The alleged owner of a derelict former tugboat that was leaking oil in a rural harbour along Nova Scotia’s Eastern Shore is being sued over cleanup and dismantling costs that the Canadian Coast Guard claims top $4.1 million.
The vessel, named the Craig Trans, was at the centre of a decade-long saga that started when it was impounded in Halifax in late 2012 after Transport Canada found numerous safety violations on board, and its Central American crew was left stranded in Nova Scotia by the boat’s owner.
The vessel subsequently changed hands a number of times and in 2017 ended up moored in the community of Marie Joseph, located about 120 kilometres east of Halifax.
In May 2023, the coast guard found it was leaking oil and launched an expensive operation to remove contaminated water and pay for the vessel to be pulled apart and scrapped.
Now the bill is landing in Federal Court, as Canada’s ship-oil pollution compensation fund seeks to make a pre-emptive claim against Clement Fleet, the Eastern Shore man it says owned the Craig Trans.
The fund is part of an independent federal office known as Ship and Rail Compensation Canada, which pays out compensation to anyone affected by oil spills from boats and ships or from major rail accidents involving crude oil.
Cameron Grant, a lawyer and director for the ship fund, said it is still determining how much of the coast guard’s claim will qualify for compensation.
Once a decision is made and money is paid to the coast guard, Ship and Rail Compensation Canada can then pursue the amount from Fleet. This early court action is to protect the fund’s right to try to recover the costs when the time comes, Grant said.
CBC was unable to reach Fleet for comment. He reportedly operated a commercial boat shed in Marie Joseph that caught fire and was destroyed in 2021.
A spokesperson for the coast guard said the agency received a report of pollution near the vessel on May 23, 2023. A contract to dismantle the tug and dispose of pollutants was tendered, and awarded that November. Work at the site was completed in March 2024.
The ship-oil pollution fund is built on money generated from interest from a levy imposed on Canadian oil shippers and receivers between 1970 and 1976. The fund now stands at more than $400 million. Since 1989, it’s received more than 600 claims, largely from the coast guard.
Once compensation is paid, the organization then heads to court in an attempt to recoup the amount from whoever is responsible for the pollution. The fund first turns to the vessel’s insurance. If there is none, it can seek to seize the owner’s assets, garnish wages or put a lien on a property.
Grant acknowledged, however, that in an “overwhelming” number of cases the vessel owners don’t have the money to pay for the costs of the oil pollution. The amount recovered can be small.
“Flat out, there’s no way to squeeze blood from a stone,” he said in an interview.
But that’s the point of the fund, he said — to take on that risk so taxpayers aren’t saddled with the expense of dealing with oil pollution from ships when owners have no money to pay for it.
The Craig Trans has an odd history. It was registered in Bolivia when it ended up in Canada in 2012 to tow a derelict cargo ship, the Kathryn Spirit, out of a Beauharnois, Que., port and to Mexico. But before it arrived, the Craig Trans was detained in Halifax.
The crew of the tug, most of them from Honduras, were then stranded on board for a month, reportedly living in squalor because the owner refused to fly them home. They were finally able to return to Central America thanks to donations gathered by the Anglican non-profit Mission to Seafarers.
As for the Kathryn Spirit, it sat abandoned. It cost the federal government $25 million to remove it in 2018.
“The Craig Trans sailing into our office a few years later was, ‘Oh,’’’ Grant said. “It sort of adds to the bill on the Kathryn Spirit because this is a ship that arrived in Canada, at least to our understanding, in order to help tow the Kathryn Spirit out.
“And instead of helping, it actually has ultimately made things worse and now the Canadian Coast Guard has had to deal with this ship too.”
The Craig Trans is one of a number of expensive cleanups involving derelict vessels over the last decade in Nova Scotia harbours, including nearly $1.8 million spent on two separate incidents involving the former anti-sealing vessel Farley Mowat.
Last year, the fund agreed to pay out $1.3 million to the coast guard related to the Hydra Mariner, a 34-metre former fishing trawler that broke its moorings during high winds in January 2021 and ran aground on Navy Island in Halifax’s Bedford Basin.
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Complicating the effort to deal with the vessel was the fact that unexploded ordnance remained on and around the island, a result of a sequence of ammunition explosions at a nearby naval jetty in 1945, an incident known as the Bedford Magazine explosion.
The area around the Hydra Mariner had to be surveyed before work could begin. Two live shells were found and handed over to the Department of National Defence. The vessel was dismantled and towed away in 2022.
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