Our Strait of Juan de Fuca, part of the greater inland water body known as the Salish Sea, is about to be put at risk in a dubious quest to turn tar into motor fuel.
Kinder Morgan, the largest pipeline company in North America, proposes tripling the capacity of its pipeline from the Alberta Tar Sands to Burnaby, B.C., according to news reports.
They would then ship that increase through the Salish Sea to refineries down the West Coast as diluted tar.
Tanker deliveries to Tacoma would increase from once a week to once a day, a sevenfold increase.
At dangerous turning points in the Strait and in the San Juan Islands, the risk of spill would increase by 350 percent, according to a study prepared for the state at http://tinyurl.com/pdn-tarstudy.
Historically, preparation and planning for spills have been poor and cleanup difficult.
Tar brings this difficulty to a whole new level of peril because it sinks rather than floats when spilled, making it virtually impossible to clean up, as was demonstrated by a 2010 spill on the Kalamazoo River.
We must not ship more of this tar through our straits. I am proud to join Olympic Climate Action, hundreds of indigenous groups and other concerned groups and individuals in boycotting the banks funding these risky pipeline plans.
It’s time to turn off the money pipeline.
Thanks to the Peninsula Daily News for its coverage of the Global Day of Action in which local groups delivered notice of our boycott to branch managers of these banks.
To join this boycott, see OlyClimate.org.
Michael Clemens,
Port Angeles