Re: Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline and tankers to ship Alberta tarsands oil to China
Some Stats:
Proposed 36- and 20-inch pipelines,1,172 km in length. This crosses 1,000 streams, rivers
including the Skeena and Fraser.
The tankers are .4 km in length with eight times the volume capacity of the Exxon Valdez tanker.
The Valdez spill polluted 1,000 miles of the coastline, and 20-plus years later, the environmental degradation has not recovered
More then 350 super tankers would traverse 240 km through the crooked, island studded and often stormy channel to the open sea. The Douglas and Principe channel is only 1.4 km wide at its narrowest point. These huge tankers do not respond quickly to direction corrections and require many km to stop.
When first proposed, Enbridge assured people that the plan was safe. Then later they stated safety was improved by double hulls, thicker pipe, and $500 million federal money.
Was Enbridge short on honesty in the first proposal and can we believe them now?
According to Polaris Institute Enbridge had 610 oil spills between 1999 and 2008. Pipelines lack adequate regulations and are not safe. Enbridge has hired H/K and are flooding the media with biased articles and widely distorted animation maps of the tanker route.
The absolute certainty is that a massive, catastrophic oil spill will occur which will be
impossible to clean up in our coast waters. This would pollute most of B.C. coastline. The carrier tanker Co. would be responsible for cleanup and damage, not Enbridge. This would likely result in B.C. residents picking up the tab and inherit a destroyed beautiful coast line and way of life.
We do not need the jobs as there are 338,000 foreign workers in Canada. Business and the Chamber of Commerce are advising that there is a big labour shortage. This means we do not need the jobs. There is no revenue sharing between AB and B.C.
B.C. takes the risk to our coast and added green house gases while Enbridge and Tarsands oil company's profit.
The govt. cannot continue saying yes to all resource exploitation without careful analysis and with regard to the risk and environmental degradation To do otherwise is industrial terrorism Both the federal and present B.C. govt. support this project.
G.P Kalischuk
Chetwynd
