Canada’s largest pipeline company has withdrawn its request to speak to councillors about planned flow reversal for its 37-year-old Line 9 running across rural Hamilton. But local opposition is growing, fed by the expectation that the pipe will carry diluted bitumen from the Alberta tar sands to foreign markets. Opponents have called a rally at city hall on Wednesday morning and a protest next Sunday at Enbridge Inc’s pipeline hub in rural Flamborough.
A staff report going to the general issues committee on Wednesday says there are dozens of residential wells within a kilometre of the site where Enbridge will be carrying out construction activities near the village of Westover, as well as a Provincially Significant Wetland (PSW), and four city-designated Environmentally Significant Areas (ESAs). The construction activity is expected to employ 30 people for about four months and includes “installation of a short section of pipe”, but the report concludes that the city has no jurisdictional authority over federally-regulated pipelines and that no action is required by councillors.
“Based on the above, staff is satisfied that the National Energy Board has addressed the issues surrounding pipeline safety and emergency response protocol through their approvals process. Since there are no planned impacts to Hamilton’s Environmentally Significant Areas and/or to existing land uses, residents and water supplies as a result of Enbridge’s proposal to reverse the direction of flow within the existing section of pipeline between Sarnia and Westover, it is concluded that there are no foreseeable impacts to the City of Hamilton.”
While Enbridge has been unwilling to reveal what it plans to put through the pipeline, the Globe and Mail and other media have reported that it will carry diluted bitumen (also known as dilbit), an unrefined composite of materials extracted from the Alberta tar sands mixed with chemical solvents to make the heavy viscous material flow. The company is also considering expanding the capacity of Line 9 once it has approval to reverse the flows all the way to Montreal.
The eastern plan is apparently an option to the company’s proposed Northern Gateway pipeline across hundreds of lakes and streams in northern British Columbia that is mired in controversy. Moving the unrefined tar sands material in that direction would also involve supertankers traveling through the Great Bear rainforest and other treacherous BC coastal waters.
Opposition to the Ontario flow reversal by Environmental Defence and others has focused on the shift from oil to the much more corrosive dilbit that also requires increases in both temperature and pressure in the pipeline. The staff report, however, makes no mention of dilbit, tar sands or bitumen, referring only to “crude oil” which it notes was transported easterly through the pipeline for many years after it was first constructed in the mid-1970s.
“However, in the 1990s, when off-shore oil from areas such as the North Sea, West Africa and the Middle East was more affordable, Line 9 was reversed to westbound to carry crude oil from the Montreal terminal to Sarnia.”
It was dilbit from the Enbridge pipe that feeds into Line 9 at Sarnia that contaminated over 60 kilometers of Michigan’s Kalamazoo River in July 2010, and sickened dozens of residents when the solvents spread into the local community. The company’s response to the spill has been lambasted by US regulatory authorities and last week the Environmental Protection Agency ordered it to expand a cleanup that has already cost the company over $800 million.
Huffington Post reported that “on the same day that Enbridge told its investors that its tar sands spill and cleanup had made the Kalamazoo River cleaner, EPA ordered the Canadian tar sands pipeline company to resume its cleanup of the Kalamazoo River after finding that submerged oil ‘exists throughout approximately 38 miles of the Kalamazoo’.”
Eight delegations have been approved to speak on the Enbridge report at Wednesday’s general issues committee that begins at 9:30 am in council chambers. They include representatives of the Six Nations Haudenosaunee Confederacy.
Opponents of shipping tar sands through Hamilton have called a rally prior to the meeting. They point to the cancellation of a federal environmental assessment of the Line 9 flow reversal and ask councillors to oppose the Enbridge project and to help uphold the treaties with indigenous peoples.
“This movement did not begin with Hamilton's council and it will not end with it,” their statement notes. “But this is a chance for Hamilton's government to be on the right side of this issue and to lend their support to the grassroots struggles that will keep stopping the Line 9 reversal and the Tar Sands – with or without them.”
The Hamilton 350 Committee on climate change is also inviting the public to a protest potluck picnic at Enbridge’s Westover hub at noon on Sunday, October 21. Cyclists are invited to ride there from Westdale, leaving at 10 am from My Dog Joe’s Café.
Hamilton 350 Blog
Sunday, 14 October 2012
Saturday, 8 September 2012
Our leaders fiddle as our planet burns
Have
you noticed how the climate scientists keep getting it wrong?
Every prediction seems to come up way short.
The weird weather has come much faster and much weirder than expected. The Arctic ice cap was supposed to last until late in this century but now appears nearly certain to be gone by 2030 or maybe 2020. It hit a record low last week — with three more weeks of melting still expected. Greenland is also showing unprecedented melting, and sea levels are rising much quicker than anticipated by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) even in its most recent report.
The droughts and extreme rainstorms have even shown up to some extent in Hamilton. Local farmers have been clobbered by a lack of rain, and hundreds of homes were flooded in the July 22 deluge that dumped six inches of rain in three hours on Binbrook and upper Stoney Creek. That was the 18th time in the last 100 months that Hamilton homes have been inundated by storms. All of this was predicted by mainstream climate science — but not so quickly and dramatically. It was supposed to be a problem for our grandchildren, not us.
In hindsight, we should have expected prediction failures. Scientists are super cautious, unwilling to predict until nearly certain. That reluctance is magnified in the IPCC reports where every sentence is negotiated by researchers from over 100 countries under substantial political pressure to be the least disturbing possible.
But this is not news to political decision-makers. It can’t be surprising to an intelligent man like Stephen Harper who seems to have so much personal power over the government of Canada. And it can’t be surprising to our local councillors who have adopted Harper’s targets as their own and refuse to do anything that might cost money to reduce climate change, while being forced to spend millions because of flooding.
The weather events this year — especially the devastating drought that made over half the counties in the United States official disaster zones — are giving us a taste of what has already happened in other parts of the world over the last few years. And all of this is occurring when average planetary temperatures have gone up by only four-fifths of a centigrade degree. The official target is a maximum two degree increase, and the only hope of stopping there is with drastic steps taken almost immediately.
So why are our leaders doing so little? The public may still be unclear because of the confusion-mongering financed by big oil and other fossil fuel corporations to protect their obscene profits, but our governments should know all about that kind of corporate lobbying, and should assume those companies have no more ethics than the tobacco magnates demonstrated in the past.
Have the elites already decided not to act, and instead hope their personal wealth or status will protect them and their loved ones from the worst effects of the climatic catastrophes coming at us? There seems no doubt that the federal Conservative party has decided exporting tar sands bitumen is the top priority.
The United Nations calculates that tens of thousands of people per year are already dying because of climate change and it’s likely that a planet that’s even just two degrees warmer will mean death for tens of millions more. What’s worse is the growing likelihood that vicious feedback loops will drive temperatures beyond the control of humans. A four-degree increase is expected to convert most of the planet’s most productive areas to deserts.
There don’t appear to be any Winston Churchills in Canada or the U.S. who will lead us back from the brink. That leaves it up to us — not just to drastically reduce our personal emissions (even if that’s cancelled out by the tar sands expansion) but to force a fundamental change in direction.
The Occupy movement provides an example. Until that began, the gross differences in wealth were ignored. It didn’t take many people in the street to make inequality a public issue, although it will take a lot more to actually force change.
But at this point, only a handful are in the streets demanding real climate action. That has to change — very fast!
Hamilton 350 Blog
Every prediction seems to come up way short.
The weird weather has come much faster and much weirder than expected. The Arctic ice cap was supposed to last until late in this century but now appears nearly certain to be gone by 2030 or maybe 2020. It hit a record low last week — with three more weeks of melting still expected. Greenland is also showing unprecedented melting, and sea levels are rising much quicker than anticipated by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) even in its most recent report.
The droughts and extreme rainstorms have even shown up to some extent in Hamilton. Local farmers have been clobbered by a lack of rain, and hundreds of homes were flooded in the July 22 deluge that dumped six inches of rain in three hours on Binbrook and upper Stoney Creek. That was the 18th time in the last 100 months that Hamilton homes have been inundated by storms. All of this was predicted by mainstream climate science — but not so quickly and dramatically. It was supposed to be a problem for our grandchildren, not us.
In hindsight, we should have expected prediction failures. Scientists are super cautious, unwilling to predict until nearly certain. That reluctance is magnified in the IPCC reports where every sentence is negotiated by researchers from over 100 countries under substantial political pressure to be the least disturbing possible.
But this is not news to political decision-makers. It can’t be surprising to an intelligent man like Stephen Harper who seems to have so much personal power over the government of Canada. And it can’t be surprising to our local councillors who have adopted Harper’s targets as their own and refuse to do anything that might cost money to reduce climate change, while being forced to spend millions because of flooding.
The weather events this year — especially the devastating drought that made over half the counties in the United States official disaster zones — are giving us a taste of what has already happened in other parts of the world over the last few years. And all of this is occurring when average planetary temperatures have gone up by only four-fifths of a centigrade degree. The official target is a maximum two degree increase, and the only hope of stopping there is with drastic steps taken almost immediately.
So why are our leaders doing so little? The public may still be unclear because of the confusion-mongering financed by big oil and other fossil fuel corporations to protect their obscene profits, but our governments should know all about that kind of corporate lobbying, and should assume those companies have no more ethics than the tobacco magnates demonstrated in the past.
Have the elites already decided not to act, and instead hope their personal wealth or status will protect them and their loved ones from the worst effects of the climatic catastrophes coming at us? There seems no doubt that the federal Conservative party has decided exporting tar sands bitumen is the top priority.
The United Nations calculates that tens of thousands of people per year are already dying because of climate change and it’s likely that a planet that’s even just two degrees warmer will mean death for tens of millions more. What’s worse is the growing likelihood that vicious feedback loops will drive temperatures beyond the control of humans. A four-degree increase is expected to convert most of the planet’s most productive areas to deserts.
There don’t appear to be any Winston Churchills in Canada or the U.S. who will lead us back from the brink. That leaves it up to us — not just to drastically reduce our personal emissions (even if that’s cancelled out by the tar sands expansion) but to force a fundamental change in direction.
The Occupy movement provides an example. Until that began, the gross differences in wealth were ignored. It didn’t take many people in the street to make inequality a public issue, although it will take a lot more to actually force change.
But at this point, only a handful are in the streets demanding real climate action. That has to change — very fast!
Hamilton 350 Blog
Thursday, 12 July 2012
Who should pay for climate disasters?
The weird weather that all but wiped out this year’s apple crop is a
disaster for local farmers and a setback for those of us who try to
support them by buying local fruit whenever possible. But when are we
going to start really sharing the pain of climate change and doing
something serious about it?
In the last 100 months, we’ve had 17 rain storms severe enough to flood homes in Hamilton. Nearly half of those storms have been only supposed to occur once every 50 years. Most of the costs have been borne by those whose properties and possessions have been flooded.
It’s good to see local councillors seeking more information about flood dangers arising from more development of rural Stoney Creek, but it should be obvious by now that paving over agricultural land and natural areas will inevitably make things worse.
Beyond our community, the damages from extreme weather are far more severe. In the couple of weeks alone, 350 homes were destroyed in the Colorado wildfires and more than 40,000 people evacuated, while18 people were killed and two million left without electricity on the east coast as the United States suffered through a massive heat wave that set or tied over 2,100 high temperatures records.
Overseas flooding and drought clearly connected with climate change are killing tens of thousands every year according to the United Nations.
Everyone knows this is the ugly face of global climate change, but incredibly, the media barely mention this – apparently frightened that some Conservative ideologue will denounce them. Instead, the weather forecasters talk about the “new normal” and the “unusually warm winter/spring/summer.”
And our politicians aren’t much better – especially the bunch in charge in Ottawa who only seem to work for the big oil companies, and who ‘combat’ climate change by firing or silencing the federal scientists gathering evidence about it.
So have we decided – without any official admitting it – that we’re not going to do anything and just hope that it won’t get really bad?
The fossil fuel corporations make billions digging out tar sands, coal, natural gas and other causes of the problem, but no one dares demand that they at least be forced to pay the bills generated by their mad rush for profits. On the contrary, the Harper government continues to provide over a billion dollars a year in subsidies, and eliminates any environmental laws that might slow them down.
There’s a rumour out there that humans are the most intelligent species on the planet.
Too bad.
Hamilton 350 Blog
In the last 100 months, we’ve had 17 rain storms severe enough to flood homes in Hamilton. Nearly half of those storms have been only supposed to occur once every 50 years. Most of the costs have been borne by those whose properties and possessions have been flooded.
It’s good to see local councillors seeking more information about flood dangers arising from more development of rural Stoney Creek, but it should be obvious by now that paving over agricultural land and natural areas will inevitably make things worse.
Beyond our community, the damages from extreme weather are far more severe. In the couple of weeks alone, 350 homes were destroyed in the Colorado wildfires and more than 40,000 people evacuated, while18 people were killed and two million left without electricity on the east coast as the United States suffered through a massive heat wave that set or tied over 2,100 high temperatures records.
Overseas flooding and drought clearly connected with climate change are killing tens of thousands every year according to the United Nations.
Everyone knows this is the ugly face of global climate change, but incredibly, the media barely mention this – apparently frightened that some Conservative ideologue will denounce them. Instead, the weather forecasters talk about the “new normal” and the “unusually warm winter/spring/summer.”
And our politicians aren’t much better – especially the bunch in charge in Ottawa who only seem to work for the big oil companies, and who ‘combat’ climate change by firing or silencing the federal scientists gathering evidence about it.
So have we decided – without any official admitting it – that we’re not going to do anything and just hope that it won’t get really bad?
The fossil fuel corporations make billions digging out tar sands, coal, natural gas and other causes of the problem, but no one dares demand that they at least be forced to pay the bills generated by their mad rush for profits. On the contrary, the Harper government continues to provide over a billion dollars a year in subsidies, and eliminates any environmental laws that might slow them down.
There’s a rumour out there that humans are the most intelligent species on the planet.
Too bad.
Hamilton 350 Blog
Sunday, 17 June 2012
Tuesday, 22 May 2012
Tar sands pipeline through Hamilton
Hamilton is being tossed into the middle of the latest tar sands
battle, as Canada’s largest pipeline company shifts its attention to
Ontario in response to the growing opposition
to the proposed Northern Gateway route through British Columbia. The
first step is a proposal to reverse the flows in the Enbridge Inc
pipeline from Hamilton to Sarnia so it can carry diluted tar sands
bitumen (dilbit) toward the east coast, and the hearing on that
application opens this week in London.
The village of Westover in Flamborough is the hub of several Enbridge pipelines including
line 9 which connects Sarnia to Montreal, the parallel line 7 between
Westover and Sarnia, line 10 from Westover to New York State, and line
11 from Westover to the ExxonMobil refinery in Nanticoke. The portion of
line 9 between Westover and Sarnia is the focus of the National Energy
Board (NEB) hearings scheduled for May 23-25 in London’s Hilton Hotel.
That 37-year old pipeline currently carries imported crude oil west to Sarnia. Enbridge is seeking permission to reverse that flow in a move widely reported to be part of a strategy to ship tar sands products to Portland Maine for export to global markets. In a potentially related move, Enbridge is also seeking
to double the capacity of a pipeline running across Michigan into
Sarnia – the same line that ruptured in 2010, dumping more than 800,000
gallons of dilbit into the Kalamazoo River and costing the company over $700 million.
The implications of routing the highly corrosive “dilbit” through Ontario has caught the attention of the London Free Press which announced
Friday that “Enbridge pipeline battle comes close to home” and noted
the Westover-Sarnia pipe goes under the city’s Thames River. It is also
being challenged by Environmental Defence, the Pembina Institute and Equiterre, as well as a Cambridge community newspaper.
If approved, Enbridge says
line 9 will transport between 50,000 and 90,000 barrels per day, but
acknowledges that it is capable of carrying “beyond 150,000 bpd”. The
flow reversal will mean higher pressures in the pipeline and some
modifications to the Westover hub and a nearby densitometer located
close to the intersection of Kirkwall Road and the 6th Concession of
Flamborough.
An environmental assessment document submitted
by Enbridge notes the presence of two environmentally significant areas
and a provincially significant wetland near the Westover installations,
as well as portions of both Spencer Creek and Fairchild Creek. However,
crossings of major rivers such as the Thames, Grand and St Clair are
likely of greater concern, as well as the prospect of tar sands refining
in Ontario near the Great Lakes such as at the Nanticoke facility of
ExxonMobil.
National
and international attention has been focused on two other proposed
routes for export of dilbit – the Keystone XL pipeline to the Gulf of
Mexico, and the Northern Gateway pipeline across Alberta and northern BC to Kitimat on the Pacific coast. Both have generated massive opposition – with the Keystone XL blocked
at least temporarily by environmental concerns in the United States,
and the Northern Gateway facing unequivocal refusals by multiple First
Nations to allow use of their lands.
The latter route would cross
more than 1000 lakes and rivers on the way to Kitimat, but the use of
supertankers to carry the bitumen to China and other markets is
particularly controversial. Their passageway would be through the Great
Bear Rainforest and other narrow and often storm-wracked coastal waters,
and the memory (and the on-going ecological effects) of the disastrous
Exxon Valdez crash in 1989 loom large in the debate.
Alberta media, on the other hand, are pointing out
that the pipeline connections to the east coast of the continent are
already in place and thus could prove easier for Enbridge to win the
required approvals. That approval process is also about to get much
easier as the federal government pushes through an omnibus budget
implementation bill that transfers final decision making from the NEB to the Harper cabinet.
The omnibus bill – labelled the Environmental Destruction Act
by Green Party leader Elizabeth May – will change more than 70 pieces
of legislation in a single swoop, including a complete re-write of the
Canadian Environmental Assessment Act that makes all assessments an
option of the federal Minister of the Environment. The bill also eliminates
habitat protection features of the Fisheries Act, shifts the start of
the old age pension to age 67, rewrites unemployment insurance rules,
and eliminates long-standing institutions such as the National Council
on Welfare and the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy.
Hamliton 350 Blog
Friday, 11 May 2012
Bill C-38, putting Profit before the Environment
Clarifying the deliberately confusing Bill C-38
- Elizabeth May
As a long-time
environmental
lawyer who has watched, and in some cases, played a role in the
development of
Canada’s
environmental
laws, I am devastated at the cynical, manipulative and
undemocratic way the Harper Conservatives are weakening or
destroying those
crucial laws.
The Conservatives
have hidden
their destructive, anti-nature, health, and even jobs agenda in
the 425-page
Bill C-38, the Budget Implementation Bill. Due to their
imposition of time allocation
on the Bill’s various stages through the House of Commons, I
haven’t been able
to speak during Second Reading, although I have been able to ask
questions and
make comments. That’s why I decided to hold a press conference
Thursday
morning, May 10, to itemize the various bills, regulations,
policies and
programs that will be affected.
Bill C-38 Changes
Clearing the
Way for Resource Extraction:
Canadian
Environmental
Assessment Act – “Environmental effects” under the new CEAA will
be limited to
effects on fish, aquatic species under the Species at Risk Act,
migratory
birds. A broader view of impacts is limited to: federal lands,
Aboriginal
peoples, and changes to the environment “directly linked or
necessarily
incidental” to federal approval.
Canadian
Environmental
Assessment Agency – The Agency will have 45 days after receiving
an application
to decide if an assessment is required. Environmental
Assessments are no longer
required for projects involving federal money. The Minister is
given wide
discretion to decide. New “substitution” rules allow Ottawa
to download EAs to the provinces;
“comprehensive” studies are eliminated. Cabinet will be able to
over-rule
decisions. A retroactive section sets the clock at July 2010 for
existing
projects.
Canadian
Environmental
Protection Act – The present one-year limit to permits for
disposing waste at
sea can now be renewed four times. The 3 and 5 year time limits
protecting
Species at Risk from industrial harm will now be open-ended.
Kyoto
Protocol Implementation Act – This
legislation, which required government accountability and
results reporting on
climate change policies, is being repealed.
Fisheries Act –
Fish habitat
provisions will be changed to protect only fish of “commercial,
Aboriginal, and
recreational” value and even those habitat protections are
weakened. The new
provisions create an incentive to drain a lake and kill all the
fish, if not in
a fishery, in order to fill a dry hole with mining tailings.
Navigable Waters
Protection Act
– Pipelines and power lines will be exempt from the provisions
of this Act.
Also, the National Energy Board absorbs the Navigable Waters
Protection Act
(NWPA) whenever a pipeline crosses navigable waters. The NWPA is
amended to say
a pipeline is not a “work” within that Act.
National Energy
Board Act – NEB
reviews will be
limited to two years – and then its decisions can be reversed by
the Cabinet,
including the present Northern Gateway Pipeline review.
Species at Risk
Act – This is
being amended to exempt the National Energy Board from having to
impose
conditions to protect critical habitat on projects it approves.
Also, companies
won’t have to renew permits on projects threatening critical
habitat.
Parks Canada
Agency Act –
Reporting requirements are being reduced, including the annual
report. 638 of
the nearly 3000 Parks Canada workers will be cut. Environmental
monitoring and
ecological restoration in the Gulf Islands
National Park
are being cut.
Canadian Oil and
Gas Operations
Act – This will be changed to exempt pipelines from the
Navigational Waters
Act. Coasting Trade Act – This will be changed to promote
seismic testing
allowing increased off-shore drilling.
Nuclear Safety
Control Act –
Environmental Assessments will be moved to the Canadian Nuclear
Safety
Commission, which is a licensing body not an assessing body – so
there is a
built-in conflict.
Canada
Seeds Act – This is being
revamped so the job of inspecting seed crops is transferred from
Canadian Food
Inspection Agency inspectors to “authorized service providers”
the private
sector.
Agriculture
Affected – Under the
Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Act, publicly owned grasslands have
acted as
community pastures under federal management, leasing grazing
rights to farmers
so they could devote their good land to crops, not livestock.
This will end.
Also, the Centre for Plant Health in Sidney,
BC, an important site for
quarantine and virus-testing on
plant stock strategically located across the Salish Sea
to protect BC’s primary agricultural regions, will be moved to
the heart of
BC’s fruit and wine industries.
National Round
Table on the
Environment and the Economy – The NRTEE brought industry
leaders,
environmentalists, First Nations, labour, and policy makers
together to provide
non-partisan research and advice on federal policies. Its demise
will leave a
policy vacuum in relation to Canada’s
economic development.
More Attacks on
Environmental
Groups – The charities sections now preclude gifts which may
result in
political activity. The $8 million new money to harass charities
is
unjustified.
Water Programs –
Environment Canada
is
cutting several water-related programs and others will be cut
severely,
including some aimed at promoting or monitoring water-use
efficiency.
Wastewater Survey
– The
Municipal Water and Wastewater Survey, the only national study
of water
consumption habits, is being cut after being in place since
1983.
Monitoring
Effluent –
Environment Canada’s
Environmental
Effects Monitoring Program, a systematic method for measuring
the
quality of effluent discharge, including from mines and pulp
mills, will be cut
by 20 percent.
In spite of the
fact that most
Canadians have no idea how seriously Bill C-38 will affect their
lives, the
Senate is beginning hearings so that Conservative Senators can
vote on it as
soon as possible. This railroading version of democracy is
tragic for Canada.
The Green Party
of Canada is
launching its C-38: Environment Devastation Act campaign to engage Canadians in having their C-38
concerns heard.
Please visit budgetdevastation.ca for more information.
Elizabeth
May is the Leader of the Green Party of Canada and Member of
Parliament for Saanich-Gulf
Islands.
Hamilton 350 Blog
Thursday, 3 May 2012
Connect the Dots
Climate change action starts at home
Hamiltonians need to “connect the dots” between the odd
shifts in weather they are seeing locally and the global impacts of
climate change, environmental leaders say. A meeting at City Hall Thursday organized by seven groups emphasized
the need for municipal action to address concerns around climate change.
The news conference was held to advance Saturday’s Global Day of
Action, which is being hosted by the Hamilton 350 Committee
In the past eight years, there have been 17 rainstorms that flooded homes in Hamilton and at least six of them were only supposed to come once every 50 to 100 years, said Don McLean, co-ordinator of the local 350 committee. “The very strange weather that we’ve had in the last two or three months, the winter that didn’t happen ... clearly the kinds of impacts it’s going to have on food production have to make it more and more urgent we do something,” McLean said.
The 350 Committee is part of a global campaign for the maximum safe level of carbon dioxide — 350 parts per million — in the global atmosphere. Right now, it’s sitting at 394 parts per million. “We’re at a point where you have almost unanimous agreement from climate scientists that this is occurring … Let’s pull up our pants and get the job done,” said Pete Wobschall, executive director of Green Venture.
Lynda Lukasik, the executive director of Environment Hamilton, said she wanted to see city council and the province take a vocal stance against Ottawa’s pipeline projects and approaches to energy resources. Lukasik’s basement was flooded in the storm of July 2009 that swamped the Red Hill Valley Parkway. She said some of her neighbours told her they had never had a flooding issue like that before. “As it starts to hit people personally more and more … it has made people reflect and think.”
Councillor Brian McHattie, who chairs the Hamilton Conservation Authority board, noted that the predicted rise in temperature in the Hamilton area by 2050 is 2.6 C.
The increase in rainfall over the past four decades was 26 millimetres, McHattie said.
dawong@thespec.com
905-526-2468 | @WongatTheSpec
Hamilton 350 Blog
In the past eight years, there have been 17 rainstorms that flooded homes in Hamilton and at least six of them were only supposed to come once every 50 to 100 years, said Don McLean, co-ordinator of the local 350 committee. “The very strange weather that we’ve had in the last two or three months, the winter that didn’t happen ... clearly the kinds of impacts it’s going to have on food production have to make it more and more urgent we do something,” McLean said.
The 350 Committee is part of a global campaign for the maximum safe level of carbon dioxide — 350 parts per million — in the global atmosphere. Right now, it’s sitting at 394 parts per million. “We’re at a point where you have almost unanimous agreement from climate scientists that this is occurring … Let’s pull up our pants and get the job done,” said Pete Wobschall, executive director of Green Venture.
Lynda Lukasik, the executive director of Environment Hamilton, said she wanted to see city council and the province take a vocal stance against Ottawa’s pipeline projects and approaches to energy resources. Lukasik’s basement was flooded in the storm of July 2009 that swamped the Red Hill Valley Parkway. She said some of her neighbours told her they had never had a flooding issue like that before. “As it starts to hit people personally more and more … it has made people reflect and think.”
Councillor Brian McHattie, who chairs the Hamilton Conservation Authority board, noted that the predicted rise in temperature in the Hamilton area by 2050 is 2.6 C.
The increase in rainfall over the past four decades was 26 millimetres, McHattie said.
dawong@thespec.com
905-526-2468 | @WongatTheSpec
Hamilton 350 Blog
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