Natives in Hartley Bay continue to be haunted by a 66-year-old ghost.
Now they’re asking the federal government to do something about it – once and for all.
“I want to see them clean this mess up,” Arnold Clifton, chief councillor of the Gitga’at Nation, said in an interview Wednesday. “It’s getting pretty bad again.”
The U.S. transport ship, Brigadier General M.G. Zalinski, is thought to have carried 700 tonnes of bunker fuel and at least a dozen 227-kilogram bombs when it ran aground in 1946 and sank in Grenville Channel, about 40 kilometres northwest of Hartley Bay.
Federal officials were alerted to the wreck’s dangers in 2003. Divers were sent down twice to seal leaks.
The department issued a warning in January 2004, ordering mariners to avoid anchoring or fishing within 200 metres of the wreck site, which is about 27 metres below the water’s surface.
Natives now say the leak is getting worse again and are asking the federal government to take decisive action.
Clifton said he’s been aware of the ongoing leak for some time, but when he flew over the site Tuesday observed an extensive spill on the water. “There were oil slicks all over in that area,” he said.
Members of his First Nation collected water samples. “It is bunker fuel and it is stinking,” he said.
The Canadian Coast Guard is conducting an overflight of the area Wednesday.
One commercial pilot who has been flying the area for 30 years confirmed there was a larger than normal slick on the water Tuesday but feels it has nothing to do with the General Zalinski.
“It looked somebody pumping bilge, a streak going down the middle of the channel, not real thick,” said Bruce MacDonald, owner of Inland Air Charters in Prince Rupert.
“It didn’t look like it was coming from the General Zalinski. Normally, it just bubbles up in little amounts and you get little streaks. Sometimes you see it and sometimes you don’t. It’s different every time you go by.”
MacDonald described it as a light sheen measuring perhaps one-quarter to one-third of a mile in length and “not very wide.” He does not feel the sheen poses a significant environmental threat. “It was thin oil and it dissipates with the tide running through there.”
Western Canada Marine Response Corp. coordinated a simulation exercise in 2009 related to a spill that might be associated with the salvage of the General Zalinski.
The wreck lies 1.35 nautical miles southwest of James Point on Lowe Inlet in the Grenville Channel, a busy route for ferries, cruise ships and virtually all ocean travel to Alaska.
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