Let’s get this straight. Woodfibre LNG discharges an estimated 3,000 litres of dangerous industrial waste and water. As reported in The Chief, “The spill was primarily contained in a containment sump and quickly cleaned up using a commercial vacuum trick.”
Keystone Environmental, working for WFLNG, then assures, “[t]he discharge spilled into and remained primarily in the berm area inside the sump. No discharge [was] observed entering either Howe Sound, Mill Creek, Ceder Creek or their tributaries.”
This report is unsettling for a number of reasons, albeit none of which come as any surprise to those used to listening to company spinmeisters over at WFLNG.
First, having the fox’s business associate investigate the misdoings in the henhouse, isn’t what comes to mind when we think of company transparency and accountability. Good business ethics demands independent investigation into incidents of this nature.
Second, are the key words: “primarily contained,” “remained primarily” and that “no discharge [was] observed” entering adjacent, sensitive environments. Given one could say that 51 per cent of a spill constitutes the majority volume of the discharge, we would have 49 per cent of the industrial waste and water not “primarily contained” or “remaining primarily” in the berm area. So, exactly what was the volume of the spill not contained?
Just as disturbing, their golden standard in the investigation was that no one saw any of the industrial waste escape into adjacent waters? That’s it? Maybe no one saw it because no workers were in the area to see it.
As WFLNG continues to exhibit such obfuscation and opaque disclosure at this level of operation, what kind of expectations should the community have if they get full operations going, loading LNG into tankers to be transported down our corridor?
Recently, WFLNG said they “have no duty” to inform our community about this sort of bungling, a posturing now adopted by their business associate, FortisBC, announcing they won’t ask the District for approval to drill more boreholes in the Squamish Estuary. A thinly veiled contempt, all the while declaring they are great neighbors.
Now, like a petulant child with scissors who then cuts himself, we’ve learned the Fortis BC drilling area was shut down over the weekend after hitting a pocket of hydrogen sulphide gas.
Companies that belligerently do what they want, irrespective of those directly affected in the community, demonstrate a mindset antithetical to what most folk call basic honesty and common decency.
Elijah Dann, Squamish
