Every day stories flood in on us about the inability of BP and the U.S Government to deal with the oi-lwell blowout in the Gulf of Mexico. We were wondering what would happen if there was a spill here, on a much smaller scale of course, say from the Gas N Go Station on the Dyke Road into the Courtenay River Estuary.

Why do we raise this issue? Because of what we know about gas stations and water pollution, the vulnerable site, and the inadequacy of the current spill policy.

If you Google “gas stations and water pollution” you’ll get 900,000 examples from around the world of gas stations polluting local bodies of water. The proposed station is high risk. It’s on unstable ground, in a flood plain area, less than 60 meters from the edge of the ocean. Does anyone know of a decommissioned gas station that did not require soil remediation?

We decided to check with the local emergency program folks in the CVRD to see about their ability to handle a spill or leak into the estuary.

They told us they couldn’t handle a spill. They would refer the matter to Department of the Environment in Nanaimo. DoE in Nanaimo told us they had a policy. It was the responsibility of the owner to do the clean-up and the Department would do the monitoring. We decided to look at the track record—how the policy was put into practice on Vancouver Island in a situation similar to one that might occur here.

In 2008, diesel fuel from an underground tank at a service station in Lake Cowichan leaked into a local creek and then into the Cowichan River, one of the province’s two most important fishing rivers. Government spotted the problem within a few days. The owner was told to clean it up while government monitored the work. But the owner failed and went bankrupt. Government failed to monitor the work. Five months later the tank was still leaking fuel. Finally, under community pressure, government stepped in with a $1million dollar budget of taxpayers’ money for clean-up.

If you have confidence in the let-the-owner-clean-it-up-while-government monitors-the-work policy...well, as the gecko in the Geico TV add might have said to the manager who put his confidence in wonky advertising slogans” “Good luck with that one.”

Mike Bell, Chairperson
Sierra Club Comox Valley