May 21, 2015 (Salish Sea, BC) — Following the breakage of a pipeline and the spill of 79,500 litres of crude oil along California’s coast on Tuesday, Audrey Siegl of the Musqueam First Nation said from on board the Greenpeace ship MY Esperanza, as it sails north through the inside passage to Haida Gwaii:
“The difference in the time of the response and the equipment deployed in English Bay versus Santa Monica demonstrates that the west coast is not ready for increased fossil fuel traffic. It took four hours for the Canadian Coast Guard to arrive at English Bay and 12 hours to deploy the oil booms. In California, authorities responded almost immediately.
“But of course, that oil in California will never completely leave its shores. This land and this water is never going to be the same after what happened in English Bay, to say nothing of what would happen to the coast from a more catastrophic spill. This is not the future my ancestors envisioned.
“The only way to efficiently safeguard our coasts is to say no to pipelines and supertankers, regardless of where the oil comes from, tar sands or the Arctic. For our coast and sacred waters, they mean exactly the same.”