A shipping company involved in spilling 29,000 litres of oil into the Squamish Estuary is pursuing Squamish Terminals and Squamish Tugboat to recoup costs associated with the 2006 incident.On Friday (Aug. 1), the Norwegian Gearbulk Shipping company filed two writs in the B.C. Supreme Court civil division seeking reimbursement of funds spent on such things as cleaning the estuary and monitoring environmental damage. Costs are still being accrued from the Aug. 2006 incident that saw the Westwood Anette spew oil after her hull was apparently pierced by something protruding from the Terminals' berth, so there is no specific dollar figure attached to the writs. But so far, millions of dollars have been spent, according to Peter Swanson, the lawyer representing the company."[The writs] basically assert two claims," said Swanson, "one against the tug company because they provided tugs that were insufficient for their intended use, in the sense that it seems they lacked sufficient power to handle the vessel in the conditions that were obviously known and to be expected. "The claim against the terminal is that the terminal was constructed and designed and maintained in a way that it had a hazard in the form of metal structures that could pierce the hull of the vessel in the event of relatively light contact, which is exactly what happened in this case."Chris Tamburri of Squamish Tugboat Co. and Kim Stegeman of Squamish Terminals both declined to comment since neither company had received notification of the writs. Swanson said the case would be a "complicated" one that would undoubtedly involve expert opinions on the terminal's design. "Terminal operators cannot have hazardous conditions at their terminals, so the question becomes was this a hazardous condition or not?"He said he doubted many opinions would be drawn from federal and provincial investigators who were on site following the oil spill since liability falls on the ship owner when oil is spilled."My guess is none of them really looked very closely at this issue - I could be wrong. But the law is such that if the oil comes from a ship, the ship owner's basically initially responsible and it doesn't matter how it happened. It's up to the ship owner, if he has recourse against others, to go after the others. Well that's what we're doing."These type of "safe berth" cases are not uncommon, although details for this particular case isn't the norm."Often it's a matter of whether or not there's sufficient depth of water for the ships, and ships will run aground trying to berth."Swanson said although levels of government don't "sign-off" of such clean-ups, Gearbulk hasn't heard from authorities for further measures, "so they're obviously satisfied."
