Since I was a teenager, I've been going into the Gulf Islands. I bought property there in 1978 and have lived there permanently for 23 years. I know those waterways wonderfully, and they're precious. With extreme winds in the winter time, strong currents and those kinds of things, we rarely saw a cargo ship anchoring in those waters before 2009. It was rare. All of a sudden, there was a change and then it kept increasing. There was no stoppage.
In 2018, when the federal government came out with the interim protocols, suddenly the anchoring increased again. In fact, Ladysmith and Saltair, which never saw ships before 2018, suddenly were inundated with ships. Now they're anchoring constantly just offshore from very small communities and creating huge underwater and above-water noise there.
The port wanted to expand, but it didn't provide the infrastructure and it didn't address the supply chain. Then it accepted American thermal coal to ship, on top of that. You can see how it compounds. A lot of the vessels that are arriving early are getting there because it's free anchorage. There's no jurisdiction and no monitoring—nothing. As a result, we've been seeing the anchor drag groundings and collisions in our local waters.