BURNABY, B.C. (MyBellinghamNow.com) – Oil tanker traffic is about to increase exponentially in the Salish Sea.

Canada’s Trans Mountain Pipeline expansion is complete and an enlarged export facility in Burnaby B.C. will go into service this month. The existing pipeline and the facility near Vancouver have been sending out about five loaded tankers per month.

Lovel Pratt with the Friday Harbor-based group Friends of the San Juans said the expansion will create six times that many tanker trips.

“There’ll be an additional 696 oil tanker transits a year through the narrow waterways of Boundary Pass, Turn Point, Haro Strait, and out through the Strait of Juan de Fuca,” Pratt said. She said that will bring more vessel noise to the Salish Sea, along with an increase of the danger of a major oil spill.

The tankers will carry crude oil from the Alberta Tar Sands.

“Tar Sands crude oil will likely submerge into the water column or sink to the sea floor,” Pratt said. “As far as I know, there’s no way to contain sunken oil and it’s very difficult and very costly to collect submerged and sunken oil.”

Washington Governor Jay Inslee joined with environmental groups, Lummi Nation and other tribes in voicing opposition to the expansion.

But the Canadian government pushed ahead, even taking the step of buying the Trans Mountain Corporation to keep the project on track. They tell the Seattle Times that they’ve invested in enhanced spill prevention and response, including multiple new response bases on Vancouver Island along the shipping lanes.

The first loaded tankers are expected to depart the Burnaby terminal in mid-May.