A member of Parksville council threw his support behind a group cycling from Campbell River to Victoria to raise awareness of the threat to B.C.’s coast from a proposed pipeline and increased oil tanker traffic.
Coun. Bill Neufeld said he donned a Protect Our Coast T-shirt and stood with the group to show his concern about the risks posed by the proposed Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline and the tanker traffic it would bring.
Not only the Enbridge proposal, but a similar plan by Kinder Morgan to twin its pipeline to the Port of Vancouver is weighing on Neufeld’s mind.
“The doubling of the pipeline wouldn’t mean twice the tanker traffic on the coast, but 11 times as much,” he said.
Neufeld said it would just take one tanker having a major spill to devastate the coast.
Neufeld said British Columbia has a significantly different approach to the potential risk posed by the project than than those on the other side of the Canada/U.S. border.
“Washington State has something like 75 to 80 employees involved in the environmental side and Alaska has that many or more, but I think we have a total of eight here in B.C.,” he said.