‘Drift card’ project shows potential impact of oil spill
ANDREA WOO
VANCOUVER — The Globe and Mail
Published Wednesday, Feb. 12 2014
A small piece of plywood that washed up in Haida Gwaii shows the potentially massive reach of an oil spill in the Salish Sea, say environmental groups studying the risks associated with Kinder Morgan’s proposed expansion of its Trans Mountain pipeline.
In October, the Raincoast Conservation Foundation and the Georgia Strait Alliance dropped more than 1,000 “drift cards” – four-by-six-inch pieces of bright, yellow plywood, each with a unique serial number – along the oil tanker route that runs from Burrard Inlet, through the Gulf and San Juan islands, and into the Strait of Juan de Fuca.
A message on each card says, “This could be oil,” and asks anyone who discovers it to contact the groups and plot the card on an interactive map. From there, researchers can make inferences on oil spill trajectories based on the card’s start and end points and the time it took to travel…
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