Dredging project in Burrard Inlet takes first steps, with many questions still unanswered

What happened: Initial work has begun on a plan to dredge part of Burrard Inlet, east of the Second Narrows bridge. That includes early field work and consultation with First Nations, according to the Vancouver Fraser Port Authority.  

• However, there’s yet to be an official plan or proposal made public by the federal government. It’s still unclear exactly where, how deep, or how much material would be dug up.

Why dredge?: Dredging, the excavation of the ground beneath a body of water, is being proposed in Burrard Inlet to “improve shipping efficiency,” specifically for oil tankers filling up at Trans Mountain’s (TMX) Westridge Marine Terminal to be more fully loaded, the port authority said in a statement. 

• “There is pressing need to optimize the port and its infrastructure to support Canada’s trade through the gateway and support a strong national economy, in the face of an uncertain and rapidly changing global landscape,” they said.

What we heard: “We were blown away,” that this is being considered, said Beatrice Frank, executive director of the Georgia Strait Alliance, an environmental conservation group. 

“It's a little bit of a counter intuitive project when we think about how much work has been done [to improve] the Burrard Inlet water quality already,” Frank told Vancity Lookout, pointing to the extensive and long-term work being done by the Tsleil-Waututh First Nation (TWN), which the province has collaborated on, to restore the ecological health of those waterways.

Since at least 1972, water contamination in Burrard Inlet has severely impacted TWN’s ability to safely harvest their traditional foods, like shellfish, from the inlet, according to a 2022 research report by Anuradha Rao, TWN’s senior marine ecosystem specialist. 

• Dive deeper: The Narwhal put together a comprehensive story about pollution in Burrard Inlet and the Tsleil-Waututh Nation’s deeply personal efforts to improve the water quality in their unceded territory. 

Ecosystem impacts: Dredging one part of Burrard Inlet would “change all of the ecosystem around it and have [a] really big impact beyond just the place,” that would be excavated, Frank said, noting that the inlet is rich in biodiversity, with important species like orcas, salmon, herring, and clams relying on the ecosystem for feeding, spawning, and habitat.  

“With dredging the bottom of the inlet, we know that a lot of those pollutants will be spread even wider and will be distributed across the inlet,” and reach areas where the water quality is better, Frank said. 

Intergovernmental affairs: Project proponents include the port authority, the provincial government, and Prime Minister Mark Carney, according to the Canadian Press.   

The province’s Minister of Energy and Climate Solutions Adrian Dix said the dredging would be a federal project, which the province would have “no objection to” as long as it met requirements and standards, including those around environmental impacts and consultation with First Nations.  

However, Tsleil-Waututh Chief Jen Thomas told the Canadian Press that “Tsleil-Waututh cautions those who speak as though this project has been pre-approved,” noting TWN’s inherent and constitutionally protected title and rights to the area.

• Vancity Lookout asked TWN if they had started consultations or received any formal engagement about the dredging proposal, but did not receive their comment by the time of publication. 

The port authority said they did not have details on the project’s estimated cost, or how it would be paid for, despite saying early work on the project has already begun.

“We are partnering with industry and government to enable Canadian trade through the Port of Vancouver and deliver stronger national supply chains… We will work closely with Trans Mountain, other stakeholders and First Nations on the early assessment to inform the proposed dredging work,” the port authority said in their statement. 

Ship specifics: TMX says the most common type of tanker “will generally only load to about 80 per cent of capacity” to allow the ships to have enough depth and width clearance as they navigate through the inlet. 

Due to shallow areas around the First and Second Narrows (15 and 19 metres respectively) “it has been suggested that some fully loaded tankers leaving port through the narrows would need to wait for a high-tide window of about 20 minutes in order to safely navigate out of the harbour, potentially leaving less than 2m of under-keel clearance,” according to a 2019 report from Fisheries and Oceans Canada.

Minister Dix told CP the dredging project would allow for less ship traffic in Burrard Inlet because ships could fully load up without risking hitting the ocean floor in shallow areas.

Since the expanded TMX pipeline began operating in May 2024, the number of oil tankers in Burrard Inlet has significantly increased, according to David Huntley, a retired physics professor at SFU who has been tracking tanker traffic in the Inlet for about 10 years. 

• Since June 2024, there have been between 18 and 30 tankers filling up every month at TMX’s Burnaby terminal, while there was, on average, just over two tankers coming to the facility between 2020 and 2023, according to Huntley’s data, which he sources from publicly available ship tracking records.