A draft report on Lopez Island 2025 is ready for review

The culmination of a Monterey Institute of International Studies class titled “Islands and Sustainability” is a 100-page report called “Lopez Island 2025: Sustainable Transformation for Resilience”.

Lopez Island population age distribution according to the 2010 US census. This graph is a nugget of informative findings from the 100 page report “Lopez Island 2025: Sustainable Transformation towards Resiliency” by a group of Monterey Institute of International Studies students.

This hefty report is the fruit of labor of 11 graduate students who took the 4-month-long class, taught mostly via teleconference by Lopez residents Chris and Chom Greacen. Nine of the students also came to visit Lopez Island and met with community members to learn various aspects of island life, from transportation, agriculture, energy use to waste generation.

The report presents an overview of the current practices in several of the island’s key systems, highlights some potential risk areas for the island and then suggests potential solutions to help Lopezians bring about sustainable transformations for resilience. It contains informative data such as those shown in the population age distribution chart.

Lopez community members are invited to review the report and provide feedback. The report will go into the final editing process and will be formatted for online publication next month. The draft report is available for download by clicking here (PDF format, 15MB).

The risks of San Juan waters becoming coal and tar sands export highways

(This article is the second in the three-part series. Go here to read the first one.)

The image of orcas and other marine life suffocating from a sticky coat of tar sands oil will be devastating not just for our souls, but probably for our economy and ecosystem as well. I hope that day will never come. But if the fossil fuel industry has its way, the risk of major oil spills will grow significantly as plans are underway to make the Salish Sea a major tanker highway for exporting coal and tar sands oil to Asia.

Tar sands "oil" is actually thick sticky "bitumen". Bitumen needs to be mixed with volatile diluents to be able to pump and move in crude oil pipelines.

In April, Texas-based energy company Kinder Morgan announced plans to expand its oil pipeline running between the Alberta oil sands and Vancouver, B.C. The move would roughly triple the number of deployed tankers operating in the area, each carrying about four times as much crude oil as the Exxon Valdez[1].

In the same month, SSA Marine, a division of the world's largest cargo terminal operator Carrix, also filed an application to build North America's largest coal export at Cherry Point[2].

The oil tankers from Vancouver would skirt Waldron, Stuart and San Juan islands on the west while the coal shipping vessels would come down the Rosario Strait east of Orcas and Lopez, before heading out to the Pacific Ocean.

These two projects alone will add approximately 1,700 more large vessel trips each year[3], averaging about one every five hours.

It's simple math: the more traffic you have, the higher the likelihood of an incident. One engine failure, bad storm or imperfect maneuver between the reefs, rocks and other ships could mean devastation to the people and marine life that rely on the special ecosystems along these coasts, warned Lovel Pratt, a SJ County Council representative, as quoted in Huffington Post.[4] "When the Gulf spill happened, we had days before any of the oil came to any shore. Here, we would have hours. And we're dealing with the unique challenges of our ecology and geography that includes so much coastline and sensitive ecosystems," said Pratt in the news article. The bulk coal carriers each carry upwards of 10,000 tons of bunker oil, one of the most toxic fuels. But the worst is tar sands oil.
 
Unlike conventional crude tar sands oil is a mixture of sticky tar and a cocktail of toxic solvents that allow the thick bitumen to be pumped through a pipeline. In the event of a tar sands oil spill, the solvents evaporate into the surrounding air hindering the rescue efforts, and the heavier bitumen sinks -- rendering useless the conventional clean-up equipment designed to recover floating oil, as seen in the recent experience of the million-plus gallons of spilled tar sands chemicals in Michigan's Kalamazoo River. Twenty months after the spill the expensive recovery efforts continued, and 30 miles of the contaminated River remained closed to swimming, boating, fishing or even wading for the foreseeable future.[5] 
 
If a Suezmax-class tanker, each carrying Alberta diluted bitumen 50 times the Kalamazoo spill amount, were to leak or spill in SJ waters, it is unclear if we have the technology, let alone the capacity, to handle such an incident.
 
The issue is further complicated by the fact that the Salish Sea straddles the U.S.-Canada border. If the ships are coming out of Canada and don't stop in a U.S. port, then Washington State has no jurisdiction. SJ residents will bear the risks but have to rely on the Canadian government for setting standards and prevention.[6]Meanwhile, the Canadian government recently decided to remove oil spill staff from Vancouver at the same time that the plan to increase tanker traffic in the area was announced.[7] 

As for the WA side, the Department of Ecology estimated that a major (conventional) oil spill would cost 165,000 jobs and $10.8 billion dollars in direct economic impacts and could even wipe out the resident orca population, blanket productive fish spawning beaches with crude, and circulate aging oil throughout the Sound for years to come.[8]

So what can be done or where we can learn more about these developments?

For the coal-related projects, go to www.powerpastcoal.org, www.re-sources.org and www.coaltrainfacts.org.

For the tar sands/tanker-related issues, check out wildernesscommittee.org/tankers, http://www.re-sources.org/programs/baykeeper/oil, and the footnotes.

Let’s get involved. Please sign petitions, talk to your neighbors and call relevant government agencies.

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[1] http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-04-12/kinder-morgan-increases-planned-trans-mountain-expansion

[2] http://www.thenewstribune.com/2012/04/02/2092581/whatcom-county-application-for.html

[3] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/25/oil-spill-risk-exports-asia_n_1453091.html

[4] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/25/oil-spill-risk-exports-asia_n_1453091.html

[5] http://thetyee.ca/News/2012/03/05/Diluted-Bitumen/

[6] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/25/oil-spill-risk-exports-asia_n_1453091.html

[7] http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Environment+minister+questions+timing+federal+cuts+spill+staff/6494593/story.html

[8] http://www.re-sources.org/programs/baykeeper/oil

Where Tar Sands Meet the Salish Sea

By Chom Greacen

What do you think about the tar sands industry exporting its crude to the world through the Salish Sea instead of Keystone XL pipeline?

A sticky tar-like form of crude oil mixed with sand and clay, tar sands of Alberta, Canada – also called oil sands – are one of the largest remaining deposits of oil in the world. The combined carbon in tar sands is more than all the carbon emitted from oil use in the world history thus far.

Canadian and U.S. oil pipelines: existing and proposed. The planned expansion from Edmonton to Vancouver (lower dotted blue line) is primarily to export crude oil from tar sands to Asia via Salish Sea. Source: Canadia Association of Petroleum Producers. 

Extracting the tar sands by strip mining, solvents, and steam has created the biggest and “most destructive” project in the world, according to Natural Resources Defense Council and Greenpeace.

Despite the high energy and environmental costs to extract, tar sands are rising in prominence as a major source of oil. The U.S. main and growing source of oil imports is from Canada, surpassing the Middle East and Mexico[1]. And more than half of the 

Canadian oil production in 2010 is from tar sands. Already very large, the tar sands crude production is expected to grow 150% by 2025[2].

According to the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, the Canadian oil industry is in an “oversupply” situation and looking for an “outlet”[3]. President Obama halted (at least for now) the Keystone XL pipeline project to export tar sands oil through the Gulf. Now our Salish Sea and the Strait of Juan de Fuca are seen by the tar sand industry as an attractive gateway to export this excess oil to Asia.

In fact, it’s already been happening. The existing “Trans-Mountain” oil pipeline from Edmonton, Alberta to Vancouver, BC and with a spur pipeline to Anacortes provides the only access for Canadian oil to reach the West Coast. In 2007, over 3.4 million barrels of crude oil were shipped to China from Vancouver[4].

And that’s just the beginning.

Houston-based Kinder Morgan (KM), one of North America’s largest oil pipeline companies, is planning for a major increase in the quantities of crude oil shipped through its Trans-Mountain pipeline and Westridge dock east of Vancouver.

Already, oil tanker traffic has tripled between 2005 and 2010, and is planned to triple again by 2016[5]. Pipeline expansion will increase crude oil deliveries from 300,000 to 850,000 barrels per day by 2017. KM announced last month it planned to double the capacity by January next year, hoping to beat other competitors to get oil to the coast[6]. About 450,000 bpd would be exported while the remaining are for BC, Washington refineries and some shippers.

KM also plans to dredge the Burrard Inlet allowing for larger tankers (160,000 deadweight-ton "Suezmax") to reach the terminal.[7]

These massive oil tankers will skirt the west side of San Juan Islands on their way out to the Pacific. Though the ships will likely stay within the Canadian border, devastating impacts from a spill accident will not.

Unlike the case of Keystone XL, we do not have a direct say in this. Well, not yet anyway, unless we act.

Both the Washington and BC governments and citizens must be involved in the dialogue of whether KM should be permitted to expand the pipeline and whether increased traffic of tankers carrying toxic crude should be allowed in our shared waters.

KM has yet to file an application with the Canadian National Energy Board to expand the pipeline. There is still a window of opportunity to make our voice heard. Write Governor Christine Gregoire. Talk to your neighbors. Mobilize. Drive less.   

Hopefully, tar sands crude will not meet the Salish Sea, not directly or indirectly. Nor will the coal trains.

This article is the first in a series about tar sands and the SJ community.

[1] ftp://ftp.eia.doe.gov/pub/oil_gas/petroleum/data_publications/company_level_imports/current/import.html

[2] CANADIAN ASSOCIATION OF PETROLEUM PRODUCERS, Crude Oil: Forecast, Markets & Pipelines, June 2011.

[3] CAPP, ibid.

[4] Statement by Chris Badger, chief operating officer of Port Metro Vancouver http://www.notanks.dreamhosters.com/misinformation-given-to-vancouver-city-council/#more-45

[5] http://wikimapia.org/1698796/Kinder-Morgan-Westridge-Marine-Terminal

[6] http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-04-12/kinder-morgan-increases-planned-trans-mountain-expansion

[7] http://wikimapia.org/1698796/Kinder-Morgan-Westridge-Marine-Terminal