Dear sir,
Buried within the mountains of material in Enbridge’s Northern Gateway dual pipeline, tank farm and supertanker port proposal, one can find some foul nuggets never seen in their shiny brochures, slick website, or heard from the mouths of Enbridge representatives.
Here, for example, is one where they mention their future plans to go from the applied for “525 kbpd annual, to an expansion capacity of up to 850 kbpd annual”. What does that mean?
It means they intend to convert the 20” condensate pipeline for pumping oil west. It means going from 82 million litres of oil per day to over 135 million litres of oil per day down the pipe to Kitimat.
It means going from 225 supertankers per year to 364 supertankers per year zig-zagging their way into Douglas Channel.
It means there will always be two supertankers, one arriving and one departing, in Douglas Channel essentially every single day of the year.
In Volume 7b there is a section on Hunter Creek, a tributary into the upper Kitimat River where it says, “The hypothetical cause of the spill into Hunter Creek is a pipeline rupture or failure. A large volume of 2,000 m3 is selected for this example”.
What does this mean? It means they anticipate a 2 million litre spill at this location. If they get to use the second pipeline for oil and there is a break in both pipelines, that would mean a spill of 3.2 million litres.
Enbridge’s own consultants say crews would have to get to Hunter Creek within two hours and have all their spill equipment in place.
They would have to drive from Kitimat to the 18 mile bridge, then drive 40 km to the spill site on old logging roads.
Good luck with that, even in summer sunshine, whatever that is...
Buried under that nugget, there’s a more rotten, disgusting one that you’ll never hear an Enbridge spokesperson ever speak of: “A closure on recreational fishing would probably be in place for some time, perhaps up to four years or more, to allow populations time to recover.”
I don’t need to elaborate on that one.
So there you have it. What else are they hiding?
The people of Kitimat should be demanding clear answers from this company, and forcing our local politicians to do the same.
Murray Minchin,
Kitimat.