Environmental advocates want Manitoba to conduct its own review of Energy East
The Carillon
Environmentalists hand-delivered 1,000 letters to Premier Greg Selinger today calling on the province to deny construction permits for the controversial Energy East pipeline proposal.
The Wilderness Committee and the Manitoba Energy Justice Coalition also want the Manitoba government to conduct its own review of the proposed pipeline through the Clean Environment Commission similar to what they say the Quebec and Ontario governments have already done.
Selinger is on tour in rural Manitoba today and was unavailable. The cards were accepted by a staff member.
"The premier needs to understand that Manitobans don’t want this new fossil fuel infrastructure," Eric Reder, Manitoba Campaign Director for the Wilderness Committee, said today. "There’s very little value and huge risk to the environment."
TransCanada is proposing to convert an existing cross-Canada natural gas pipeline into one that can carry 1.1-million barrels of oil from Alberta’s tar sands to refineries in Eastern Canada.
The National Energy Board has yet to hold hearings on the company’s application, but environmentalists say that review is restricted by federal legislation.
Tim Duboyce, spokesman for TransCanada's Energy East pipeline, has said the company operates 70,000 kilometers of pipelines and there has never been a large-scale integrity leak on its oil lines. There have been small-scale leaks, usually around pumping stations, that were detected by the company’s remote sensors or other leak prevention programs immediately.
He said, since Alberta’s oil sands will continue to produce oil regardless whether the Energy East project gets the go-ahead, it makes much better safety sense to transport the oil to market by pipeline rather than rail car.
Alex Paterson of the Manitoba Energy Justice Coalition said what the province must also review is the cost to Manitobans to service the proposed pipeline’s pumping stations with electricity.
"Manitobans are going to be asked to pay for at least five transmission lines to pumping stations," Paterson said. "They’re going to be asked to pay for dam development while the fossil fuel companies like pipelines pay the industrial-user rate which is the lowest in the province."
Paterson said the main issue is if Energy East is approved it means the expansion of the Alberta tar sands.
"It’s kind of game over for the climate if we develop that," he said.
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Photo: WC Files
