Our Government Favours a “dirty oil zone in the Great Lakes”

Quietly, our embassy in Washington has asked the US Environmental Protection Agency to weaken air-pollution controls for the Great Lakes shipping industry. Instead the industry lobby wants the tighter controls to be relaxed until 2020 in order for it to comply. The exemption, if granted, would allow Canadian (and US) ships on the Great Lakes to continue to burn bunker fuels which have been described as the dirtiest fuels on earth. In a stunning piece of hypocrisy both we and the US will require ocean going vessels within 200 miles of our coasts to meet the tighter air pollution standards by 2015. If the government is successful in its efforts we will see a situation where, at that time, only ocean going vessels that enter the Great Lakes system will be using the required low sulphur fuel. In the interim the industry proposes to implement a smoke stack scrubber technology, (that doesn’t exist today) as a way to clean up its act. The industry claims that the new air pollution restrictions and associated higher costs would force it to scrap some of the “iconic” (read rust buckets) vessels in the fleet that currently plies our waterways. It is also pointed out that the potential loss of capacity for moving freight by water would force that displaced shipping volume onto rail or, even worse, onto our highways. We certainly don’t need any more heavy truck traffic on our highways but rail is a competitive and environmentally reasonable alternative for the bulk freight normally carried by lake freighters. What would be even more sensible would be to force the Great Lakes shipping industry to modernize its fleet! I can’t believe that even fuel costs as high as 275% over the cost of dirty bunker fuel, (as the industry claims) cannot be absorbed into bulk freight costs with minimum effect on the eventual consumer. We already own and operate North America’s largest contributor to air pollution in the coal fired Nanticoke Generating station. Let’s not add to our poor reputation and hypocrisy. Instead let’s urge our government to stand up to this powerful lobby group and force it to do what it should have willingly done a long time ago! It’s not like our awareness and concern about air pollution just happened.

AH