Residents in B.C. favour the Northern Gateway pipeline: Poll

CALGARY — Hollywood heavyweights may want the curtain drawn on the Northern Gateway pipeline, but a new poll suggests B.C. residents are giving the project good reviews.

Resistance to the oilsands pipeline through B.C. has been undermined by a poll showing support for the project trumping opposition among the province's residents, says the company that commissioned the survey.

But a group opposing Calgarybased Enbridge's Northern Gateway questioned the poll's validity and insisted their movement remains undaunted.

The Ipsos poll of 1,000 British Columbians conducted in midDecember shows 48% support for the pipeline meant to carry oil from Alberta to West Coast tankers, while 32% voiced opposition.

Those results demolish the insistence of pipeline opponents -- including the likes of Robert Redford, Leonardo Dicaprio and Kevin Bacon -- that they have public opinion on their side, said Todd Nogier, Enbridge.

"Their findings are quite strikingly different from what our opponents have been saying for some time -- it's nice to have this information to refute claims there's a groundswell of opposition," he said.

Poll results, he said, are important in setting the tone for public hearings into the project that begin next week in Kitimat, B.C.

"It is the proper context to be heading into public hearings," Nogier said.

However, the poll plays down the risky role of seagoing tankers that would ship the oil through B.C. coastal waters on their way to Asia, said Emma Gilchrist, spokeswoman for the Victoriabased environmental group Dogwood Initiative.

"People who are more familiar with the project and connect it to the threat of tanker spills oppose the project."

When tankers were part of an actual question in their own polls, opposition to the pipeline was close to 80%, said Gilchrist.

But the Enbridge survey's intro does state oil would be trans-

spokesman

for ported to Kitimat "for export by tanker to China and other Asian markets."

Nogier noted the poll found support for the pipeline higher in B.C.'S north, which the pipeline would traverse, with 55% embracing it.

"Familiarity with the project is highest in the north," he said.

Gilchrist said the poll won't alter the reality of solid opposition to a pipeline that would create no more than 100 permanent jobs.

Most passionate, she said, are coastal dwellers dependent on the ocean fearful of an oil spill.

"They've told us they'll be waiting for the day their community dies," said Gilchrist.

With Washington's delay in approving the Keystone XL pipeline to the U.S. Gulf Coast, attention has shifted to the Northern Gateway route, which would move 525,000 barrels of oil a day along 1,177 km of pipeline.

The regulatory span the next year.

process will

Shell is fuelling Friends of the St. Clair River's (FOSCR) bid to reestablish naturalization in the St. Clair Watershed.

Canada Shell is offering environmental grants totalling $1 million through their Fuelling Change challenge, and FOSCR topping the $100,000 category with 32,211 votes.

“It's going to take a sustained effort, now that we're in first, that we don't just sit back and drop out of the picture,” said Darrell Randell, president of FOSCR.

A few thousand votes separate FOSCR from second place Alberta Conservationassociationandthird place Pacific Parklands Foundation.

Randell said a cash infusion like that would go a long way towards habitat restoration in the St. Clair River 'area of concern'.

The area stretches from Point Edward to south of Mitchell's Bay and encompasses Walpole Island and land draining directly into the St. Clair River.

“I'm afraid that habitat is going to be the one area where we've been lagging behind (in the remediation project,)” said Randell. “Hopefully this will help us get to the point where we can say the St. Clair River is a healthy river again.”

The reintroduction of native tall prairie grasses, tree coverage, and re-establishing wetlands along the corridor will increase the nutrient value of soil, while reducing sediment runoff. The wetlands will clean the water and contribute to a healthier fishery habitat. Increased tree coverage will encourage corri-