"Hume: Citizen Marsh Calculates the Odds of a Northern Gateway Oil Spill"

By Stephen Hume, Vancouver Sun, July 14,2012

Democracy works when citizens act.

Democracy is not simply government creating a frictionless environment for the transaction of corporate business or dispensing with the inconvenience of being accountable to critics.

It's really about citizens embracing the messiness of debate, dissent, disagreement and the opportunity to object to policy and practice. This capacity is what makes the dishevelled and cumbersome and often frustrating process we call democratic government worth having.

Corporations are not democracies and generally don't behave like they are. And corporations have only one allegiance- to their shareholders and investors, who expect returns, not red ink.

That is why, in a healthy democracy, it's important for citizens to challenge the influence of elites who seek advantage and to keep nudging the process back to transparency and accountability.

And this is why we should all be grateful to Kelly Marsh.

Marsh is a 52-year-old millwright. He's lived in Kitimat for 40 years. He's a longtime volunteers with the local search and rescue organization. He's by no stretch of the imagination a political militant.

"I'm just a regular guy", he says. "I don't belong to any environmental group. I'm just a regular guy who cares about the environment and this beautiful place where we live."

When Enbridge, the trans-national energy transportation company, announced plans for a pipeline to carry bitumen and natural gas condensate between Alberta's oilsands complex and a marine terminal at Kitimat, Marsh took notice.

He was open-minded about the idea- who wouldn't like an economic boost for their community? He read Enbridge's submission to the panel evaluating the environmental and economic and resource implications of the proposed project.

"Something didn't sit right with me," he says.

As a search and rescue volunteer, he was particularly interested in the spill risk posed by a pipeline, terminal and tanker traffic in and out of a congested, constricted waterway, but found himself, as a lay citizen, swamped in arcane corporate rhetoric and "really big numbers" that sounded impressive but didn't mean anything to him.

"I was trying to educate myself. Man, I thought, there's got to be a way to rationalize those numbers."

So he set out to do so, enlisting a friend with mathematical training. Then he had his calculations vetted by a mathematics professor at Thompson Rivers University.

On June 25, he presented the pipeline panel with his calculations for the probability of an oil spill at sea, at the Kitimat terminal or in the six geological regions traversed by the proposed Northern Gateway pipeline route.

Here's what he found, crunching Enbridge's own data:

The mathematical chance of an oil spill at sea is 18.1 percent. The mathematical chance of a spill of up to 10,000 litres at the Kitimat terminal is 47.8 per cent and of a spill of up to a million litres is 15.6 per cent.

There is a 30.8 per cent chance of a spill of up to a million litres in the southern Alberta uplands section of the pipeline and a 34.5 per cent chance of a similar spill in B. C.'s Interior Plateau.

"Using the appropriate mathematical formula, the probability that at least one of the locations will experience a medium-sized [up to a million litres] leak or spill over the 50-year proposed project is 77.54 per cent. Combining everything, the risk of one or more medium or large spills over the 50-years is about 87 per cent," Marsh observes.

Those are large margins of probability, yet Marsh thinks he's been conservative in his calculations.

First, because the raw data he used was provided by Enbridge, the project component.

Second, because the proposal was made in 2009 before the full extent of plans for liquefied natural gas exports from Kitimat - with large increases in tanker traffic - were fully known.

Third, because the pipeline design allows for carrying capacity of 60 per cent more bitumen and 40 per cent more natural gas condensate than cited in the initial proposal.

An 87 per cent chance of a heavy oil spill into a pristine coastal or river environment when long-term jobs and economic benefits to the province will be small is a prospect that should give every British Columbian pause.

We all owe thanks to Citizen Marsh for doing the math and drawing our attention to his calculations.

shume@islandnet.com