Coal dust seen as serious environmental threat, poll shows

The majority of Metro Vancouver residents polled in a new survey see coal dust as a serious environmental threat.

The respondents are also concerned that coal dust from a recently approved loading facility at Fraser Surrey Docks will harm regional air quality, according to findings from an Insights West survey.

Just 43 per cent of respondents said they were confident the coal would be handled properly and without problems, which is something Mario Canseco, vice-president of Insights West, said suggests stakeholders need to have a broader discussion with the public about how they plan to handle the coal.

“The level of confidence on things going by smoothly is pretty low,” he said. “It’s not even 50 per cent saying ‘I have confidence in everything happening OK, that the coal is going to be taken from one place to the next and nothing is going to go wrong.’”

Still, residents overall are divided on whether the facility should be built. While 42 per cent of respondents were in support of the project, 43 per cent opposed it. A similar near-even split was found in a 2013 survey on the project by the pollster.

Despite the lack of consensus on whether the project should go ahead, more than three-quarters of surveyed respondents said the expanded terminal would boost jobs in the province.

Canseco noted that a clear demographic pattern appeared in the responses.

“Women and those 18-34 tend to be more environmentally conscious. They’re worried about coal,” he said, while “men and those over the age of 55 are all about the jobs that this is going to create.”

Canseco said that is a demographic pattern seen in opinion about other energy-related projects, where women and younger people are calling for “different ways of doing things.”

“There’s this tendency for younger residents to be more in-tune with the environment,” he said.

Port Metro Vancouver approved the $15-million facility in August.

Peter Xotta, the port’s vicepresident of planning and operations, said at the time that a review of the project found there would be “no significant adverse environmental effects, including health effects,” that could not be mitigated. But regional health officials said they were not consulted during the review.

The terminal would receive about four million tonnes of thermal coal annually from the American Midwest and load it onto barges to be shipped to another terminal before it is exported. An estimated 25 direct and 25 indirect jobs would be created by the project.

Shortly after the facility was approved, environmental legal group Ecojustice filed an application for judicial review of the decision. The Federal Court application says the Vancouver Fraser Port Authority failed to consider certain environmental effects set out in the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act when it approved the permit.

The Insights West findings are based on an online survey of 702 Metro Vancouver residents on Sept. 25 and 26. The results have a margin of error of plus or minus 3.7 percentage points 19 times out of 20.