Daily Times

Outrage is the only word for what people are feeling after a tug and fuel barge, owned by Texas-based Kirby Offshore Marine, crashed on rocks in the heart of B.C.’s Great Bear Rainforest. It’s been leaking 200,000 litres of diesel fuel into the sensitive marine ecosystem ever since. The 30-metre Nathan E. Stewart tug was pushing the empty fuel barge DBL 55 south from Alaska where it had dropped off its petroleum cargo of 52,000 barrels of oil. It was operating without a local pilot in the complicated waters of the spectacular Inside Passage. Only three weeks ago, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, Prince William and Kate Middleton, had visited the Great Bear Rainforest near Bella Bella, B.C. and were hosted there by the Heiltsuk First Nation, who have extensive clam, herring, salmon and other fisheries in the region now threatened by the sunken tug’s oil slick. The Great Bear Rainforest is the largest remaining tract of intact temperate rainforest in the world. It is home to Sandhill cranes, grizzly bears, grey wolves, humpback and orca whales, giant conifers, every species of wild salmon, and many other wild species. Ingmar Lee, an environmental activist who owns a popular eco-tourism business called C’idawai Point Cabins near Bella Bella, told me by email on Oct. 16 that there is “a veritable holocaust of helicopters flying over our house here at first light this morning. Texas personnel are out there shovelling money in any direction they can.” Meanwhile, “there are a large number of huge vessels languishing around on-scene, trying desperately to look busy, as though they’re doing something, anything,” and a dozen people are deploying pads and stringing booms “which are utterly useless in containing the damage.” More than a year ago, Lee had told a reporter that the Nathan E. Stewart tug was a “disaster waiting to happen.” At the site of the grounding, Kelly Brown, director of the Heiltsuk Integrated Resource Management Department, told Global News on Oct. 14, “It’s really bad out here. A lot of fuel is on the beach already, and fuel is in the water.” Brown also called the initial response to the spills “totally inadequate. The first responding vessels were not equipped to deal with a spill, and had to return to town to gather more gear,” he said. “The Heiltsuk are providing our own equipment because what responders have been able to provide so far is insufficient.”