800,000 barrels a day to mid-west refineries. 16 If the Northern Tier 

 pipeline is built, petroleum throughput by oil tanker in Washington 

 State would jump to 1,100,000 barrels per day. 17 



Debate surrounding the environmental impact of oil tankers in Puget 

 Sound has focused on the threat of massive oil spills in the productive 

 and intensely used waters of the Sound. Many observers believe that 

 such spills could be very damaging to the Sound's wide variety of economic, 

 ecological, and recreational activities. 18 Among the uses of Puget 

 Sound that would probably suffer the greatest impact in the event of an 

 oil spill are (1) a large sport and commercial fishery, (2) a multi- 

 million dollar recreation, tourist and boating industry, and (3) fish 

 (salmon and shellfish beds) and wildlife (wintering waterfowl) populations 

 and habitat . 



The principal issue of controversy, however, has been where to land 

 the oil from tankers in western Washington. Four alternative sites have 

 been the most frequently mentioned: (1) a common-use terminal at or 

 west of Port Angeles; (2) a common-use crude terminal at Burrows Bay; 

 (3) the independent development of deepwater berths at the four existing 

 major refineries at Anacortes and Cherry Point and (4) a common-use 

 terminal at Cherry Point. 19 The last three alternatives would all 

 require tankering petroleum into Puget Sound, through Rosario or Haro 

 Straits to an east sound location (Figure 10). The Port Angeles 

 alternative would avoid the risk of transporting oil along this route. 

 A 1974 study by the Oceanographic Commission of Washington estimated a 

 Port Angeles terminal to be 6 to 7 times safer in terms of tanker accidents 

 and oil spills than a terminal on the east side of the Sound. 20 But 



89 



