The Canadian city Vancouver on the behest of its mayor has filed a federal court claim against the owner of a vessel that spilled fuel into English Bay back in 2015.
What happened?
The news was confirmed by the Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson about the federal court claim against the owner of a vessel that spilled fuel into English Bay in 2015, as part of the city’s continuing effort to get compensation for its response efforts.
In 2015, the vessel ‘MV Marathassa’ spilled 2,700 litres of bunker fuel into the bay and the city of Vancouver still hasn’t been compensated for about $550,000 it spent on response efforts. The city is keen on claiming the repayment through the federal government’s Ship-source Oil Pollution Fund, but has only been promised compensation for 27 percent of its costs, something which has been deemed totally unacceptable by the mayor.
Unfair compensation
The city’s claim against the ship owners was filed last month but was announced on May 27 calls for damages, interest and court costs related to the spill.
Mr.Robertson added, “It’s ridiculous that it’s taken over three years now fighting for our costs to be covered by an oil spill in our harbour. The city’s difficulty in getting paid back is described as a relatively small oil spill shows there aren’t enough measures in place to protect coastal communities against more major spills. The costs and impacts of a potential diluted bitumen spill from the increased tanker traffic that would come with the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline expansion has not been meaningfully addressed by the federal government”.
He further added, “The Ship-source Oil Pollution Fund was set up by the federal government to act in the interest of communities like Vancouver, but is failing to do so. It clearly does not do that, does not deliver the results. This speaks to the greater concern we have with Kinder Morgan and oil tankers”.
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Source: Brinkwire
