Editor: After reading the open letter to Mr. Trudeau and seeing in the first paragraph the mentioning of the Exxon Valdez, I felt it was time to respond.
First, the Valdez had no trained marine pilots with their own navigation tabs on board; second, the Valdez did not have tug escorts; third, the Valdez did not have double bottoms.
Tankers in B.C. waters have all of these and B.C. marine pilots are the best trained in the world and do 12,000 vessel movements every year. That number times 25 years equals 300,000 ships of every size, some as large as 365 metres, and every ship has oil in it, yet there has not been a spill in B.C.
Constant training on emergency ship handling both in simulators and real time, state of the art escort tugs capable of manoeuvring the ship entirely on their own, this is the reality of ship movements in the 21st century.
A comparison of the Exxon Valdez to the ships now cannot be made. Let the pipeline stand or fall on its own merits but using scare tactics and misinformation such as this to try and prove ones point is wrong.
Capt. MW Roman,
Langley
