Gitga'at First Nation Reacts to BC North Coast Shipping Incidents

HARTLEY BAY, BRITISH COLUMBIA--(Marketwire - Nov. 23, 2012) - Arnold Clifton, Chief Councillor of the Gitga'at First Nation issued the following statement in response to reports of two shipping incidents in the last 48 hours on the BC North Coast.

"These incidents show that an oil spill is just waiting to happen if the Enbridge pipeline and oil tankers project is ever approved. These were close calls involving container ships, but what if they had been oil supertankers carrying two million barrels of crude bitumen?"

The latest incident, involving the Tern Arrow, a deep-sea container ship, took place inside Gitga'at territorial waters in the Great Bear Rainforest, and follows the grounding of a container ship in Prince Rupert Harbour earlier this week.

"The ship lost power and drifted for three hours in Laredo Sound," said Clifton. "This is the same place that a ship hit Wilson Rock in 1980. These are the same coastal waters that Enbridge is proposing to bring more than 225 oil supertankers through every year. How many close calls will we have then, and how will our coastal communities survive?"