http://www.nationalobserver.com/2016/08/17/news/trudeau-government-quietly-endorses-toxic-chemical-clean-oil-spills
Trudeau government quietly endorses toxic chemical to clean up oil spills
By Elizabeth McSheffrey in News, Energy | August 17th 2016
The federal government has quietly authorized Canada’s embattled
pipeline regulator to allow use of a controversial toxic substance that
caused major damage during the Deepwater Horizon spill in the Gulf of
Mexico.
Corexit 9500A — a chemical known to seriously harm marine life including
fish, shellfish, and coral — is intended to be used by industry after an
offshore oil spill. Critics say the chemical is dangerous and describe
the oil spill response process as "polluter decides."
Corexit has been hotly-debated since it was added to the list of
federally-approved spill-treating agents in 2015, and was kept there by
the Trudeau government in spring 2016. It has yet to be deployed in
Canadian waters and the decision to do so now rests with the National
Energy Board (NEB) which bases its oil spill response on an
environmental evaluation from the oil and gas company responsible for
the damage.
It’s a supreme conflict of interest, environmentalists argue. The guilty
oil company has an inherent interest in controlling costs but produces
the evaluation. And the decision is made by the NEB which has been under
fire for a series of controversies involving private meetings with
pipeline company officials, allowing substandard parts, weak responses
to spills and explosions, and allegations that it has been captured by
the energy industry.
The environmentalists want Corexit to be banned in Canada.
A deadly chemical
Corexit, in its many chemical varieties, has been around since the late
1960s. The 9500A version made headlines when more than 8.3 million
litres were sprayed into the Gulf of Mexico to help clean up nearly 760
million litres of oil spilled during the BP’s Deepwater Horizon accident
in 2010.
The chemical breaks oil into smaller globules that naturally-occurring
microbes can munch on, reducing the surface slick affecting the
shoreline, and eventually, allowing the oil to biodegrade. Environment
and Climate Change Canada (ECCC) lauds it as a “highly effective”
substance in laboratory performance screening tests that has low
toxicity in aquatic toxicity tests at concentrations anticipated during
actual use. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency also acknowledges
it as "generally no more or less toxic than the other available
alternatives."
But real-world experience in the Gulf of Mexico proved that Corexit can
be deadly: scientists who studied the spill found that the substance
makes oil up to 52 times more toxic to marine plankton and decreases
survival rates for baby corals exposed to the oil-chemical mix. It can
also damage the gills of marine life like zebrafish and blue crabs,
according to One Green Planet, which linked Corexit to the deaths and
injuries of more than 8,000 birds, sea turtles, and other marine mammals
over six months after the devastating spill.
It’s a tradeoff for governments and oil companies, explained Vince
Palace, an aquatic toxicologist for the Winnipeg-based International
Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD).
“Over the long term, by increasing the surface area of the oil, you’re
also increasing the potential for the oil to be degraded by microbes in
the environment,” he explained. “But it can actually increase the
toxicity of it over the short term...
“Are we going to have an oil slick that will persist for a longer period
of time and be exposed to more biota [organisms], or a more acutely
toxic plume by applying the Corexit but for a shorter time?”
A “polluter decides” policy in Canada
In an email, ECCC told National Observer that a “best-in-class approach”
was used during its review and approval of Corexit 9500A in 2015 using
extensive evidence from research studies, tests, and real-world experience.
But the federal Environment Department won't be the one deciding how and
when the substance would be deployed by industry. Instead, the decision
to deploy Corexit is made by Canada's offshore regulators, including the
NEB, the Canada-Newfoundland and Labrador Offshore Petroleum Board, and
the Canada Nova Scotia Offshore Petroleum Board. Their verdict is made
on a case-by-case basis using a net environmental benefit assessment
that considers the pros and cons of different spill response options in
order to minimize environmental and socioeconomic impact.
The conflict, according to Greenpeace Canada, is that a number of these
regulators have demonstrated allegiance to the industry they oversee.
The NEB is particular, has been plagued by conflict of interest concerns
that include an appointed contractor who did work for the Texas-based
oil giant Kinder Morgan, investigation and audit reports that were
revised and watered down by industry, and an overall cozy relationship
between the board's senior management and the companies it is supposed
to regulate.
“These boards have conflicting mandates where they’re supposed to
promote the oil industry, regulate it, and protect the public from the
negative impact of the oil industry,” Greenpeace campaigner Alex
Speers-Roesch told National Observer. “Sometimes you can’t do both.”
Adding fuel to the fire, said Daniel Green, a deputy leader of the Green
Party in Quebec, is the fact that the offshore operator responsible for
the oil spill is also responsible for conducting the net environmental
benefit assessment. Corexit is a much cheaper solution than deploying an
arsenal of industrial booms, skimmers and the personnel to operate them,
Green pointed out, and in dispersing the oil rather than collecting it,
the chemical makes the problem disappear more quickly — visually, at least.
“It’s polluter decides,” he told National Observer. “And oil companies —
the first the thing they think about when they see oil on the water is
how to minimize costs. This is why oil companies immediately stand up
and say, ‘It’s our spill we’ll take care of it.’ Because they control
the cost by doing that.”
The NEB did not comment on the alleged conflicts before deadline.
Holes in government science
As the Harper government deliberated adding Corexit 9500A to the list of
federally-approved spill-treating agents in 2015, WWF Canada tried
desperately to stop them.
The conservation group sent a six-page letter to then-environment
minister Leona Aglukkaq urging the ministry not to approve a
“potentially deleterious” substance, citing the havoc it wreaked during
the Deepwater Horizon spill, and holes in government science that
assumed if Corexit worked well during lab tests, it would work just as
well in the open ocean.
"Under real world conditions, where it’s difficult to deploy the
dispersant in exactly the right place at exactly the right concentration
and so on, it turns out that only 10 to 40 per cent of the oil is driven
into the water columns," said Rob Powell, WWF Canada's senior officer
for priority conservation programs.
"And what more recent research shows is that... what happens when you
apply dispersants, which contain small hydrocarbons in the solvent
portion, is that it actually can favour microbes that are good at
munching on the dispersant over those actually capable of munching on
the oil. So instead of getting increase biodegradation of the oil, you
actually get decreased biodegradation of the oil.”
WWF Canada's letter to Environment Canada on Corexit 9500
Indeed, tests cited by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency have
shown that Corexit is only 45 to 55 per cent effective in dispersing of
various types of crude oil. Such inconsistent results make Corexit a
"wild guess" and "rolling of the dice," argued Speers-Roesch of
Greenpeace Canada.
"The cardinal rule is these kind of situations, as any doctor can tell
you, is do no harm," he explained. "We shouldn’t be dumping chemicals
that we have lots of evidence can actually make the situation worse,
onto an oil spill.”
Both Greenpeace and WWF are calling for a ban on Corexit in Canada,
while Daniel Green of the Green Party calls for more federal oversight
for oil spill response in Canada.
“I think that the unseen commander should be the government and that he
government should be making the decisions in the spill response and not
the polluter," said Green. "The polluter will pay, but the government
should decide ultimately. The polluter is in a conflict of interest to
make these decisions because they’re there to reduce cost.”
Environment and Climate Change Canada has said it would only consider
removing Corexit 9500 from the list of spill-treating agents (STA) if it
is determined the product "is not suitable" for use in Canada, and that
changes to the regulation could only come after new findings on the
risks of the dispersant are incorporated into a net-environmental
benefit assessment.
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