Story
In 1986 a container ship sank in Notre Dame Bay, and for decades, sat on the ocean floor dormant. But in early 2013, dead birds began to wash ashore soaked in fuel, and oil slicks started appearing near Change Islands. No current vessels had reported any accidents, so it didn’t take long to realize that this oil came from the ship that sunk so long ago.
I first publicly engaged with this issue when I met with a volunteer community group, the Save our Shores (SOS) committee, who were working to raise the profile of this potential disaster. I wanted to join their efforts to find a solution and avoid a major catastrophe. If we didn’t clean up the spill, the fuel would have leaked into the ecosystem and devastated the region’s largest industry: seafood. The potential disaster would have shut down the local economy for an entire generation.
I started to lead the fight in this massive clean-up, one stage at a time. Our volunteer group and members of the community knew that a clean up project of this size and magnitude would be very expensive. First, we presented the immediate and long-term consequences of this potential disaster to the local public. We then brought the issue to the national stage – rallying the support of provincial and municipal governments to help us elevate the issue in the public sphere. Following these efforts, I met with the minister of Environment and the minister of Fisheries and Oceans to see how and where we could find the funds to assess the current corrosion damage and the fuel’s removal. Simultaneously, we continued to keep the public informed about any new information and progress to keep the issue in the spotlight.
Impact
For close to three years – which is very quick considering the size and scope of a project this size – I worked hard with residents, as well as politicians from across all parties, to thwart a potential disaster and ensure the spill was properly cleaned up.
When the project was completed, we all breathed a collective sigh of relief. The cleanup also instilled great confidence in our government employees and the Canadian Coast Guard who led this project.
The Manolis L shipwreck also served as an outstanding learning experience on an international level. The deep-water excavation project was, in many ways, the first of its kind and brought in observers from around the world – including the American Coast Guard – to participate and learn how to handle a future leak from a sunken vessel submerged in deep waters.
But the Manolis L shipwreck was also an eye-opening experience for me personally. I learned that when circumstances dictate, you can break out of your normal routines to explore new ways to be effective, and in doing so, convince others that it is possible to accomplish your goals.
In the end, thankfully, there was a never large-scale leak because the project stopped the leak and cleaned out the contents of the bunker fuel inside. As a result, there was no large-scale impact on the environment, nor on Notre Dame Bay and the province’s economy.