PORT HAWKESBURY- Four decades after the ill-fated Liberian tanker Arrow unleashed 8,000 tonnes of Bunker C oil onto the shores of Chedabucto Bay, officials with three provincial departments and the federal Environment Department are still hammering out a strategy to deal with oil storage sites in six Strait area communities.
Under charter to Imperial Oil Limited and heading to the Nova Scotia Pulp and Paper Mill in Point Tupper, the tanker ran aground on Cerberus Rock at approximately 9:35 a.m. on February 4, 1970, with the first signs of oil leakage reported at 4 p.m. that afternoon. Four days later, the Arrow broke in half, accelerating the spillage, and the stern section sank in 90 feet of water on February 12, taking an estimated one-third of the ship’s 16,000-tonne cargo with it.
Despite the clean-up efforts of a military-civilian task force and a federal Royal Commission, remnants of the released oil continued to wash up on the shorelines of Richmond and Guysborough counties for decades, impacting marine life and local wildlife, as well as the ground fishery and tourist trade in such areas as Isle Madame and Canso.
Today, six Richmond County communities - L’Ardoise, West Arichat, Cape Auguet, Janvrin’s Island, Doyle’s Road and MacIntyre Lake - have received formal identification as Arrow oil storage sites. To establish a joint strategy to deal with these materials, the provincial Departments of the Environment and Labour, Natural Resources, and Transportation and Infrastructure Renewal have formed a working group that is currently negotiating with the federal government with regards to the project’s status.
“The province has continued to meet over the past four months, and we met as recently as just before Christmas, looking at strategies to move the project forward,” explained Dean Hart, speaking from Port Hawkesbury’s Environment and Labour office.
“The province has been conducting preliminary inspections and evaluations of the Crown sites, we’ve completed preliminary assessments, and we’re going to be moving forward with further analyses of the sites themselves.”
While municipal officials serving these communities have regularly sought status updates regarding the storage and clean-up of leftover Arrow oil, Hart reiterated statements made by provincial Environment Department officer Bruce Nunn in 2008 and 2009, which noted that no specific complaints have come from any residents of the communities identified as oil storage sites.
“We’re satisfied, from our perspective, with the preliminary inspections and evaluations,” Hart told The Reporter.
“Presently, there’s no immediate environmental risk associated with these sites, and we’re going to continue to monitor them. And the sites themselves have been inspected on and off by the department over the past number of years - visual inspections have been conducted.”
Despite the impact the Arrow disaster has had on many communities around Richmond and Guysborough counties, Hart suggested that the six current Arrow storage sites have remained consistently free of similar complaints.
“If we look back at the history of the sites themselves, the communities that these sites are located in have not seen any immediate concerns or problems with them, and those would have been relayed to directly by those individuals,” Hart explained.
“The sites are there, and we have a responsibility to monitor them because they are provincial sites that we’re looking at specifically. And we will continue to inspect them and evaluate them, and determine if there are any immediate concerns that need to be addressed on them.”