Oil Spill
This is a 1989 Wilderness Committee education report about an eye-witness account of an oil spill clean-up operation in Pacific Rim National Park, near Tofino on the west coast of Vancouver Island. An oil-filled barge had ruptured off the coast of Oregon. No one thought that the oil would travel as far as Canada, so local authorities were caught off-gaurd when sticky thick black crude started washing ashore on beaches around Tofino. The Wilderness Committee at the time called for a ban on off-shore oil drilling pointing out how hard it was to deal with this small spill. To date there has been no off-shore oil drilling - but there are plans to bring dirty tar sands oil to the Pacific coast via several proposed pipelines. This scheme would involve oil tankers plying our waters to load up on tar sands crude. The Wilderness Committee opposes every part of this risky plan.