A $50-million Canadian Coast Guard clean-up operation is underway to extract hundreds of tonnes of fuel from a bomb-laden U.S. Army transport ship that sank in 1946 in Grenville Channel on B.C.’s remote north coast.

While removal of the seeping oil from the Brigadier-General M.G. Zalinski is considered a positive step, critics question the cost of the operation — which involves more than 150 people, three floating fishing lodges, and a Prince Rupert command centre — and believe the U.S. should foot the bill.

“We decided not to do this on the cheap,” responded Roger Girouard, incident commander for the Zalinski operation and assistant commissioner for the coast guard’s western region. “This is a big one, no question about it. The idea is to do it as cleanly and safely as we can.”

Representatives of at least five federal departments are involved in the operation, along with two provincial ministries, two first nations, and several contractors, including Mammoet, the Dutch-owned company that is removing the oil with subcontractor Global Diving and Salvage of Seattle.

The Zalinski is also providing lessons on how multiple agencies must work together on a complex clean-up operation.

“This is not a dress rehearsal,” said Girouard, noting an oil-tanker spill would pose much greater problems. “But are there things we are learning in terms of cooperation and tactics that are good for the coast? Sure, absolutely. We’d be crazy not to glean those lessons.”

He added that oil-tanker traffic is part of a larger change sweeping the north coat. “With natural gas, more coal, more grain, another container terminal ... the amount of tonnage on the coast will grow. It doesn’t take a crude carrier to cause a challenge up here on the coast.”

Lance Sundquist, provincial incident commander and director of special projects with the B.C. ministry of environment, said that “every exercise we go through improves our ability to better respond ... and prepares us for any further operations that may take place.

“We know that things happen, and we have to be prepared to respond the best that we can.”

Ian McAllister of the environmental group Pacific Wild, who dove the wreck last year, said the best that can come from the $50-million cleanup is to achieve what should have happened long ago, preferably with the Americans paying the tab since it “was their ship that sank, after all.”

Built in 1919, the Zalinski ran aground in September 1946 about 100 kilometres south of Prince Rupert in the Inside Passage. The ship was transporting a cargo of bombs, large amounts of ammunition, and spare truck parts from Seattle to Alaska. All 48 men aboard survived.

The wreck lies 2.5 kilometres south of James Point in Lowe Inlet.

Asked if the U.S. would be billed, Girouard said: “That’s something that gets discussed slightly above my pay grade between foreign affairs and the U.S.” No one at foreign affairs could be reached to comment Monday.

About 120 people are living in floating lodges near the Zalinski wreck site, plus 40 at a command centre in Prince Rupert. Ten oil-spill response vessels are on site, including a staging barge capable of holding 4,000 tonnes of oil, along with equipment such as containment booms.