Understanding Spills For Effective Emergency Planning

It can happen at a railroad crossing at midnight on a -30° winter night, or in the middle of a sweltering workday afternoon in an industrial plant: an environmental emergency resulting from a leak, explosion, fire or release of a substance. These incidents are given the general term of "spills," and information about spills is gathered through reporting hotlines at provincial agencies, regional Environmental Emergencies offices and the National Environmental Emergencies Centre.

Collecting information about spills helps to better understand how, where and why they happen, and leads to more effective pollution prevention programs. Examination of spill data and resulting trends also helps emergency response organizations design ways to clean up spills as quickly as possible so that environmental impacts are minimized.

The latest look at spill statistics and trends is found in the newly published Summary of Spill Events in Canada, 1984-1995. The report shows that during the period from 1984 to 1995, the number of spills reported has more than doubled. This doesn't necessarily represent more spills, but reflects the fact that provincial reporting legislation was implemented during this same period. There was also increased awareness of federal and provincial spill-reporting requirements.

Seven sectors were examined: chemical, government, metallurgy, mining, petroleum, pulp and paper, and service industries. The top five reasons for spills in these seven sectors are equipment failure, human error, corrosion, storms or floods and material failure. Some of the overall findings include: smaller spills of less than one tonne account for 44 per cent of reported spills; the largest-quantity spills are often the result of overflows caused by a storm or flood and involve sewage or effluent; and oils account for 58 per cent of the total number of reported spills.

Understanding trends in spills can help to prevent them by assisting in design of pollution prevention programs and spill response plans by government, industry and the public. Comprehensive pollution prevention not only benefits the environment, it is far more economically effective.

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