Drift cards released on Fraser River to simulate pipeline oil spill risk

By Larry Pynn, Vancouver Sun August 26, 2014

Four hundred plywood drift cards were released Tuesday on the lower Fraser River in an experiment to simulate the dispersion of an oil spill from Kinder Morgan’s planned $5.4-billion pipeline expansion project.

Andy Rosenberger, a biologist with Raincoast Conservation, tossed the yellow cards off a six-metre aluminum boat just downstream from the Port Mann Bridge, close to where the second pipeline would go.

“We don’t know the exact spot,” he told reporters. “They have an allowance — it could be here or 500 metres away.”

Coastal residents who find the cards in the ensuing days and weeks are asked to report the date and location to help researchers calculate where oil from a spill might wind up over what length of time and along what route.

Another 600 cards were released in Burrard Inlet on Tuesday, making for a total of about 4,000 cards released in local waters, including Washington state’s San Juan Islands, since last October…

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