Beating The Oil and Tanker Combine By Eating Chocolate (Ship) Brownies

Good folks at the San Juan County Fair Safe Shipping booth are selling brownies in four flavors, including Bakken Shale Brownies with Caramel Crude.  Funds raised this week and weekend go to spreading the message of Safe Shipping in the Salish Sea.

San Juan Islanders For Safe Shipping write: “Our goal is to raise awareness of the increasing number of proposed terminal projects that will increase vessel traffic and multiply the risk of oil spills in the waterways just outside our front doors -- the waters that wash up on our favorite beaches. We are especially concerned about increases in tanker traffic transporting crude oil -- crude oil spills are the most damaging and most difficult to cleanup. 

“The specific target of our action at the County Fair is the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline expansion project -- poised to increase the number of tankers seven-fold per month. We islanders need to talk to Canada and let them know we won't let that happen without them putting the safest of precautions in place. Right now, Canada is not capable of effectively cleaning up an oil spill, and that is just not acceptable to us -- especially when we stand to lose nearly 80% of our county's economy should such a disaster happen. And for what? 50 permanent jobs for Canadians and hundreds of millions of dollars in profits to Kinder Morgan....”

OK, maybe it’ll take more than eating brownies but all that we do to save our Salish Sea should at least include brownies. Eat on!


--Mike Sato

Commencement 2014: Thinking About What Sally Jewell Didn’t Say At Whitman College

Commencement 2014, Whitman College

First, a loud shout out to Interior Secretary Sally Jewell for a fine commencement address at Whitman College’s commencement this past Sunday. She talked salmon and she talked about and quoted Billy Frank, Jr., who is on his way to an iconic, mythic stature. I just hope the graduates really listened and heard Billy’s words.

She saluted past Whitman graduates from the Class of 1964, who had returned for a 50th reunion, and she looked forward to the time when the Class of 2014 would be returning for its 50th year reunion in 2064.

Heady stuff, commencement addresses. I applauded when Sally urged graduates to tackle the hard, complex issue of climate change both on the big policy level and in their everyday lives. I hoped parents, grandparents and friends also really listened and heard her.

I was coming off a week’s high having learned that President Obama had used his executive authority under the Antiquities Act and designated 500,000 acres of New Mexico public lands as the Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks National Monument. [Obama names New Mexico monument, says ‘I’m not finished’]

One parent asked me whether I though anyone was going to show up to protest the Keystone XL pipeline. No one did. I spoke with another parent and we hailed the building momentum for removing dams on our rivers. When we parted, she said she loved the speech and what Sally brought to Interior but just wished she and Obama would come to grips with oil and gas exploration on public lands.

After commencement and the festivities, I didn’t think about what Sally Jewell had said until trying to return to Puget Sound via Interstate 90 on Memorial Day afternoon and sitting and crawling westward in two lanes of vehicle traffic from Ellensburg to near the Snoqualmie Pass summit. I don’t usually drive and sit in rush hour traffic so travel like Monday’s gave me a lot of time to think about the irony of living in the 21st century in our Washington and the United States.

Grandchild is in the back seat amusing herself with a game on the hand-held device connected to the internet. I can look on the WDOT web site to see that the road ahead is bright red, indicating we will be in line for a long, long time. Our families are sitting in three different vehicles crammed full of luggage and household goods cleared out from the graduate’s rental and we’re calling and texting each other about the traffic jam.

Communication-wise, we are traveling at the speed of light. Our petroleum-based technology and infrastructure, however, are still somewhere in the mid-20th Century.

That’s what Sally Jewell didn’t talk about on Sunday. She didn’t tell us that on Monday we’d be returning to Bellingham, Ashland, Corvallis and Bellevue from Walla Walla in a clunky, outmoded fashion that would stand as the real challenge to not only meeting the dangers of climate change but also the decline of America’s competitiveness and productivity.

Build me a way to get around without a car safely, conveniently and economically and I’ll use it. Set up a live and interactive video stream that captures important events like commencements and I’ll log on. Reduce and eliminate the sources of carbon emissions and draw the line at extracting carbon out of the ground and maybe, maybe the Class of 2014 and the grandkid playing on the hand-held in the back seat will be around for the commencement address in Walla Walla in 2064.

--Mike Sato

Puzzling Over Saving the Earth

Help me puzzle out where we are heading on this annual celebration of Earth Day.

It hasn’t helped to have read Elizabeth Kolbert’s The Sixth Extinction earlier this month. From a scientific point of view, it looks pretty clear that continuing as we are on our highway of carbon emissions, we are driving to an end much of life as we know it.

I try not to despair since much of my job is to inform people about saving the land, waters and critters. I’d like to get up and believe every day is Earth Day or at least to believe, as reporter Gary Chittim at KING5 tweeted this morning, “On Earth Day; the movement toward a healthier earth keeps rolling along through the mud of skepticism by finding traction in common sense.”

That’s good, if it were true and helps you get up in the morning. But for many people common sense would say the earth is still the center of the universe and, if asked to choose between the accounts of the beginning of the universe given by Carl Sagan and Neal DeGrasse Tyson and Genesis, would say they didn’t know or opt for the Good Book’s version. [Poll: Big Bang a big question for most American]

Common sense, based on keen observation and experience, is smart. Common sense, based on custom and prejudice, is ignorant.

If global warming and ocean acidification aren’t real to you this Earth Day, how can you take seriously the 101 ways to save our planet?

Two-and-a-half years ago I lost my job and our household’s monthly gasoline bills dropped since I was not driving up and down the freeways. The car we drive now is almost twice as fuel efficient as the one before and, I am fascinated by the dashboard feature that measures my fuel efficiency in real time while driving. That’s the same fascination I have when I encounter those radar-activated traffic displays on city streets telling you how fast you are going. Drive steady; whoa, slow down...

I’m also hooked on taking my daily blood pressure, imagining the the fragrances on the tropical breeze, the rustling of the coconut fronds while the cuff constricts and slowly releases. What have I been eating, I wonder, when the reading is higher; what are you upset about? Whoa, slow down, take some deep breaths; try the reading again...

My ongoing skepticism on Earth Day and every day is that we are told to do things to reverse the bad things with no appreciable result we can see. Picking up litter or dog doo isn’t going to save the planet. The only results we learn about are the negative effects of increased carbon in the atmosphere and in our waters.

Gasoline prices in Puget Sound are now hitting the oil companies’ springtime bargain of $4 a gallon. [Whatcom County gas prices closing in on $4 a gallon] However, for many there is no connection between the miles driven and the boom in Salish Sea oil and fuel transport by tanker, train and pipeline— and the steady increase of carbon in our air and waters. [Surging oil traffic puts region at risk]

What’s the feedback mechanism in real time that will allow us to see how modifying our everyday actions will affect the health of the planet? What will shows us in real time how our everyday actions relate to larger issues and actions, the same way driving for fuel efficiency and speed limits can tell us about oil exports, climate change and public safety, the way taking one’s blood pressure and weight can tell us about medication, diet and exercise?

Unless we get to that point on Earth Day and every day, science will always lose to custom and prejudice. Unless we can show that we and our world are irrevocably connected, we and the world lose.

But sometimes the feedback mechanism is as simple as hearing once what you will always recall: Bill Frank, Jr. is said to have pointed to the overhead lights in a meeting room and said, “You know what I see in those lights? Dead salmon.” Since I heard that, I always think about salmon when turning off lights not in use.

And, as a palliative to The Sixth Extinction, I read the last chapter of Primo Levi’s The Periodic Table where he describes several incarnations of a carbon atom through the webs of space, time and life. The elements, thank goodness, are eternal.

--Mike Sato

Early April 2014: 3 Down, 9 To Go

(PHOTO: Scott Terrell/Skagit Valley Herald)

We’re a fourth of the way through the year and the short list of things I said I’d be looking for in 2014 has gotten shorter, while the verdict’s still out on a few:

I think it’s pretty clear that nobody rose to govern in the Legislature or in the Governor’s office this past session but maybe that’s the strategy of divided government: make sure nothing happens so you can say the fault is divided government then go raise money for another election— so we don’t have divided government. The best we can say about this legislative session is that nothing bad happened to the environment. We’ll still have to wait to see who will rise to govern next year.

It’s a shame the session wrapped up before the 25th memorial anniversary of the Exxon Valdez oil spill on March 24 and the Galveston oil spill coming at the same time. It may have prompted more serious consideration of the oil spill prevention measures and fees proposed. There’s always the opportunity to remember the BP Gulf disaster this month, saying so inspiring words around Earth Day and hope there is no major spill here.

Still haven’t heard whether anyone’s figured out what caused our starfish to die. Haven’t heard much about whether they’re still dying. Still worrisome.

As we wrote earlier, the Puget Sound Partnership’s new executive director is fully on board and the Leadership Council has the blood of new members. We may not know for awhile whether it’s a new game or game over but an early measure would whether the draft 2014 Action Agenda creates some excitement. I’ve been told discussions have been scheduled for April 8 in Edmonds and April 15 in Tacoma. As always, we stay tuned. [4/10 edit: The Partnership cancelled the 4/8 Edmonds meeting and announced in a 4/9 news release  the Edmonds meeting would be on 4/16. The 4/15 Tacoma date remains unchanged. Go here to read about the updates.


No Seahawks for a few more months but there’s Mariner baseball to strut and fret over. 10th Man, anyone?

--Mike Sato

Oil And Water Don’t Mix— Never Have

Prince William Sound birds (WikiCommons)

I learned about the Exxon Valdez going aground 25 years ago while working in corporate communications for the investor-owned utility, Hawaiian Electric Company. We sadly watched the national news for days as 11 million gallons of oil spread and coated the pristine shorelines.

I told my colleagues there about being with the nascent Puget Sound Water Quality Authority on the Olympic Peninsula in late December 1985 right after the Arco Anchorage went aground west of Port Angeles spilling 239,000 gallons of oil.  What stayed with me was the pervasive smell of the oil and the frantic and futile efforts to clean seabirds with detergent before they ingested the oil and died.

Right before I returned to Puget Sound to begin work and launch the new People For Puget Sound, the fishing vessel Tenyo Maru spilled 354,00 gallons of fuel oil and 97,000 gallons of diesel in a collision off the mouth of the Juan de Fuca Strait in July 1991.

I was on vacation in Hawaii and taking calls from the news media in late December 2003 when 4,700 gallons of oil overflowed late at night while a barge was being loaded at Point Wells near Edmonds, then floated over to ruin the shellfish beds on the Suquamish reservation.

At People For Puget Sound we scrambled in the early morning and throughout the days that followed a spill or discharge of 1,500 gallons of oil near Vashon Island’s Dalco Passage.

And we watched and watched and watched in April 2010 and for months afterwards as 210 million gallons of oil gushed and gushed from BP’s Deepwater Horizon drill site in the Gulf of Mexico.

These spills have brought to some extent or another hand wringing, calls to action, studies, enhanced planning and communications, more regulatory oversight, training, response equipment— and even a permanently stationed rescue tug at Neah Bay paid for by the shipping industry after over 12 years of wrangling for enhanced protection near the outer Strait.

Are we better prepared to keep the genie in the bottle with better spill prevention measures? Are we better prepared to try to get the genie back in the bottle with better spill recovery measures?

The amount of large vessel traffic and oil transport is expected to increase with an additional oil pipeline to Vancouver BC, an coal export facility at Cherry Point in Whatcom County, and railroad tank cars bringing Bakken crude oil to refineries in Skagit and Whatcom counties.

I think, as long as human beings are still operating transport systems, increased frequency and volumes will increase likelihood of human error and mechanical failures.

For some, that’s the risk and cost of living and working and doing business in a port and shipping based regional economy. The risk, of course, is to our “commons”— the waters and shores and natural resources of the Sound and Straits— while the benefits are to those who work for, invest in and are associated with those industries. Of course, taxes are paid and wage dollars are spent in the community but does that offset the cost and the risk in using the “commons”?

Damage to our “commons” are paid for by companies after a spill. The first court judgment post-Exxon spill awarded plaintiffs $287 million and assessed $5 billion in punitive damages. Exxon lawyers have fought that judgment for years and years.

Industries using the “commons” should be required to put aside in advance money in a fund sufficient to pay for all natural resource, restoration and personal injury damages, indemnifying their use of the people’s “commons”— our waters and our shores. Until they do it, the public will continue to bear the risks.

They won’t like it and won’t do it willingly but I’m sure industries will be even more careful than they say they are when the public holds them not only accountable but holds their profits as well.

--Mike Sato

February 2014: Two Down, 10 to Go

Dying starfish (Photo: Don Noveillo/USA Today) 

February was a short month and I'm still waiting to see which of our elected officials in Olympia will choose to govern in the remaining weeks of the legislative session:  [“What I'm Looking For In 2014”]

At least we might have a tax put on those bringing crude oil by rail into the state, given that GOP energy and environment committee chair Senator Doug Ericksen (42-Ferndale) thinks that's a good idea. “Every tanker coming into our refinery today pays a 5-cents-per-barrel tax that goes into oil spill prevention and response,” Ericksen says. “We believe we should apply that to rail cars coming in and we have a bi partisan bill that would apply the barrel tax to the rail cars also.” [“Washington State Senators Propose Tax On Oil Train Shipments”]  On the other hand, will a bill improving safety for all oil transport in Washington state (HB 2347)  which passed out the House and moved to the Senate see the light of day out of Ericksen’s committee? Probably not.

Is somebody going to solve the mystery of our West Coast starfish deaths? We’re still waiting, worried. Who needs more to worry about? Try scallops dying because of ocean acidification in Qualicum Bay north of Nanaimo on Vancouver Island. [“Ocean acidity wipes out 10 million scallops near Qualicum Beach”]

Meanwhile, next week will be a month since Sheida Sahandy took over as the Puget Sound Partnership’s executive director. Clock’s running; what’s Sheida got to say about a fishable, diggable, swimmable Puget Sound?

And we’re hearted that there were fine words said at the Squaxin Tribe Center ceremony recognizing the 40th anniversary of the Boldt decision— and heartened that the news media could tear themselves away from the Seahawks victory parade long enough to report on the anniversary. [“The Boldt Decision turns 40”]

Now, anybody still excited about the Seahawks? Reading Beth Hackett’s blog [“Seahawks: What bandwagon fans like me helped bring to Seattle”]  brings to mind the movie “State and Main” with a Northwest version of fist bumps, chest bumps and shout outs of “Go, ‘Hawks.”

Hackett writes: “The Seahawks’  Super Bowl season brought people together.... I found people being kinder to one another because we had something in common. There was a little less distance between us. The football season created COMMUNITY and we all had a common goal, a common GOOD.  Something in common that we were working toward, together, without politics or all the other stuff that usually separates us, getting in the way.... We weren’t just rooting for the Seahawks. We were rooting for each other. And that should be celebrated and continued!”

Got community? You tell me. There are a few more months left in 2014. 

--Mike Sato

What I'm Looking For In 2014

Forget all the pundit wisdom as 2013 ends; the story continues and the end's not in sight so any conclusions others might wish to draw are, well, masterful or maybe not so masterful self gratification.

Since the story goes on, I'll be watching how Governor Jay Inslee figures out how to get something done with a GOP-led state Senate and whether there's any real political muscle in getting rid of turncoat Democrats like Rod Tom and Tim Sheldon.

Watch with me how much more of a threat is posed to Puget Sound and the Salish Sea as oil shipments by rail and pipeline ramp up, and vessel traffic numbers get tossed around for oil tankers and coal cargo ships.

I really don't know what's happening to the star fish and why they are wasting away along the West Coast and in the Salish Sea. Until the biologist figure out what's happening, it's hard to be sanguine about the health of our waters. I hope we figure out what's happening soon in 2014.

Next year is the 40th anniversary of the Boldt decision which recognized Washington treaty tribes as co-managers of fish harvest in their usual and accustomed tribal areas. I'll be watching for some fine words being written and spoken.

I'll also be watching and listening for some news from the Puget Sound Partnership and its Leadership Council on the real work that's being done and needs to be done to make Puget Sound fishable, swimmable and diggable. There's a lot of money being spent and, if making meaningful progress by 2020 is no longer a goal, then let's have a public discussion on what's the real timeline.

Looks like it'll be an interesting year. Stick around and see how the stories unfold. Thanks for reading.

--Mike Sato

When Good Seafood Goes Bad

(PHOTO: OceanNRG)

Jacques White of Long Live the Kings reminded me about a March 18 article in Ocean Natural Resource Governance (“Gulf Seafood Deformities Alarm Scientists”) detailing the deformities found in fish, crabs and shrimp in the aftermath of the BP Deepwater Horizon mega-spill and use of dispersants in 2010.

His reminder brought to mind how much of the urgency in cleaning up and restoring Puget Sound was prompted in the early 1980s by Dr. Don Malins whose research (and promotion of that research) detailed the liver tumors he found in Elliott Bay and Duwamish River English sole.

(You’ll enjoy listening to Dr. Malins, the former Director of the Environmental Conservation Division of NOAA Fisheries, in a recent interview about his work discovering the tumors. Go to Puget Sound Voices: Don Malins interview.)

In the Gulf, Dr. Jim Cowan of the Louisiana State University’s Department of Oceanography and Coastal Science has found cancerous lesions on red snapper. Fishermen, scientists and seafood processors have found mutated shrimp, fish with oozing sores, underdeveloped blue crabs lacking claws, and eyeless crabs and shrimp.

Dr. Cowan believes that the polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in the spilled oil are likely to blame for what he is finding. Dr. Riki Ott, a Prince William Sound toxicologist, points to the dispersants containing solvents as a cause of seafood deformities.

These are the immediate effects. The longer-term effects on the spill and the dispersants aren’t known but may prove more devastating. Dr. Andrew Whitehead at Louisiana State University has shown an adverse effect of spilled oil on the reproductive capabilities of a major marsh prey species, killifish.

Almost a decade after Dr. Malins and researchers established a link between the liver tumors in English sole and the toxic sediments they lived on, research by Dr. Usha Varanasi’s NOAA team pointed to how juvenile salmon passing through the water column above sediment contaminated by PAHs could suffer genetic damage, weakened immune systems and slower growth. (“Troubled Waters? -- Puget Sound's Pollution Seems To Be Damaging Young Chinook”  and “Fish Study Finds Dna Damage From Pollution”)

Fast forward 20 more years and we’re facing not only declining native salmon runs but also an onslaught of increased import of crude oil into the region’s refineries and an export of finished products. Meanwhile, the state can’t update its fish consumption standards to reflect the true amount of fish eaten out of the Sound because, well, it would require tightening up a whole bunch of discharge standards affecting businesses and industry. And, thankfully the incidence of liver tumors in bottom dwelling fish in Elliott Bay has decreased, but the latest research shows a significant decline of benthic organisms that live in the sediments of our urban bays.

The Gulf has big problems, for sure. Where’s the urgency in Puget Sound?

--Mike Sato

Coal: “I Owe My Soul To The Company Store”

I grew up in Hawaii with no idea what I was singing about when rumbling along with Tennessee Ernie Ford in my deepest pre-teen bass voice to the lyrics of Sixteen Tons--

"You load sixteen tons, what do you get
Another day older and deeper in debt
Saint Peter don't you call me 'cause I can't go
I owe my soul to the company store"

I still don’t have much of a first-hand experience with coal except for seeing some in a dusty basement in an old Portland rental. I’ve watched How Green Was My Valley and Coal Miner’s Daughter and used the expression “canary in a coal mine.”

I’ve heard of the somewhat surreal story by Lemony Snicket, The Lump of Coal, and pondered whether children in Europe who got a lump of coal at Christmastime were being punished or rewarded. On one hand, the Dutch tradition was punishment for bad behavior; on the other, coal was a valuable fuel that warmed you. Maybe punishment or reward depended on whether you were rich or poor.


This past week we had to think about the implications of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers deciding that effects of climate change would not be included in the scope of the environmental impact study for the coal export facility proposed to be built in the Cherry Point Aquatic Reserve and pondered the implications of the multi-pronged avenues of the President’s policy to reduce the impacts of coal burning on climate change.

On the one hand we aren’t going to assess the impact on climate change of a major action regarding coal; on the other hand, we are going to take action on the impact on climate change by reducing how we and the rest of the world uses coal.

I was reminded that decision like the one announced by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers were long in the making and made at the highest levels of the Administration. In late February of this year, Bloomberg News reported in White House CEQ Meetings on Coal Projects Seen Indicating Major Policy Issues at Stake:

The White House Council on Environmental Quality has convened a series of meetings with federal regulators over the past nine months as the Obama administration shapes environmental impact analyses for the building of terminals to export coal to Asia. While CEQ downplays its involvement in the deliberations, a former CEQ official and other analysts suggest the White House role highlights the sensitive policy issues at stake, as the administration is under pressure to assess the possible climate change impact of burning U.S. coal in Asia.

At issue is how broadly the government should extend its analysis: whether to consider the impacts of each of the Pacific Northwest export terminals through narrowly tailored individual environmental impact statements or to assess their cumulative effects together, which would allow for a comprehensive analysis of possible climate change impacts.

Trains carrying coal north to British Columbia are the closest those of us in Western Washington get to coal these days. I think it would help make talking about coal much more real if, every time someone wanted to say something pro or con about coal, they had to hold a piece of coal in their hands. Sort of like a talking stick.

This past week, I suggested to an activist organizer she could use coal in a more tactile way but there was no easy way short of derailing one of those coal trains to get some coal to have and to hold. But we have Eocene rock formations in Western Washington out of which coal has been mined, giving us names like Coal Creek, Newcastle and Black Diamond.

I asked geologist Dan McShane if he’d written about the coal in his blog, Reading the Washington Landscape, and Dan generously shared some of the articles he’d written.

Dan’s article, Park Store - Sometimes Zoning Does Not Matter tells of, among other things, the 1890 opening of the Blue Canyon Mine located above the east shore of Lake Whatcom. The high-quality coal was barged to the north end of the lake, then sent by rail to ships on the Bellingham waterfront.

Coal in Whatcom County: Glen Echo Mine tells of the 1918 opening of the Glen Echo Mine on Anderson Creek.

Dan writes about coal mined in the 1870s in downtown Bellingham in A Patch Over Bellingham's Void and near the Bellingham Golf Course in When Bellingham Had Coal Piles.

Bellingham and Whatcom County’s coal, as well as King County’s coal, was small potatoes compared to the amount of coal coming via locomotives whose lights we see coming our way in the dark tunnel. There are a lot of folks more than happy to owe their souls to the company.

Me? I don’t sing Tennessee Ernie’s song any more. Nowadays, I think about who wins and who loses. Anytime I need to be reminded, it's time to listen up to John Prine singing Paradise --

And daddy won't you take me back to Mulenberg county
Down by the Green River, where Paradise lay
Well I'm sorry my son, but you're too late in askin'
Mr. Peabody's coal train has hauled it away

--Mike Sato


(Note: Eric de Place at Sightline gives some real scary numbers about the amount of oil coming our way by rail, What You Can Do About Oil-By-Rail in the Northwest, to go along with my earlier blog, Greased Rails for Oil and Coal )

Greased Rails for Oil and Coal

PHOTO: Globe and Mail/Canadian Pacific

Some of us remember the Arab Oil Embargo of 1973-74 when the foreign oil we depend on was cut back, resulting in cars lining up for gas and higher prices at the pump. The embargo also prompted a law outlawing export of our domestic oil to foreign countries. There have been several incidences since then of threats to our life styles due to dependence on foreign oil imports, prompting many words about the necessity of U.S. achieving energy independence.

Well, thanks to fracking technology advances, domestic oil production may outstrip refinery capacity within 18 months to three years, according to an analyst at FBR Capital Markets Corp. Net petroleum imports now account for about 40 percent of demand, down from 60 percent in 2005, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, the Energy Department research unit. Output is putting the nation on pace to surpass Saudi Arabia as the world’s largest producer by 2020, according to Energy Department data.

In order to maintain the growth in domestic oil production despite the limits of refinery capacity, the law prohibiting export of domestic oil may have to be lifted by Congress. ( U.S. Considers Exporting More Oil for First Time Since ’70s  )

This puts Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway, already in prime position to profit from transporting coal to be exported from facilities proposed in Washington and Oregon, in an equally prime position to profit from transporting oil to be exported— should the oil export ban be lifted.

The rail lines are already in place and BNSF since last year has been supplying the Tesoro refinery near Anacortes with a third of its crude oil from the Bakken oil fields in Montana and North Dakota. You might have seen those 100-car shipments on their way to Anacortes; we can expect to see many more when Bakken crude oil deliveries by rail begin to the Phillips and Shell refineries as well as to the BP refinery in Ferndale, which currently receives Bakken crude oil via barge from a Clatskanie, Oregon, terminal until its refinery rail line is completed.

Pipelines like BC’s Northern Gateway to carry Alberta tar sands oil and Kinder Morgan to carry Canadian Bakken crude and the yet-to-be-approved Keystone pipeline are all still in play, but the oil transport games changed rapidly in the last year.

“America’s energy boom has left the middle of the country awash in cheap oil. But as pipeline companies scramble to spend billions of dollars to build new pipes to tap these hot new fields, they’re discovering that railroads have beaten them to the punch. By laying a few extra miles of track and building new loading facilities, oil and gas operators are quickly connecting remote areas of oil production with the existing networks of big railroads such as Union Pacific and BNSF Railway. On the other end, they’re running tracks directly into refining complexes as far away as Philadelphia and Puget Sound. These rail projects can often be finished in a matter of months at a cost that’s usually in the millions, not billions.” Amid U.S. Oil Boom, Railroads Are Beating Pipelines in Crude Transport  

The Port of Grays Harbor which boasts itself to be “Washington’s only deep water port on the Pacific coast”, in hopeful anticipation of some boom times to come their way, dropped plans to develop a coal export facility and instead has been moving forward with a proposal to build a crude oil export facility served by rail.

Notwithstanding the Port’s declaration that the “oil industry is one of the most regulated industries. State and federal laws and policies will govern construction, operations and shipping protocols,” a coalition of Friends of Grays Harbor, Grays Harbor Audubon Society, Citizens for A Clean Harbor, Surfrider Foundation, and Sierra Club has concerns about putting nearly 100 million gallons of crude oil on the edge of the Grays Harbor Estuary. The coalition filed an appeal to the Substantial Development Permit granted to Westway Terminal Company, LLC by the City of Hoquiam and Department of Ecology. Citing failure to follow the law and errors in application of the law, the appeal asks the Shorelines Hearings Board to reverse the permit and the Mitigated Determination of Non-Significance and require an Environmental Impact Statement for the project. So has the Quinault Indian Nation.

According to Curt Hart at the Department of Ecology, the state has regulatory authority when oil is transferred over water, from land to ship or from ship to land. While the state cannot pre-empt federal laws and regulations governing shipping operations, contingency response plans for oil spills and equipment are required of transports over water. Washington state has a rescue tug at Neah Bay paid for by the shipping industry.

Not so for trains carrying oil or coal or your caustic chemical. As interstate commerce solely under federal regulations, railways don’t need to declare what they are carrying or when or where. Only after there is an accident must they declare their manifest to first responders. Each rail car of oil carries about 28,000 gallons; a spill in a rail yard is one thing; a spill along a waterway like the Columbia River or Puget Sound is another.

If the boom in oil and coal transport by rail is put into the equation of jobs vs. environment, constructive discussion tends to bog down, so I’d put the question in terms of asking who benefits from this boom in resource extraction and export and who or what is put at risk by this boom without benefit? It’s a rather selfish way of looking at what some might consider progress and others regress, but maybe by starting there, we can begin discussing how to share the benefits and the risks in an equitable way.

--Mike Sato

‘Tis Only Human to Spill...

(Keith Thorpe/Peninsula Daily News)

After Friends of the San Juans’ board member San Olson told me about a talk he was giving on risks associated with increased vessel traffic in our shared Salish Sea waters, I came across the photo on the left in the Peninsula Daily News. It accompanied a story about an oil-spill drill conducted last week around Port Angeles.

I recall one of the first field trips taken by the newly-formed Puget Sound Water Quality Authority in December 1985 was out to the Strait near Port Angeles where the Arco Anchorage, carrying 814,000 barrels of Alaska crude, went aground due to a navigational error, spilling 5,690 barrels -- or 239,000 gallons—of oil. (Tom Callis at the PDN wrote a good retrospective on the incident two years ago.)

A couple of images and sensations are still pretty fresh for me today: one is the smell of spilled oil, the vapors that permeate everything; the other is the sad frenzy at the bird rescue cleaning station set up at Peninsula Community College.

Since then I’ve never been to a spill that bad which was caused by a drift grounding or navigational error, thank goodness, but that may be due to subsequent progress in establishing better navigational oversight and stationing a stand-by rescue tug in the Strait. Since the rescue tug system went into service in 1999, there have been 46 times when the tug has responded to a vessel in distress. Neah Bay Emergency Response Tug - Summary of Responses

In 1999 the Coast Guard reported that: “The number of vessels greater than 300 GT in size transiting the Strait of Juan de Fuca is projected to grow from about 11,000 transits in year 2000 to over 17,000 transits in year 2025, an increase of 50%. Petroleum movements, including cargo oils and ship bunkers, are forecast to grow from about 360 million barrels in year 2000 to 457 million barrels in year 2025.” Use of Tugs to Protect Against Oil Spills in the Puget Sound Area

But San Olson told me one of the main points in his talk was that there’s a lot more vessel traffic on the horizon not anticipated in spill contingency planning by either US or Canadian agencies.

The proposal to export coal to China from Cherry Point near Bellingham would at full capacity fill approximately 487 large cargo ships making about 1,000 vessel trips through the waters of the straits.

Kinder Morgan of Canada proposes to export tar sands oil from Burrard Inlet and Burnaby near Vancouver and there’s consideration to expand tar sands export at March Point in Anacortes. If so, another 225 more oil tankers could pass through the Salish Sea annually.

I’m sure every precaution will be taken to ensure vessel safety and spill prevention if these proposals come to pass. But it’s only human to err— and to spill oil.

And we learn a few things from these spills. We learn that it’s a lot cheaper to keep the oil out of the water and prevent spills than to attempt to clean them up.

We got a lot better at handling reports of oil spills and coordinating spill response after the Dalco Passage oil spill in October 2004.

We put regulatory safeguards in place to keep oil out of the water when fuel was being transferred over water or between land and water after the Point Wells oil spill in December 2003.

And, after BP’s Deepwater Horizon debacle in 2010, the state strengthened spill contingency planning, spill equipment deployment and spill response training.

Which brings me back to the picture of the oil spill drill last week.

It’s certainly a nice summer day, calm and pleasant, and I’m sure the drill went well. The Arco Anchorage spill happened on a cold, windy December night. So did the Point Wells fuel transfer spill. The Dalco Passage spill was reported in the early morning hours before dawn as the October fog rolled in.

Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.

--Mike Sato

Putting A Price On Nature

(AP Photo/Maritime New Zealand, Graeme Brown)

I’ve been thinking about oil transport and oil spills after reading some of the stories about the proposed Northern Gateway pipeline project and oil tanker routes in British Columbia.  So have a few other readers.

Liz commented on an article posted about the dangers posed by supertankers laden with the pipeline oil from the Kitimat port on the B.C. coast. She pointed out: “While it is not a tanker, the mammoth cargo ship over in New Zealand provides a sobering example of how difficult it can be to contain a wrecked, sinking large vessel.” That would be the Rena, grounded since October and now sinking off the east coast of New Zealand.

It’s always after spill and cleanup efforts that a cost is put on the social, economic and natural resource damages. That’s when we get some kind of order of magnitude when a Gulf of Mexico Deepwater Horizon disaster unfolds or a Nestucca or Rena or Exxon Valdez spills its oil.

Why not before the fact, another reader asked? Is anyone modeling and calculating the social, economic and natural resource cost if an spill were to occur in or around the supertanker routes in Hecate Strait?

There’s a good map at the Globe and Mail depicting the tanker routes, Where the Gateway leads: Tanker routes to Kitimat

There’s a YouTube video modeling what a spill might look like and what will be affected, Tar Sands and Tankers Part 4: Modeling a BC Spill

As reported by the Vancouver Sun’s Larry Pynn, project proponent Enbridge has made its own estimates of how a spill would affect the tanker transit areas.

“Enbridge environmental studies suggest that the condensate would evaporate relatively quickly, producing ‘short-lived toxic effects.’

“It would take up to five years for the Kitimat intertidal zone to recover from a spill of 250 cubic metres of bitumen, as much as two years for condensate, Enbridge calculates.

“A major bitumen spill from a tanker would be much more serious, affecting all levels of the food chain, fouling the feathers of birds, contaminating fish spawning and rearing areas, invertebrates and marine mammals.

“The depth and longevity of effects would depend, in part, on the amount spilled, location and time of year.

“An Enbridge study calculated that a spill of 36,000 cubic metres of bitumen — on the order of the Exxon Valdez spill — in Wright Sound would contaminate 240 kilometres of shoreline in 15 days.

“It could take four years for exposed rocky shores to recover, up to 12 years for sheltered shores.” ( What if a supertanker tanks? )

So how much in dollars (Canadian, if you want) would the social, economic and natural resource costs be for spills like this? What’s that kelp bed worth? That nesting duck? That salmon stream? The years of closed fishery? The loss of a culture?

And wouldn’t it be reasonable for these costs to be agreed upon in the project permitting process and for project approval be contingent on the project proponents insuring with a performance bond the amount of damages risked by its operations?

Oil guys claim all the time that an accident won’t happen. That’s date cheap talk and we’ve seen unthinkable accidents happen again and again.

Until a fair price is paid for using the people’s marine waters and insuring it won’t be damaged, risks continue to be socialized and profits privatized.

It’s not up to the government on behalf of the people to prove that risks in the project exist; it’s up to the project proponents to prove that they will minimize the risks and be responsible for any damage that might occur— from the smallest incident to the worst-case scenario.

I recall giving a talk once about what a wetland was worth and finding a couple of birders rather upset in referring to how wetlands help avoid paying for expensive runoff pollution facilities. They would have preferred the worth to be limited to the natural and aesthetic.

So would I but in a capitalist system we use the tools we have to accomplish what’s right and fair— and in this case it happens to be putting a price tag on nature.

(On the subject of putting a price tag on nature, you must read — in a completely different vein— Carl Safina’s current blog “Bluefin Tuna: New Record Price for Carcass Further Devaluates the Fish” where he bemoans how the news media reported the story of a single bluefin tuna selling at wholesale auction in Tokyo for a record $736,000. Good stuff.)

--Mike Sato