Steve MacLellan

At last count, almost 300 beaches and a Brazilian coastline 2,500 kilometres long have been defiled. Damage estimates are in the billions. Tourism has been hit hard, along with commercial fisheries and community shellfish harvesting. A key marine sanctuary protecting corals and humpback whales was caught in the crude’s path.

If this tragic picture from faraway Brazil triggers a foreboding chill for those living in the Salish Sea marine gateway shared by southern coastal British Columbia and Washington State, it should.

Because each year, for the next 50 years, the expanded Trans Mountain pipeline from the Alberta tar sands/oil sands to a marine terminal in Burnaby is slated to pump some 215 million barrels of chemically similar “dilbit” into Asia-bound oil tankers. That would cumulatively total one billion barrels passing under Vancouver’s Lion’s Gate Bridge, then to the Pacific via the Strait of Juan de Fuca.

Now consider this: the known damage to Brazil’s 2,500-kilometre coastline has been caused by only 28,000 barrels (4,000 tonnes) of fugitive Venezuela heavy crude.