A tour of Western Canada Marine Response Corporation's (WCMRC) spill response facility drew hundreds of visitors recently, giving locals a rare glimpse at the base serving as the primary response centre for Vancouver Island.
Outfitted with 42 personnel, the base was first made operational in 2022 – but the open house was delayed until August of this year to wait for its vessel complement to be completed.
"It's basically just an enhancement, because we had that base in Duncan, but this is a much more significant presence and capacity as well," said Michael Lowry, WCMRC spokesperson. "The main driver for it is our response times went from 72 hour response times down to six hour response times."
The faster response time is a requirement with the the Trans Mountain Expansion Project, which uses the Salish Sea.
"Now that doesn't mean this is only for Trans Mountain spills, it's for any spills that happens on the coast, in fact this room was used last summer," Lowry explained, gesturing to one of the large offices. "There was a spill in Nanaimo harbour here and so this was run as a command post for that particular spill."
Now fully outfitted, the site is equipped to handle 20,000 tonnes of oil in 10 days. To accomplish this, there is one oil response vessel, two landing crafts, three general vessels, four work boats, one boom skiff, one mini barge, as well as the heaviest hitter of them all, the response barge.
The response barge, the Sentinel 303, is 76x20m in size with 3,500 tonne oil storage. It has never been used in the field and the goal is for it never to be needed. To put it into perspective, Lowry said if the response barge had to be used, the spill would be large enough that "Europe would hear" about it.
"We've also outfitted it with a lot of equipment. In all those sea cans, there's a bunch of boom and at the front of the barge, in that white structure there, there's accommodations, so it can sleep 20 people. So if you did have a big spill, this could be towed out to the spill site and act as a forward operating base for the spill."
Another featured vessel for guests to see was their oil spill coastal response vessel, the first-of-its-kind in the world – commissioned through Robert Allan Ltd, a naval architect firm in Vancouver.
"When we were planning the enhancements, essentially we were... doubling the size of our fleet and doubling our personnel, but one of the vessels we didn't really have was a vessel that could handle our heavier weather. Something that wasn't a super fast boat, but was slow and steady, goes out in bad weather."
With this in mind, three response vessels were designed through the firm. The Gulf Sentinel sits in Nanaimo, while its sisters are located in Port Alberni and Sooke.
Visitors also got to see the facility's offices, their large operating yard and a warehouse where 10,710 feet of boom is held, the material used to soak up oil in the event of a spill. After the boom is used, Lowry said it's incinerated.
Another tool in their belt are skimmers. Brush skimmers are used to combat heavy persistent oil, utilizing brush-coated rollers that stick to the oil and pull it into its internal storage, where it can be pumped out in one of their vessels. If it's a lighter fuel, a disk skimmer will be used with absorbent pads.
"In Canada, we are focused pretty much entirely on mechanical recovery which means we have to use equipment to clean up the spill, so boom and skimmers. there's other jurisdictions where we use chemicals like [dispersants] or whatnot, but in Canada it's booms and skimmers."
After the oil is collected in the barges, it can be recycled to be used for asphalt through a treatment facility.
Nanaimo resident Rod Littlefair was one visitor at the event. Regularly seeing facility from the outside, Littlefair said he was surprised at the size of the workshop, adding "it was really something."
"It was advertised, so we were curious to see it … It's really nice, it's quite a set-up."
Clarice McCord and Irene Markovich were another two residents that made the trek out, after receiving flyers in their mail boxes. McCord said she was surprised to learn that in the case of an oil spill, the polluters have to pay for the cleanup, not the taxpayer.
"You always hear about the negative part, right?" Markovich said. "Even if they're flagged under a little country, before they come into our waters they get inspected to ensure they meet our Canadian standards, which we didn't know either – which is important and good to know."
In an average year, Lowry said the spill response team gets about 20 calls for service.
When they're not responding to emergencies, the team is gathering data for their coastal response program, a planning initiative where they go out and map the coast for sensitivities, These sensitivities can be environmental, fish habitats, bear fishing locations, cultural sensitivities or socio-economic, like marinas.
"By knowing where those are ahead of time, we can actually develop a protection strategy for that. We could put boom around that area so oil can't get into that site. We got about 900 of those strategies for the shipping lanes and we're working with communities, training them on how to do their own protection."
