Transcript
Speaker: I'm Jane Williams, this is the Red Eye Podcast. In our show today I talk with Misty McDuffie of Rain Coast about the potential environmental consequences of a new container terminal on Roberts Bank in the Lower Mainland. The Fraser Estuary is one of the largest and most important estuaries on the Pacific Coast of North America. It's the rearing grounds for Canada's most productive salmon runs and connects a food web
Speaker: that links fish, birds, and marine mammals across thousands of kilometers of the North Pacific Ocean. The Vancouver Fraser Port Authority is proposing another massive container terminal on Roberts Bank in the Strait of Georgia, raising concerns about continued port expansion and environmental sustainability. Misty McDuffie is a biologist and program director with the Rain Coast Conservation Foundation.
Speaker: She's joined me today to talk about the fight against this container terminal. Hello, Misty. Good afternoon. Let's start out with the basics. What exactly is Vancouver Fraser Port Authority proposing to do on Roberts Bank? So they're proposing to essentially double the size of the existing terminal, and that requires a lot of infill, putting fill into what is currently an estuary environment
Speaker: and extending that long causeway all the way across the bank and into Georgia Strait. So it's a huge facility and a substantial footprint really in the heart of the Fraser Estuary. They're actually going to make an artificial island, am I right? That's absolutely correct. Yeah, so a huge amount of material deposited onto what is now the bed of the estuary.
Speaker: And I understand it's going to cover like a third of the size of Stanley Park. Yeah. You know, more than 150 football fields would double the size of the existing terminal. And just to be clear, so the Roberts Bank terminal is what you see when you go to it's so often to take the ferry.
Speaker: Exactly. So once you're out at the end of the ferry terminal causeway, you look across and you can see either a coal ship at the port there and often two or three container ships. Now the Raincoast Conservation Foundation has identified significant environmental problems with this proposal. Tell me first of all about the impacts you're concerned about on Fraser River salmon.
Speaker: So from the perspective of salmon, they are dependent on this estuary twice in their lifetime, once as they leave as juveniles and once as they migrate home as adults. But when the salmon are leaving as juveniles, they have to transition from freshwater into saltwater
Speaker: and they do that in the Fraser estuary. So it's a really important nursery and rearing environment while these tiny little fish grow and prepare themselves for their ocean migration. What this terminal does is it, there's already been substantial impacts from the human footprint in this estuary and we've already lost so much
Speaker: of the habitat that young salmon would want to access. And this is just another blow on a really important part of their rearing habitat that would have what's known as population level consequences for some of these Fraser River salmon. What about the southern resident killer whales that are in the strait there?
Speaker: Yeah, and that's another component. This project is problematic from two perspectives. One is the actual footprint of the terminal expansion right there in the Fraser Estuary, and then the other concern is the increase in traffic and shipping that will be coming into that port.
Speaker: already southern resident killer whales are struggling because of lack of food and noise from vessels, everything from small boats through to whale watching vessels through to large ships reduces the effective foraging of these whales and their ability to catch salmon. So already many of the acoustic scientists that study this problem feel that the Salish Sea really can't get any noisier if we are to recover
Speaker: this endangered population of southern resident killer whales, and port expansions, bringing in more ships, do exactly that. They would increase the amount of noise within the sailor's sea. And I guess, as we also talked about, the effect on the salmon, and then killer whales eat salmon, so then that's a reduction in food right there. Absolutely. So the southern residents have two pathways where they are affected. One is the noise from the ships and the second
Speaker: is the potential decline in the abundance of those Fraser River Chinook. The ISU is also a crucial stopover on migration routes for birds that are stretching from South America to the high Arctic. What kind of effect will the expansion have on that habitat? One of the biggest concerns is for the population of Western sandpipers.
Speaker: You know at certain times during the year much of the global population of Western sandpipers is moving through the Fraser estuary and they are really dependent on this unique substance that's on the surface of the sand flats called biofilm and the concern is that the circulation patterns and potentially salinity and the kind of conditions that create this
Speaker: really high lipid rich food source for these birds would be impacted by the terminal expansion. And already so many of these migratory populations are already at risk and already far below their historic numbers that, you know, when you have these kinds of impacts in such an important stopover on their migration route, that, again, potential significant
Speaker: impacts to this population. Now, the panel didn't conclude that the impacts on Western sandpipers would be significant. That's the panel in an independent review panel. That's the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency that independently reviewed this project. And they did conclude that the effects from the project would be significant for both Fraser River Chinook salmon and for southern resident killer whales.
Speaker: but they didn't conclude that they would be significant for Western sandpipers simply because of the uncertainty that surrounds our understanding of the situation. So it's not that those consequences aren't likely, it's just that there's a lot of uncertainty in determining what the outcome is going to be.
Speaker: I think the last time we covered this issue on our show, communities and First Nations were waiting for a report from that independent review panel, and then in March it was released. Since then, it's gone to Canada's Minister of Environment and Climate Change, Jonathan Wilkinson, who's going to make the final decision. Do we know what he thought of the report? He has not shown us his hand on what he thinks of the report.
Speaker: He did indicate in a letter that he wrote in August to the port asking some really important questions about how they're going to compensate for the habitat loss.
Speaker: The depth of Minister Wilkinson's questions to the port did reveal that there is a good understanding on his part and his team at Environment Canada of the implications from this project. And so the questions that he was putting to the port and the details that he wants from the port in order to assess how they're going to mitigate this project are very pertinent.
Speaker: Our concern is that simply because of the status of the populations that depend on this habitat, so critically endangered southern resident killer whales along with threatened populations of Fraser Chinook that rely on this habitat, that there isn't any mitigation or ways to mitigate the effects of this project without having
Speaker: consequences for these populations. So we would argue that too much has been lost at this stage to think that we can mitigate the effects. Is support suggesting that mitigation is a possibility?
Speaker: Well, the port has presented their material by saying that, yes, we can mitigate these effects. However, the port did not conclude that construction of Terminal 2 would have significant impacts, where the panel did conclude that the construction of Terminal 2 would have significant impacts.
Speaker: there's a different perspective coming from the port and the panel. And that's why Jonathan Wilkinson wants to hear very detailed information and response from the port to say how they're going to mitigate when submissions from, say, raincoast suggest that you cannot mitigate these effects.
Speaker: No, this is not the only iron that the Vancouver Fraser Port Authority has in the fire. I mean, there's an oil terminal in Burnaby, there's LNG export terminals near Squamish and Delta, and there's an aviation fuel terminal in Richmond. Is this kind of activity sustainable at all?
Speaker: Well, I would say that the short answer at this stage in the game is no, because we keep barreling ahead with approving this project and alienating or outright destroying the habitat that once existed that species depended on.
Speaker: And now we've got a critical situation with populations that rely on the estuary or food coming out of the estuary in the case of southern resident killer whales. And so now when you've got a population like southern resident killer whales that are at a critical threshold and they cannot sustain further declines in the condition or the quality of the habitat in the Salish Sea,
Speaker: And all these projects simply contribute to more decline and industrialization in the Salish Sea. So we can't have it both ways. If we are serious and if the government is serious about recovering southern resident killer whales, they can't continue down this road.
Speaker: For some time now, organizations like Rain Coast and others have been saying you have to undertake a cumulative effects assessment of all of these projects on these different species that are at risk in the estuary. There's more than 100 species in the Fraser estuary that are considered at risk.
Speaker: But there's been no cumulative effects assessment. We keep approving these projects as one -offs, like looking at them in this siloed approach. And ultimately, they aren't sustainable from this perspective of salmon, from the perspective of killer whales, and in many cases, a host of other species that rely on the habitat that is being compromised.
Speaker: If people want to add their voices to the work that Raincoast and others are doing to raise awareness of this issue, express their opinion, what should they do? They should contact Jonathan Wilkinson, especially if they're in his riding, but he's also the Minister of Environment, Canada, and climate change. And it's Jonathan Wilkinson that is going to make a decision on whether the port gets to proceed with Terminal 2 or not.
Speaker: And we are saying, get your letters out there and tell Jonathan Wilkinson that this project should not proceed. And we haven't even gone into, I'm only talking about the ecological considerations. There's many other considerations from a social and a human health and an economic perspective that you would want to consider as well.
Speaker: and let Jonathan Wilkinson know that there's no way that this project can be approved and we can recover species that depend on this estuary. And then if you want to contact your own MP on federal MP on this issue, then that would be really valuable as well. Great. Well, thank you so much, Misty, for talking to me today. My pleasure, Jane. Thank you. I've been speaking with Misty McDuffie. She's a biologist and program director with Rain Coast Conservation Foundation.
Speaker: You can find out more about this proposal and its impact at Rain Coast Conservation there, raincoast .org. You can also go and find the group Against Port Expansion, and they're against portexpansion .org. The Red Eye podcast is produced at the studios of Vancouver Co -op Radio. You can support us by supporting Co -op Radio.
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