BURNABY, B.C. - The area in the splash zone of a gushing oil pipeline will soon look like a moonscape.
Officials are preparing to remove trees, grass and gardens and will even slice off about 10 centimetres of contaminated soil around homes because of Tuesday's spill.
"Surfaces of the soil and grass of the heavily impacted areas are all being removed to the point where there's no more contamination,'' said Paul Huddleston, a spokesman for Kinder-Morgan, the company that owns the pipeline.
Fifty homes and yards were damaged when the crude oil spewed for about 25 minutes earlier this week.
Eleven of those homes were severely damaged.
"There's no indication we'll have to demolish structures at this time to remediate them,'' Huddleston said.
But siding on the homes will either been cleaned or removed and replaced.
Huddleston said all the debris will be destroyed just as any hazardous waste.
The city of Burnaby has already given permission for removal of several of its trees in the area that were painted a glistening black by the sticky crude.
Some of the trees covered in crude are up to 15 metres tall.
More than 230,000 litres of oil burst out of the line on Tuesday after a work crew broke open the pipe.
Some of that oil made its way down the hill to the near by Burrard Inlet, soiling beaches and some birds.
Even more oil has washed up on beaches to the west in New Brighton Park in Vancouver and kilometres across the inlet to Cates Park in North Vancouver.
"The free oil that was on the water is now gone,'' said Craig Dougans, of Burrard Clean, the company hired to clean the oil from the water and shoreline.
He said some oil likely was forced under the containment boom and that's what's causing the tar balls found on beaches around the inlet.
"Once that free oil is removed from the environment, the production of tar balls will cease,'' he said.
Dougans believes 95 per cent of the oil that made it down to the water was contained in the Kinder-Morgan terminal.
But a spokesman for the David Suzuki Foundation said clean-up efforts are a hit and miss exercises when it comes to oil spills.
"You just never get all the oil, so you've got a persistent impact here and as that spreads, there's varying degrees of the impact on wildlife, from the short term to the long term depending on the type of wildlife you are talking about,'' said Bill Wareham, a marine conservation spokesman.
The shoreline and marshlands are currently home to many juvenile birds who recently left their nests, but have yet to stake out their own territory, he said.
Wareham said many of the older birds are also in danger of being covered with oil because they are in their molting stage and have lost their flight feathers.
"They are waterbound,'' he said.
Wareham said oil slicks dissipate over time, but the process is lengthy.
"The only saving grace is it's not an enormous amount of oil,'' he said. "It's not like the Exxon Valdez hit Vancouver. But it highlights, even in a small spill like this, how difficult it is to deal with it and clean it up.''
The National Energy Board is leading the emergency response to the spill and the Transportation Safety Board will investigate what went wrong and how it can be prevented again.
Christine Van Egmond, of the energy board, said while she has monitored several spills, she has never been involved in an urban spill such as this.
"I'm impressed with the work Kinder-Morgan has done so far. There's been very few things that I've been able to find fault with.''
However she said the NEB will be closely monitoring the clean-up work.
The spill happened in the aboriginal territories of the Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh native bands.
Squamish First Nation Chief Bill Williams they could never be happy with the spill.
"What we are happy with is there is a response and a quick response, and that the response is enough to minimize the damage as much as possible.''
Tsleil-Waututh Chief Ernie George said his band is most concerned about quality of the water.
"Tsleil-Waututh means people of the inlet and we've been here since time out of mind,'' he pointed out.
George said they've started a clam rehabilitation program for 15 sites around in the area.
"Now this has put it in jeopardy.''
Art Nordholm, the lead investiator on the file for the Transportation Safety Board, said he's still gathering all the facts around the incident.
An investigation usually takes about a year, but Nordholm said if they decide something needs immediate change they can issue a warning at any time.
"At this point, we have nothing of that volume to bring out.''
