A DAY LATE, A DANGLE SHORT
Aerial blockade was exciting but the big news is pipeline reboot
There’s been a huge question ever since Ottawa struck a deal to buy the Trans Mountain pipeline in late May: When will work get started again?
You’d have thought $4.5 billion in public funding would ensure an immediate reboot. But this is Canada. There were more delays.
Now we have an answer. Work begins in earnest at the end of July on the 290-kilometre stretch of pipeline route between Edmonton and Jasper National Park.
Work is also expected to start in late September in B.C.’s North Thompson region, according to notices issued last week by Trans Mountain.
At this stage, the work is mainly route preparation — clearing, surveying, flagging — the prelude to laying pipe starting in 2019.
While seven Trans Mountain protesters dangled from Vancouver’s Ironworkers Memorial Bridge on July 3, mandatory statements were starting to appear in newspapers from Edmonton to Hinton.
“Construction will commence in a series of phased activities along the pipeline right-of-way through Spruce Grove, Stony Plain, Parkland County, Wabamun, Yellowhead County, Edson and Hinton from the end of July 2018 to the end of March 2019 to prepare the right-of-way for pipe installation,” say these official notices from Trans Mountain.
The notices warn of noise, burning odours and other effects, while thanking local people for their patience. They also note that deadlines may change (no kidding?) and that regulatory approval is required before work starts.
It sounds ominous, after what this project has been through, but these are technicalities. The work is starting again.
No such notices have yet been issued in B.C., but they may come by the end of the month.
Meanwhile, there’s plenty going on across the border.
On July 3, Trans Mountain filed a six-month summary schedule of construction work with the National Energy Board.
Besides pointing to the Alberta and North Thompson regions, it says “additional construction is planned in the Lower Mainland of
B.C. and the work at the Westridge Marine Terminal in Burnaby, that has been underway since September 2017, will continue.”
In a news release, Kinder Morgan Canada president
Ian Anderson said, “We’re excited to be moving forward in Alberta and the North Thompson ... delivering on our commitments to local, regional and Aboriginal jobs and benefits.”
The North Thompson phase includes 120 km of pipeline between Mount Robson Provincial Park and Blue River. As in Alberta, the work includes relocating rare plants, weed control, wildlife surveys and clearing of trees.
There’s also activity along the entire pipeline route “to develop temporary infrastructure sites, such as stockpile sites, construction yards and camps.”
There will be “pipe stockpile sites in B.C. and Alberta, construction yards and camp locations in Valemount, Blue River, Clearwater, Merritt and Hope, B.C.”
And, oh, yes, “safety fencing.” There will certainly be a great deal of safety fencing.
The protesters get a lot of attention, of course, with their attempt to block supertankers with their spinning bodies and flags.
This display easily tops the 2008 Greenpeace stunt in Edmonton, when two protesters rappelled down from a catwalk and unfurled a protest banner, right in the middle of a PC Party fundraiser for then-Premier Ed Stelmach.
These people deserve a certain grudging admiration for verve and nerve. But what they did last week pales beside the re-start of construction, propelled by a $4.5-billion public stake that Ottawa simply can’t allow to fail.
These people deserve a certain grudging admiration for verve and nerve. But what they did last week pales beside the re-start of construction.