MONTREAL – Until a Canadian Steamship Line vessel ran aground just south of Montreal and ruptured its fuel tank Monday night, there had never been an oil spill in the St. Lawrence’s Seaway 51-year history.
But if an accident of this nature were ever going to happen, it appears the circumstances that surrounded Monday’s spill of between 50 and 200 tonnes of the heavy crude-like oil that was being used to fuel the M/V Richelieu couldn’t have been better.
The vessel, which was loaded with 25 metric tonnes of wheat was just upstream of a lock at the South Shore town of Ste. Catherine when it lost power during a flash storm and went off course to the channel’s rock wall and ran aground, officials said Tuesday.
The fortuitous location meant that the oil that did leak from the vessel’s ruptured fuel tank before it was capped early Tuesday is mostly contained in the Ste. Catherine lock, where the vessel is now moored and oil recuperation efforts are under way.
"It is a closed canal in which only ships transit," explained Jack Meloche, the St. Lawrence Seaway Management Corporation’s regional manager of operations and one of several officials on site Tuesday. "The water can’t go anywhere."
Meloche said all the oil that leaked is being contained by the lock’s gate on the east and by bright yellow boons installed across the navigational channel on the west.
Residents living in municipalities that rely on the St. Lawrence for drinking water have no reason to worry, said Yvan Tremblay, Environment Quebec’s emergency measures co-ordinator in the Eastern Townships and Monteregie.
"There are no public health issues," Tremblay said, noting that the municipalities are being constantly updated. "It’s not an ecological catastrophe, we have to keep things in context."
The cleanup is expected to take at least two days, and the shipping lane will not reopen until the Canadian Coast Guard issues an all-clear and Transport Canada gives the okay for ships to travel again.
Transport Minister John Baird said Canada has tough regulations, and that the government would do its best to enforce them.
"Obviously, we’re following it very closely, we have our officials on hand (and) we’ll do everything we can to assist local officials," said Baird at a news conference regarding the passage of the government’s budget legislation. "Obviously, there will be an investigation (and) the first priority is to contain the spill."
As of late Tuesday, five ships were put on hold and that number is expected to increase. About 10 ships go through the Seaway each day.
But oil recuperation efforts are under way as is the cleanup of the affected shoreline, mostly localized to Ste. Catherine, said Sonia Laforest, an emergency operations officials with Environment Canada. She asked residents to avoid the Ste. Catherine shoreline, a popular spot with local fishermen, until the cleanup is completed.
Meanwhile, Canadian Steamship Lines has committed to pay for the cleanup, the cost of which remains unknown, company officials said Tuesday.
"CSL is going to take full responsibility for the incident and cleanup of the shores, no question," said Claude Dumais, CSL’s vice-president of technical operations.
Still, given the monumental environmental damage in the Gulf of Mexico that has played across television screens since April, officials recognized that there will be public concerns that need to addressed in the coming days.
Although contained, Monday night’s spill has raised the question: What is the chance of a major oil spill in the St. Lawrence Seaway?
The possibility wasn’t quashed entirely Tuesday but experts noted crude oil normally doesn’t travel up and down the special shipping channel between the Atlantic Ocean and the Great Lakes.
"There’s not much crude oil at all being transported by ships on the seaway," said Guy Robitaille, director of operations of the Montreal Pipe Line Ltd., which operates crude-oil pipelines between Montreal and the Atlantic seaport of Portland, Me.
Last year about three per cent of all cargo that used the shipping lane – 1.31 million metric tonnes – were petroleum products, said Meloche.
Most crude oil in North America is transported by pipeline.
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