Spills report improving
Hazardous spills down from 1997

Mike W. Bryant
Northern News Services

NNSL (Aug 09/99) - According to the 1998 Spills Report released late last month, the occurrences of actual hazardous spills in the North has dropped considerably since 1997.

In 1998, 190 reports were made to the 24-Hour Spills Report Line. Of these, 186 involved actual spills while, upon investigation, the remaining reports were not hazardous spills. In comparison, 275 reports were made in 1997, 268 of them involved actual spills.

The Spills Report Line has been in operation since 1971 with the co-operation of both the territorial and federal governments and is used in both Nunavut and the NWT.

Despite last year's decrease in reported spills, however, there appears to be an upward trend in the amount of spills reported since the Spills Report line was established.

Director of environmental protection services with Resources, Wildlife and Economic Development, Emery Paquin, says there may be several reasons for this upward trend.

"I think the increase is because of increased awareness," Paquin said. "A general trend that we've been finding is that, in recent years, the average volume of spills has been decreasing.

"There may be as many, but the volume of what is spilled has decreased and I think that is a reflection of management.

"I think everyone is becoming more conscious of the impact of spills."

The occurrences of reported spills in the North has steadily climbed since 1971, where there were less than 50 reported, to more than 200 spills in 1990. Since then, reported spills have hovered between 200 and 250. The highest reported number spills has been in 1997.

The North Slave Region recorded the highest number of spills, at approximately 42 per cent, with the Baffin Region following behind at 17 per cent.

The mining sector, including their contractors, was responsible for 28 per cent of the spills, down from 32 per cent the year before. Governments, including federal, territorial and municipal agencies, followed with 26 per cent, up from 22 per cent a year earlier.

According to environment manager for BHP Ltd., John Witteman, there are several ways to prevent spills from occurring.

"The first thing we do is regular maintenance of vehicles," Witteman said. "Another thing we do is all the underground fuel lines plus all the fuel tanks have warning systems on them.

"All the above- ground tanks are double-lined, so if the inner tank breaks then we'll be able to detect it between the two.

"We put in a lot of safeguards to guard against spills. A lot of errors in the past have been human errors, so we devise ways to counteract them."