Fromt he Times-Colonist – April 17, 2011

by Kim Westad

Thousands of salmon are expected to have been killed by a large
gasoline spill that poured into Goldstream River during the weekend.

A Columbia Fuels truck smashed into the rock face and rolled, damaging the cab and one of the two tanks the engine was pulling.

About
40,000 litres of gasoline are estimated to have been spilled and much
of that flowed into the river at the side of the highway. The truck hit
the rock wall beside a small waterfall that flows across the road to the
river, and that helped move the gas.

“Gasoline is very toxic to aquatic life,” said Graham Knox, the Ministry of Environment’s manager of environmental emergencies.

Ministry
biologists, an oiled-wildlife specialist and staff from Environment
Canada were on the scene Sunday conducting an assessment of the site.
There was little apparent damage at the site itself, but as they moved
downstream toward the estuary, they saw “hundreds” of dead fish in the
water, Knox said.

With that many visible to the eye, the number killed will be significantly higher, he said — likely in the thousands.

“It is a significant amount of fish that have been killed,” he said.

Gasoline
travels and kills quickly in water. The fish would likely have died as
soon as the gasoline went into their gills, Knox said.

The
ministry tries to collect the dead fish, Knox said, so that other
animals don’t eat them and potentially ingest contaminants. It’s
unlikely the fish ingested the gas, he said, although that will be
reviewed.

Gasoline is more toxic to wildlife than other types of
oil, Knox said. The only positive is that being lighter, it evaporates
quickly and breaks up. Crude oil is more persistent and difficult to
cleanse from the environment.

Small excavators were on scene Sunday at the dump site, removing the roadside soil. It will be replaced.

The
Environmental Management Act specifies that the party at fault is
responsible for much of the remediation costs. Columbia Fuels has been
“very co-operative from the start” on that, Knox said.

“They are proceeding with all of our requests and getting the work done.”

Columbia
will hire an environmental consultant to conduct various tests of the
soil and submit a report to the Ministry of Environment, Knox said.