Monday, January 16 on San Juan, Lopez, Orcas and Shaw Islands, and interisland ferry

— from Stephanie Buffum —

Islanders are invited to take part in a countywide “Salish Sea Stands” day of action on MLK Day, Monday, January 16 against the Kinder Morgan pipeline expansion to the United States. The Trans Mountain Pipeline, owned by Kinder Morgan, received approval from the Canadian government to proceed. The project will affect the Salish Sea by radically increasing the number of tankers transporting crude oil in our waters.

Events will be held at the following locations:

  • San Juan County Park Boat Launch, 12 p.m.
  • Odlin County Park on Lopez 12:30 p.m.
  • Shaw County Park, 12 p.m.
  • Eastsound Waterfront Day Park on Orcas, 11 a.m.

You can also join in on the inter-island ferry for a teach-in and letter writing opportunity starting on the 12:25 west bound sailing from Orcas.

For more details visit www.facebook.com/salishseastands or call the coordinator on each island or Friends of the San Juans at 360-378-2319.

Rain or shine, come one come all, and please wear black, the color of an oil spill. Bring kayaks and signs.

Dana Lyons
Dana Lyons is a singer, guitarist and recording artist who has toured the world
for thirty years promoting environmental and social justice causes.
Dana has nine albums to date including his latest “The Great Salish Sea”
and an album with world-renowned Jane Goodall “Circle the World”
which features Goodall telling stories and Dana singing related songs.
Background information:

The expansion of Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain Pipeline endangers our region. They are projected to nearly triple capacity of the existing pipeline from 300,000 to 890,000 barrels of tar sands crude oil a day—increasing vessel traffic through the Salish Sea seven-fold, with each tanker holding more than twenty-five million gallons of oil.

Some of this product is slated for export through BP’s dock at Cherry Point. The Army Corps of Engineers is supposed to be evaluating the environmental impact of this dock, but it’s dragging its feet. We need to demand that the Corps of Engineers release the final environmental impact study for BP’s tanker dock and shine a light on BP’s impacts to our  shared US and Canadian waters, the Salish Sea.

The environmental study for the dock should reveal that the permit BP is using for this expansion was issued illegally and that their plans are dangerous.

BP’s dock enables far more oil tanker traffic than permitted by a 1977 law written by Senator Warren Magnuson —at least 190 more tanker calls a year to the BP refinery. That’s a recipe for disaster in a fragile waterway already crisscrossed by thousands of ships bound to ports in Washington and British Columbia each year carrying diluted bitumen tar sands oil as cargo. The U.S. and Canada do not have the technologies or capabilities to clean up a tar sands oil spill. In addition, advocates of the project have yet to even outline how to best equip first responders in the event of a spill.

We have been waiting for more than 11 years for the Army Corps of Engineers to produce an Environmental Impact Statement for the expansion of BP’s Cherry Point tanker terminal. The Draft EIS, released more than two years ago, failed to recommend a limit on the number of crude oil tankers allowed to call on the refinery terminal, which is a direct violation of the Magnuson Amendment. It should not take more than a decade to conclude that building a second dock doubles the capacity for BP to transport oil.

We are calling on the Army Corps of Engineers to release a Final EIS for the Cherry Point refinery tanker terminal immediately—limiting the tanker traffic to no more than the number that called on the refinery before the second dock was built in compliance with Magnuson.

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