March 19, 2014

For the past two days, I’ve been in a courtroom representing the Wilderness Committee in an important case to protect BC’s fresh water from fracking. 

Along with Sierra Club BC and our lawyers at Ecojustice, we challenged the BC Oil & Gas Commission’s common practice of granting of repeated short-term water permits for oil and gas companies – a practice that violates BC’s own Water Act.

It was a really tense two days, with gas company Encana pointing out how a decision in the case could affect their business in a really bad way!

In addition to its many environmental and climate impacts, fracking for gas uses a massive amount of water from our lakes, rivers and streams. In BC, companies using water resources for this kind of industrial activity are supposed to apply for a longer-term licence. But instead, the Oil & Gas Commission has allowed companies to bypass the public process that comes along with a water licence by offering back-to-back short-term permits with no community consultation or additional oversight.

This means they can repeatedly “top up” their water supply without any hassle, and communities don’t have the opportunity to object or raise concerns over how the industry’s water use could impact the environment or drinking water resources.

So how much water are oil and gas companies allowed to take? Well, with just one short-term permit from the Oil & Gas Commission, a company is allowed to draw from over 100 different sites, which in total gives them access to the equivalent of 500 Olympic-sized swimming pools of BC’s fresh water. And that one permit is just the tip of the iceberg. 

For details on the case, check out this radio interview from Monday’s episode of the Early Edition on CBC Radio. You can also read more about our court challenge in this article from The Province newspaper.

As the BC government continues to push forward with its plans to develop a massive liquefied natural gas (LNG) industry – which will require thousands of new fracking wells to feed new LNG plants – we’re doing all we can to take on these environmentally destructive practices. But we can’t do it without you.

Can you help us spread the word and raise awareness about this issue? Please share our graphic on Facebook or Twitter, and if you haven’t done it already, sign our petition to stop fracking in BC. 

Click here to add your name to the petition >>

We’ll keep you posted on updates or new developments in the case, but for now, thanks for your support!

- Eoin Madden | Climate Campaigner