Council should challenge dangerous Hamilton pipeline application

An environmental disaster is waiting to happen in Hamilton: the rupture of Enbridge’s Hamilton-to-Sarnia pipeline, pouring diluted bitumen from Alberta’s oilsands into the Beverley Swamp or one of the many creeks and rivers along the way that flow into lakes Ontario and Erie. The pipeline hub is at Westover in Flamborough.

 

Enbridge applied last month to the National Energy Board (NEB) to reverse the flow of its 37-year-old Pipeline 9 through Hamilton and ship diluted bitumen from west to east, rather than crude oil from east to west. Pipeline 9 uses the same type of steel pipe that ruptured last year in Kalamazoo, Michigan, causing a $750-million spill that’s still not fully cleaned up. It took Enbridge 17 hours even to turn off the flow of that pipeline after the rupture.

 

Crude oil isn’t corrosive but diluted bitumen is. Crude oil requires less pressure to move through a pipeline than diluted bitumen. And diluted bitumen, when bursting from a break in an outdated pipe that is under greater pressure than it was built for, does not float on water. Rather, it sinks to the bottom where it’s hard to remove, and releases toxic solvents into the atmosphere that could cause respiratory problems and even deaths among residents, first responders, livestock, and wildlife nearby. Six hundred people became ill during the Kalamazoo spill. Two later died.

 

Enbridge Pipeline 10 from Hamilton to Buffalo spilled once in Binbrook in 2001 and, according to Binbrook resident John McGreal, it took 12 hours for the company to shut off that 29-year-old pipe.

 

On Oct. 17, 2012, Enbridge was supposed to address Hamilton council regarding its proposal. For the third time, it failed to show up. Instead, Enbridge representatives privately lobbied councillors but apparently failed to tell them diluted bitumen was to be shipped. Hamilton, incidentally, does not have a compulsory lobbyist registry.

 

In Enbridge’s place, a number of citizen delegates addressed council. I argued that, because the Stephen Harper government recklessly cancelled the environmental assessment of the Enbridge proposal (along with 3,000 others in its omnibus budget bill), council should direct its legal staff to initiate a legal challenge forcing the project to undergo one. Until then, I recommended the city amend its building code to idle oil pipelines over 30 years of age within city limits. At the very minimum, I urged that Hamilton’s idle blast furnaces should be churning out steel for a brand new pipeline.

 

Harper, I pointed out, is the voice of the oil industry in Canada. Line 9 through Hamilton represents the last hope of the oilsands consortium to ship out its environmentally unfriendly product to world markets. The proposed Keystone pipeline for oilsands bitumen through the United States for refinement in Texas has been nixed for now by Barack Obama. The proposed Northern Gateway pipeline to transfer bitumen to the West Coast for shipment to Asian markets by supertanker (shades of the Exxon Valdiz) has been stopped by British Columbia. So, Enbridge wants to ship diluted bitumen through Hamilton to be refined in Maine.

I also explained why the oilsands development should be shut down. That mining operation is environmentally unsustainable and represents an obsolete 1950s paradigm of the use of fossil fuels to power a completely outdated system of private transportation using cars and trucks. It is the world’s largest single polluter producing CO2, a greenhouse gas that promotes climate change.

 

Other presenters called for council to demand a $1 billion performance bond from Enbridge, to be apprised of the results of 84 recent “integrity digs” on pipelines near Hamilton, to intervene in Enbridge’s NEB application, to approach other municipalities for joint action, and to force Enbridge to appear at public informational meetings, among other initiatives. On Oct. 17, with Brian McHattie in the chair, city councillors listened attentively and asked many questions of presenters and city staff. Hopefully, council will act promptly on these suggestions.

 

Hamiltonians wanting to learn more about this issue would be well advised to hear Andrew Nikiforuk deliver the annual Spirit of Red Hill Lecture on Wednesday, Nov. 28, at 7:30 p.m. at the First Unitarian Church, 170 Dundurn South. The topic of this award-winning journalist will be Bitumen, Pipelines and the Petro-State. Admission is free.

 

Ken Stone is a member of Environment Hamilton and Hamilton 350 Committee.

Tribute to Maggie Hughes

Maggie Hughes has died after a long struggle with multiple sclerosis. Maggie was an independent journalist and a tireless advocate for social justice, citizen activism and environmental sustainability. For 12 years she produced a weekly radio program on CFMU 93.3 FM called The Other Side that reported and examined news and events from a grassroots rather than an institutional perspective.

Her topics of interest included the Alberta Oilsands, global warming, pollution, corporate globalization, justice for First Nations communities, sustainability, civil rights, the concentration of wealth, environmental destruction, and government accountability. She published interviews with scientists, activists and advocates to present more detailed information and background that could not be found in the sound-bite media.

Just before her death, Maggie focused on the Enbridge plan to run diluted bitumen through a 37 year old pipeline that passes through Hamilton on its way east. On October 30, she published audio recordings of the citizen delegations to the City's General Issues Committee on the plan.

Maggie suffered from multiple sclerosis, a degenerative inflammatory disease that attacks the nervous system and leads to progressive physical and cognitive disability.

Despite her disease and its unpredictable but increasingly debilitating symptoms, Maggie continued single-handedly to publish detailed reports on important issues, producing thousands of hours of audio and video recordings from public meetings, protests, lectures and other events.

James Tennant, program director at CFMU, writes about her dedication. "We remember a woman who needed a motorized chair, yet hitched a ride on the back of a motorcycle to gather news from Caledonia in 2006."

In her last email to me, Maggie expressed her deep frustration dealing with MS:

"I can tell you it is like living in a circus of constant change. Very difficult. ... Be nice if I made some people understand that MS isn't just about going lame, or having speech struggles. It is far more."

Maggie's relentless dedication to social justice in Hamilton has long been a major inspiration for me, not only through her willingness to get involved but also as an example of what a difference one person can make with determination and skill.

She will be deeply missed.

Ryan McGreal

Published November 09, 2012 on RaiseTheHammer.org

What are we leaving for future generations?

On the issue of climate change, Canada is failing our global community.  Canadians are failing future generations.  We are also failing ourselves.

Public figures as diverse as Prince Charles and Stephen Hawking have declared climate change the biggest threat to human kind.  A report published earlier this year estimates that even early, relatively subtle, climatic changes cause as many as 400,000 deaths a year, mostly as a result of associated hunger and communicable diseases. 

It should not be surprising that climate change could be responsible for so much death and destruction.  Hurricane Sandy is just the most recent reminder of exactly the type of the damage we can expect.  Hamiltonians and local farmers are sure to remember the strange, early, warm spring followed by a cold snap which devastated so many local fruit tree crops.  Images of dead corn stalks as a result of this hot dry summer should also be fresh in our memory.  Climate change has the ability to diminish our most basic necessities: food, water and shelter.

Many prominent figures in the military industrial complex refer to climate change as a threat multiplier.  Gwynne Dyer, in his book Climate Wars often repeats the chilling mantra that “people always raid before they starve”.  It is no wonder that the United Kingdom’s Climate and Energy Security Envoy has officially made the same declaration we heard from Charles and Hawking. 

More alarming still, Jared Diamond popularized the idea that our unsustainable practices could lead to a collapse of civilization as we know it.  The casualties of such a serious event would be unprecedented.  The truth is that it is impossible to know how climate change will impact human civilization and our biosphere.  All we know is that the risks we are exposing ourselves to are immense.

Our Prime Minister is focused on removing oil from Alberta as quickly as we possibly can at the expense of significant action on climate change.  Canada is repeatedly been given Colossal Fossil awards for being the most obstructionist nation at climate change conferences, like the most recent one in Durban.  We also recently made headlines for lobbying against an international ban on oil subsidies, which tax paying Canadians still provide to the tune of $1.4 billion a year.

Canadians are some of the highest greenhouse gas emitters on the planet per populace, emitting more than a hundred times more emissions than people in undeveloped nations like Bangladesh, who will probably suffer most as a result of climate change. 

As a 29 year old, my generation has often been referred to as the new lost generation.  I wonder how all Canadians, young and old, will be remembered if we continue to contribute so heavily to the problem of climate change.  Surely, our behavior is an insulting tribute to the great generation that won World War II.  Many died for the democracy and freedom we have today and we have the responsibility to put these gifts to good use.  Canadian citizens have a moral duty to confront a problem as immense as climate change.

Please join Hamilton 350 as we fast for 24 hours starting November 23^rd at 8am in an effort to highlight the relationship between climate change and food security.  This is just one small part of the response we, as Canadians, owe our global community.  Visit Hamilton350.org for more information.

Hamilton 350 Blog