard Inlet in Burnaby. The park's beach remained closed due to a sheen of oil.
CREDIT: Bill Keay, Vancouver Sun

"Turkey platter-sized globs" of crude oil have been creeping northwards with the tides in Burrard Inlet, and by Friday had coated boats and shorelines in the village of Belcarra and forced the closure of public beaches in the village and North Vancouver.

Several children ignored the sparse beach patrols and walked over the oil, while the Tsleil-Waututh (Burrard) First Nation across from the spill site worried about how the spread of the spill would affect their traditional clam beds.

Some 232,000 litres of oil spurted from a ruptured pipeline in Burnaby Tuesday, with some of it reaching the inlet.

The mayor of Belcarra said more could have been done to contain the spill.

"This is not a sheen. This is big black globs of oil," Ralph Drew said in an interview Friday.

"The area is surrounded by parks and sensitive habitat areas, and this is very disturbing.

"This is not a big oil spill in the grand scheme of things. They were very slow to respond.

"In the final analysis they weren't able to contain it and it's all over the place now," he said, referring to the marine efforts of pipeline company Kinder Morgan and crews of Burrard Clean.

Waterfowl, marine life, seals and otters are put at risk, he said, and residents have to deal with "the hell of the mess."

Crews should have skimmed the oil off the water late Thursday before the "turkey platter-sized globs" of oil hit the beaches and made removal more difficult, he said.

"Quite frankly, they've got oil on their hands," said Drew.

Environment Minister Barry Penner had said the spill was contained by oil slick booms on Thursday. But at a news conference Friday, the incident commander for the Environment Ministry, Lance Sundquist, clarified the minister's comments.

"Containment around the boom is subject to the limitations of the boom itself," he said.

Though oil booms contain about 95 per cent of the floating oil, wave action pulls some oil under the booms to create small tar balls -- thumbnail-sized droplets of oil, said Craig Dougans of Burrard Clean.

"We're talking about droplets, but they do coalesce," he said.

Burrard Clean crews had seen 24 tar balls on a 500-metre stretch of Barnet Beach, but those balls could have combined as they moved across Burrard Inlet to create larger mats, he said. A boat was heading to Belcarra to deal with residents' complaints as the news conference was under way, he said.

Jennifer Glover, 49, who lives on the water on Belcarra Bay, said she saw blobs about 30 centimetres across, which left hard-to-clean rings around boats in the bay.

"It was a messy sight coming into the bay last night," she said, describing a rainbow oily effect, the blobs, and a brown, sludgy mixture.

Belcarra Beach was closed by the Greater Vancouver Regional District at 9 a.m. Friday, but reopened at about 4 p.m.

On the other side of Indian Arm, the beach on Cates Park remained closed due to a sheen of oil.

Kayak tour company Takaya Tours has closed its Belcarra office and may close its rental office in Cates Park because of the risk to the kayaks, company officials said.

And Chief Ernie George of the Tsleil-Waututh said the oil could "set back years" of effort by the band's marine stewardship program, which has been trying to rehabilitate clam beds on the North Shore since 2002.

Officials said they didn't know where the oil was headed next, or how long it would wash ashore. The tide could continue to spread it, they said.

Richard Boase, environmental protection officer for the District of North Vancouver, said the district, which is facing a strike by unionized workers, didn't have the manpower to properly patrol Cates Park, where oil had stuck to seaweed and gave off "a fairly strong odour."

"If we were at full complement of staff, we would have. . . 10 or 12 people," he said. "I can't be there all the time."

Kinder Morgan officials estimated that no home at the site of the spill would have to be demolished, and that the deepest the oil had penetrated was four inches, or about 10 centimetres.

The Transportation Safety Board and the National Energy Board are investigating how a Burnaby city contractor punctured the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain Pipeline on Tuesday. The city has said maps provided by Kinder Morgan to the contractor were off by nine metres.

Burnaby's chief engineer, Lambert Chu, told The Sun Friday that the pipeline was mapped 8.5 metres from the property line on the south side of Inlet Drive.

The new sewer pipeline was to be 11.3 metres from the property line, he said.

Kinder Morgan was reprimanded by the U.S. government for safety problems, and the California Department of Industrial Relations fined the company following a similar incident in which a contractor broke a pipeline the location of which was not properly indicated.

jwoodward@png.canwest.com

- - -

OIL REACHES NORTH SHORE BEACHES

WHERE THE BLOBS OF OIL AND TAR ARE WASHING ASHORE

BURNABY:

95 per cent of the floating oil has been contained, but some slipped past the booms and small tar balls are pulled under the booms by the waves.

BARNET BEACH:

Crews walking along a 500-metre stretch of the beach found 24 tar balls the size of a thumbnail.

BELCARRA:

Late Thursday night, "turkey-platter-sized globs" of oil coated boats and docks on the shore in Belcarra Bay. Belcarra Beach was closed from 9 a.m. until 4 p.m. Friday.

CATES PARK:

District of North Vancouver officials closed a 100-metre stretch of Whey-ah-Wichen beach on Thursday because of a sheen in the water and a strong smell.

TSLEIL-WAUTUTH FIRST NATION:

Small beads of oil have been noticed in clam and crab beds.

NEW BRIGHTON PARK:

Quarter-sized patches of oil were found at low tide and underneath small rocks.

© The Vancouver Sun 2007

A WorkSafeBC official said today the agency is investigating whether a contractor for the City of Burnaby followed regulations and determined the exact location of an oil pipeline before it started digging with an excavator.

The pipeline ruptured July 24 after it was struck by the contractor's excavator, sending nearly a quarter-million litres of oil spewing into the air, raining down on houses and trees, and flowing into Burrard Inlet.

The contractor, Cusano Contracting, could be fined as much as $500,000 if WorkSafeBC, B.C.'s Workers' Compensation Board, finds it didn't accurately determine the location of an underground facility before using a machine to excavate, said Al Johnson, the board's regional director of construction.

The oil-covered excavator and the hole where the pipe was ruptured and spilled oil over the road. This is ground zero of the scene of a ruptured oil line at Inlet Drive at Ridge Drive in Burnaby.

"With any underground utility, contractors need to be aware, and it's their responsibility to be aware, of the regulation, which is clear cut with respect to locating those services before they dig," said Johnson. "Take a second look, take a third look, make sure that is done."

The board has not issued any findings yet.

Cusano Contracting did not return The Vancouver Sun's calls today, nor has it returned any calls since the spill occurred.

A map produced by the previous owners of the pipeline, Terasen Inc., which was provided to The Sun, includes a warning that echoes the WCB regulation, telling crews to dig manually before using excavation equipment because the map is not accurate.

The map was produced to indicate the location of natural gas pipelines in the area, but also shows the oil line that was ruptured.

"Attention: Do not rely on this information alone!" the warning on the map says. "You must manually dig to locate gas lines before using excavation equipment. All locations are approximate only."

The Terasen map shows the oil pipeline snaking under the southeast side of Inlet Drive 8.5 metres from the property line.

Burnaby Mayor Derek Corrigan said earlier that the map the contractor used was inaccurate by nine metres. But Burnaby's chief engineer Lambert Chu has said that a sewer line Cusano was working on was to be constructed only 2.8 metres from where the map said the oil pipeline would be, at 11.3 metres from the property line.

If the pipeline was struck nine metres away from the map's indicated marking, as Corrigan suggested, that would place it either under the sidewalk on the north side of Inlet Drive, or under the southbound lanes.

But aerial photos indicate the ruptured pipeline is located under the northbound lanes of Inlet Drive.

Kinder Morgan, the company that now owns and operates the pipeline, refused to provide copies of its maps to The Sun, but maintained they're accurate.

Burnaby city staff also refused to provide their maps of utilities in the area.

jwoodward@png.canwest.com

Raw Video: Burnaby, B.C., Canada Oil Spill
www.liveleak.com

Residents worry about their health and long-term impact on neighbourhood.

Environmental experts predicted long-term contamination of the land and sea around Burnaby, B.C., as the cleanup continued Wednesday after almost 240,000 litres of crude oil were spilled into Inlet Drive and Burrard Inlet Tuesday.

People who live near the massive oil spill complained they've been given little information about their top priority — their health — and some residents fear rain in the forecast will make matters worse.

An undetermined amount of crude oil entered the storm sewer system and drained into Burrard Inlet. An undetermined amount of crude oil entered the storm sewer system and drained into Burrard Inlet.

Residents attended a town hall meeting held by the city Wednesday night. Also in attendance were government officials, police and representatives of Kinder Morgan, owner of the ruptured pipeline.

The pipeline company told residents at the meeting that it won't finish assessing damaged homes until the weekend.

Premier Gordon Campbell toured the area Wednesday afternoon, and said those at fault will pay the cleanup bill.

There's disagreement over why the spill occurred. The construction crew charges that the pipeline wasn't properly marked, and the pipeline operator has blamed the crew.

Burnaby Mayor Derek Corrigan said Wednesday afternoon that non-stop digging and scraping are being done to remove the thick crude oil covering the neighbourhood.

"We worked all night. There's been a lot of progress made in cleaning up. Both the federal and provincial ministers of environment have promised resources to help us," he said.

Federal Environment Minister John Baird was scheduled to tour the inlet on a boat in the afternoon, and environmental crews continue to assess the problem.

Some residents who left their homes after the spill returned after deciding they could bear the heavy, pungent smell of the oil, but others are still staying in hotels.

Debby Crouch, who fled her home after oil began falling into her yard, returned only to inspect the damage.Debby Crouch, who fled her home after oil began falling into her yard, returned only to inspect the damage.

Debby Crouch fled her home after oil began falling into her yard Tuesday. After a long night in a local hotel, she said she was only returning to inspect the damage.

"Our tomatoes and corn and vegetables … I think they're all ruined," she said. "My roses have turned blackened and died. I don't know how you can save them."

Pipeline ruptured by excavator

At about 12:30 p.m. Tuesday, a road crew digging with an excavator on Inlet Drive near the intersection of the Barnet Highway and Hastings Street ruptured a Kinder Morgan pipeline carrying crude oil from a refinery to a refuelling facility on the harbour.

Witnesses said a stream of black crude shot 30 metres into the air like a geyser for 25 minutes before the pipeline was shut down.

About 50 homes were evacuated and residents had to spend the night in hotels. The Barnet Highway from Hastings Street to St. John Street has remained closed while crews continue to clean up the oil.

Corrigan said crews were using peat moss and street cleaners to mop up the mess, but that damage to property and the environment had already been done.

Crews use heavy equipment to dig and scrape oil from the streets.Crews use heavy equipment to dig and scrape oil from the streets.

Dirk Kirste, an environmental geochemist at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, said Wednesday that when oil gets into the sand, soil and water systems, it can be toxic.

"Certainly the vegetation can be killed off," said Kirste. "Any oil will cause a fairly significant change in the chemistry in the soil and the water surrounding it."
Marine damage could linger for decades, expert says

According to Ian Anderson, president of Kinder Morgan Canada, 234,000 litres of crude were spilled. An undetermined amount entered the storm sewer system and drained into the environmentally sensitive waters of Burrard Inlet.

Containment booms were deployed within hours, but environmental conservation experts are still concerned.

Marine conservation specialist Jay Ritchlin says it will take a few days before the extent of the damage to the marine environment is known. He says toxic effects could linger for decades.Marine conservation specialist Jay Ritchlin says it will take a few days before the extent of the damage to the marine environment is known. He says toxic effects could linger for decades.

"We don't know the extent of the damage fully, but clearly the land around the spill and waters of Burrard Inlet have been affected, so we do expect some toxic impacts," Jay Ritchlin, a marine conservation specialist with the David Suzuki Foundation, said Wednesday morning.

"Crude oil can sink in water, making it difficult to clean up. Birds and mammals can run and hide, making them difficult to find," said Ritchlin. "They lose their ability to control their heat when they get oiled. That can cause instant death."

So far there are no reports of dead or affected animals, but they could start showing up as early as Wednesday, he said.

Many plants and trees are coated with the thick crude oil, causing concern for the neighbouring area's ecology.Many plants and trees are coated with the thick crude oil, causing concern for the neighbouring area's ecology.

Several factors will aid the cleanup, said Ritchlin. Containment booms were put in place within hours of the spill, and a lack of wind and waves means the oil has not been breaking up and dispersing.

But Ritchlin said Burrard Inlet has sensitive wetlands, and if the heavy crude gets into the eelgrass, the long-term low-level toxic effects could last for decades. He said four species of salmon populate the inlet and First Nations still use the mudflats for harvesting shellfish.

Ritchlin said toxic oil still remains in a similar marine environment, the sensitive wetlands in the Squamish River estuary, after an oil spill in 2006.

The cleanup on the water by is being overseen by the Vancouver Port Authority and monitored by the coast guard.The cleanup on the water by is being overseen by the Vancouver Port Authority and monitored by the coast guard.

"The real tragedy is there is supposed to be a moratorium on this sort of activity on the coast," said Ritchlin. "Instead we are importing toxicity from the tarsands in Alberta and exporting global warming to the rest of the world."
Investigation continues as blame disputed

Ultimately, those responsible for the broken pipeline will have to pay for the damages — but it's not yet clear where the blame lies.

The road crew that ruptured the pipeline said it was improperly marked. The company that owns the pipeline, Kinder Morgan, has blamed the crew for the rupture.

Burnaby officials said the city has strict guidelines to prevent these types of accidents.

The Transportation Safety Board has begun an investigation into the cause of the spill.