Board backs pipeline
Castanet
UPDATE: 4:50 p.m.
Lizette Parsons Bell, lead of stakeholder engagement with the Trans Mountain Expansion Project, calls the $845,000 given to the communities within the TNRD a "community benefit agreement."
"We recognize that through the construction of the project, if it is approved, that we are going to have impacts within communities," Bell said.
"We want to make sure that there’s an offset to the impacts of the project, and to provide that positive legacy."
ORIGINAL: 4:00 p.m.
The Thompson-Nicola Regional District board of directors has voted to support the controversial Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline expansion project, which will add hundreds of kilometres of new pipeline through the region.
The project will twin the existing pipeline that runs from the northern Alberta oilsands to Burnaby, carrying diluted bitumen.
The vote, which is largely for moral support since Kinder Morgan does not require approval from the board, ended up with 19 in favour and four opposed.
“The board was of the opinion that it’s a far safer alternative to have the oil flowing through a pipeline,” said John Ranta, chair of the board. “Especially when the pipeline is managed by a company like Kinder Morgan that has such an outstanding safety record over the past many years.”
Others dispute this safety record. Sven Biggs, a campaign organizer with the environmental group ForestEthics, said the existing pipeline has had an incident along the route at least once every year.
“That (existing) pipeline has been operating for 60 years now and they’ve had over 80 spills along the route of the pipeline,” Biggs said. “Most famously back in 2007 there was a big geyser of oil shooting out of it in Burnaby, but that’s actually only the ninth largest spill along the route.”
ForestEthics, along with the Wilderness Committee, held a town hall meeting in Kamloops in March, to discuss residents’ concerns with the project. Biggs spoke at that meeting.
“There was a lot of concern from the folks who came out,” he said. “Any spill along that route into one of those waterways could devastate local rivers, and that was one of the main concerns.”
Communities within the TNRD received a total of $845,000 from Kinder Morgan in February, which will be used to fund community parks, trails, road upgrades and drinking water infrastructure in the area.
Ranta said as far as he knew, this money played no part in the board’s recent approval.
“It wasn’t raised, it wasn’t brought up, it wasn’t discussed,” he said.
Biggs said these community contributions from Kinder Morgan are happening all over B.C.
“Kinder Morgan is approaching local governments all along the pipeline, basically offering them free cash to sign some sort of agreement with the company,” he said. “A number of local governments have found that too irresistible to turn down, while others like Chilliwack have voted to not take that money.”
Ranta said the board has not heard much opposition to the project from the community.
“There is some sentiment amongst some groups, that by supporting the twinning of the Kinder Morgan pipeline that you’re supporting the extraction of oil from the oil sands or you’re supporting the continuation of a fossil fuel based economy or whatever,” Ranta said. “We understand that and Kinder Morgan understands that, and they would like nothing more than to move away from a fossil fuel based economy, more or less, but it’s going to take some time to get there from here.”
Photo Credit: Marsh along Nicola Lake, BC. (Wayne Weber via flickr)