Simon and Garfunkel provide soundtrack to Coastal First Nations warning on oil spills

The celebrated folk duo Simon and Garfunkel have added their voices to the debate on oil tanker traffic in B.C coastal waters.

In a video uploaded to YouTube today by a coalition of B.C. First Nations groups, Simon and Garfunkel’s 1965 hit “The Sound of Silence” plays over video and audio from the catastrophic Exxon Valdez oil spill.

That tanker ran aground off the coast of Alaska in March 1989, 24 years ago yesterday. Hundreds of thousands of barrels of crude oil subsequently leaked from the ship, damaging marine life and coastal environments.

The effects of the spill are documented in the video, which was uploaded by Coastal First Nations.

“We’re leaking some oil, and we’re going to be here for a while,” Captain Joe Hazelwood says in the ship’s initial radio call to Coast Guard.

“What if it had happened in B.C.?” the video then asks.

It concludes: “Don't be silent. Vote for an oil-free coast.”

The YouTube video’s description states that rights to use the song were granted for a “small honorarium” after Coastal First Nations wrote Paul Simon, “telling him about the Great Bear Rainforest and the danger that oil tankers pose to the coastal communities that live here.”

While the Exxon Valdez spill is perhaps the best known to North Americans, it actually ranks relatively low among dozens of oil spills listed on a Wikipedia page devoted to the topic.

The Coastal First Nations video was released as the energy company Kinder Morgan moves ahead with an expansion of the Trans Mountain pipeline, which runs from Edmonton to Burnaby. That project will twin an existing pipeline, increasing capacity from 300,000 barrels per day to 890,000.

It’s estimated the Kinder Morgan expansion would result in as many as 408 tankers per year moving oil through Metro Vancouver’s coastal waters.