The fate of the HMCS Annapolis is now in the hands of a federal court and all sides are waiting to hear what will become of the decommissioned warship.
Lawyers for the Artificial Reef Society of B.C. (ARSBC) and Save Halkett Bay were before the Chief Justice of the Federal Court on Feb. 25 and 26 in Vancouver to battle over whether the ship should be sunk to create an artificial reef in Halkett Bay.
Martin Peters, lawyer for Save Halkett Bay, argued the ship needed to be cleaned of tributyltins (TBTs) found in paint on the bottom of the vessel before sinking could be considered. He presented a report that claimed the TBTs on the Annapolis were 33 to 200 times higher than what has been found to cause significant impacts on the food chain.
Peters said sinking the ship would release the TBTs, pollute the waters and destroy marine life.
Bryan Hicks, lawyer for the ARSBC, argued the Annapolis had to be towed from its current location in Long Bay to Halkett Bay and sunk as soon as possible because it’s in a precarious state and could sink where it’s moored accidentally.
Around 1,000 volunteers have spent more than 17,000 hours stripping the vessel in preparation for sinking and in January holes were cut in the ship as the ARSBC worked toward a Jan. 17 sink date.
Save Halkett Bay filed an application for judicial review and stopped the sinking before it could occur.
Hicks noted the ship sinking accidentally in Long Bay would be an environmental disaster that could cost more than $2 million to clean up.
After two days of arguing their sides before a federal judge the Annapolis hearing ended without an answer.
“The judge withheld a decision at the end of the second day of hearings and, unfortunately, we don’t have any info about when he might make it, or make it public. So at the moment we’re still in wait-and-see mode,” said Save Halkett Bay spokesperson Gary MacDonald this week.
