Category: United States

First Nations, environmentalists and ‘rednecks’ stand together opposing Gateway, witness tells Kitimat JRP hearings

 

Members of the Joint Review panel make notes at Kitamaat Village (Robin Rowland)
Members of the Northern Gateway Joint Review Panel, left to right, Kenneth Bateman, chair Sheila Leggett and Hans Matthews make notes at the June 25, 2012 hearings at the Haisla Recreation Centre, Kitamaat Village. A map of Douglas Channel can be seen behind the panel. (Robin Rowland/Northwest Coast Energy News)

“This will be the first project in Canadian history to have First Nations, environmentalists and, for a lack of a better term, rednecks standing together in protest,” that sentence from Katherina Ouwehand summed up the first day of public comment testimony Monday, June 25, 2012, as the Northern Gateway Joint Review Panel returned to the Haisla Recreation Centre at Kitamaat Village.

Ten minutes isn’t that long. Ten minutes is the time that the Northern Gateway Joint Review Panel gives a member of the public to express their opinion on the controversial Enbridge project that would pipe oil sands bitumen from Alberta through the port of Kitimat to Asia.

Ten minutes is sufficient if you know what you’re talking about, if you’ve done your homework and rehearsed presentation so it can comes in right on time.

Ten minutes can be eternity if you’re an Enbridge official sitting silently at a nearby table as people who do know what they’re saying tear apart your public presentations, your multi-million dollar ads and the thousands of pages the company has filed with the Joint Review Panel. Or perhaps, as some at the public comment hearings pointed out, those ten minutes mean little if Prime Minister Stephen Harper has already decided the pipeline will go ahead no matter what, and thus any recommendation from the JRP has little credibility.

The first witness to appear before the public comment hearings on Monday afternoon was someone who knows all about the role of human error in accidents, Manny Aruda, an Emergency Response Team leader at the Rio Tinto Alcan smelter.

Aruda began by commenting, “To be clear, I do not belong to any environmental or radical organization, although I do recycle and occasionally I do eat granola.” His responsibilities at RTA include overseeing anything related to an emergency response, including dealing with spills and reporting the spills. Before that he worked at Methanex first in operations as a field operator and then as an ammonia control room operator. He also volunteers as a Search Manager for Kitimat Search and Rescue.

Talking about his time in the control room at Methanex, Aruda said, “I worked in the state-of-the-art chemical plant which is constantly being updated with the newest instrumentation. No matter how many safety features are in place, human error could supersede. Incorrect wires were cut causing plants to shut down; drain lines were left open during start-up causing methanol to go into the effluent system and eventually into the ocean; pigs [robots that operate inside pipes] are used to clean pipelines that were supposed to be collected at the end of a line at the wharf, and over-pressurizing of the line and mental error, leaving a valve open and the next thing you know pigs really do fly right into the ocean.

“Enbridge has spoken many times about how they’ll use smart pigs. Perhaps their smart pigs will know when to put the brakes on and stop.

Humans weak link

“The bottom line is that no matter what state-of-the-art infrastructure, instrumentation, safety

Manny Aruda
Manny Aruda takes some water after testifying before the Northern Gateway Joint Review Panel at Kitamaat Village, June 25, 2012. (Robin Rowland/Northwest Coast Energy News)

measures are in place human decisions or lack of decisions will affect the outcome. Humans are the weak link.

“There is an enormous pressure from management to keep plants and pipelines running. Control room operators are most at risk on start-ups and shutdowns, when conditions are changing rapidly. When a suspected issue arises it requires interpretation and analytical skills. These skills are relative to the amount of knowledge and experience of the individual.

“When in the control room you can’t see, hear or smell what’s going on outside, this is why the field operator is so valuable and utilized to go out in the field to verify a level, check a pump status, a pressure reading, identify leaks, et cetera.

Despite what some people may believe, it’s not black and white. There’s not a red Staples easy button flashing indicating that a spill is happening.

“When in the control room you can’t see, hear or smell what’s going on outside, this is why the field operator is so valuable and utilized to go out in the field to verify a level, check a pump status, a pressure reading, identify leaks… Despite what some people may believe, it’s not black and white. There’s not a red Staples easy button flashing indicating that a spill is happening.”
Any deviation from normal operations is subject to interpretation by the control room operator, “a human, the weak link,” Aruda said. He added: “Industry can continue to make improvements and make things more and more idiot-proof. History has shown that better idiots will come along.”

He told the JRP that the long Northern Gateway pipeline through remote mountain passes would have no field operators available to check every kilometre of the line to verify what the control room operator thinks is happening.

Like other witnesses, Aruda pointed to the Enbridge spill at Marshall, Michigan, where four million litres were spilled into a river in a populated area. “The spill went unnoticed due to human error,
the weak link.”

He testified that he has spent “hundreds of hours looking at Enbridge’s risk assessment,
management of spills, emergency response,” and then he said from the point of view of an
emergency response team leader, “reading these documents has flabbergasted me.” He said Enbridge’s risk management was “seriously deficient and woefully lacking in substance. They do not take into consideration the rugged terrain, the climatic conditions and dangers of fast flowing moving water.”

He said Talmadge Creek that feeds the Kalamazoo River, the location of the spill in Michigan, flows at much slower rate than the Kitimat River. At Kalamazoo, he said, four million litre oil spill moved 39 miles downstream contaminating everything in its path and it was contained two days later.

“It took Enbridge two days to deal with a meandering Kalamazoo River spill. Enbridge has stated in their risk assessment and management of spills they can contain a spill in the Kitimat River within two to four hours. This is irresponsible and inaccurate statement with no associated details.

It rains a lot in Kitimat

“To be fair, the Marshall spill happened at the worst possible time when the Kalamazoo River flows were at flood stage, causing oil to be deposited high on marshes and banks. This caused widespread contamination in the area. The Kitimat area also has high periods of flows and flood stages. It’s called, May, June, September, October and November. I’m not sure if you’re aware, but it rains here, a lot.

“In a worst-case scenario for the Kitimat River, Aruda said, based on events of September 2011, “heavy rain caused a dramatic increase in river levels within 24 hours. This is a normal occurrence. And the river widens by 75 yards in some locations. I have personally witnessed tree after tree, including 100 foot trees with full root balls 20-feet in diameter barrelling down this river. The Kitimat River flow at that time, 72,000 cubic feet a second, [was] some 18 times more than the Kalamazoo River. There’s not one qualified incident commander that would even consider sending out emergency responders into that raging river.”

He said that even during a moderate rise of the river, booms are not effective because of all the debris floating down the river.

Aruda said, “I invite anyone who thinks this oil spill can be cleaned up effectively to drift down the river with me to see for themselves how impossible a task that would be.” He noted that Enbridge has spent $765 million in clean-up costs, and while some parts of the Kalamazoo River have recently been opend for recreational use, other parts remain closed for clean-up.

He repeated his belief that Enbridge’s response plans are insufficient and concluded by saying, “Other pipelines and transmission lines have succumbed to the forces of nature in this area without any long-term environmental impacts. Sadly, this will not be the case if oil spills here.”

A later witness was Terry Brown, a former project engineer at Eurocan. Brown began by describing his love for sailing the Douglas Channel for the past 28 years. In one instance, Brown said, “ One extra-special night was when the ocean waters were disturbed and the phosphorescence was a glow like fireworks. We were seldom alone on the water as we often saw, heard and smelled seals, sea lions, orcas, and humpback whales, just like a huge aquarium but all to our own and so secluded.

“We not only stayed on the surface but some of our family engaged in scuba diving. What a joy to see so much life, crabs, fish, and shrimp, sea anemones, sea lions and much more. What a gorgeous dive it was as our daughter Stacy and I went down deep on the wall at Coste Rocks to see many different life forms hanging in our view. Later, we circumnavigated the rock and were amazed to see the pure white forms of a large sea anemone.”

Katherina Ouwehand Murray Minchin at JRP hearings
Katherina Ouwehand testifies at the Northern Gateway Joint Review hearings as Murray Minchin, the next witness listens, at the Haisla Recreation Centre, Kitamaat Village, June 25, 2012 (Robin Rowland/Northwest Coast Energy News)

 

Things failed

Like Aruda, he then turned to how things can go wrong. “No matter how hard we tried to do our best, things failed or as they often said, ‘shit happens’. Pipes, gaskets would fail; tanks would collapse; equipment would break. We even had SRBs in our stainless tanks. Many items would fail with such power that it would resemble an explosion.

“Lately, I have heard comments on how new gaskets are much better than old. Our experience was the opposite, as old gaskets contained asbestos they had a much better life span than the new synthetic ones.

“My largest project at Eurocan, a 300-tonne per day CMP pulp mill, actually had 10 — that’s it, 10 major failures within the first one to two years after start-up. During my working time, I was also involved in some of the projects to reduce the tainting of the local oohlican fish. This involves a highly cultural activity that the Haisla engaged in up until Eurocan start up in 1970.

“Over the 10 to 15 years spent looking for a solution, some $100 million was spent on related activities. If this much was spent with no success on a minor issue, if you call it that, how can anyone expect to clean up the beaches of a real nasty oil like dilbit?”

There was a third, highly technical presentation from Kelly Marsh, a millwright with the District of Kitimat (as well as Kitimat Search and Rescue volunteer) who presented his mathematical evidence, based on what he said we standard and accepted models that he said showed that Enbridge has vastly underestimated the chances of spill.

For the first time in public, some voiced in public what many in Kitimat have been saying in private, that if Stephen Harper pushes the project, there will be resistance from the residents of Northwestern British Columbia.

Katherina Ouwehand testified, “I am not a bully and I don’t lose my temper easily, but if this project is given the go-ahead by our Prime Minister, they had better be prepared for a huge fight. My thousands of like-minded friends and I will unite in force and do more than
speak up peacefully. There will be many blockades on the pathways of the pipeline and marine blockades in the channel.”

Murray Minchin, a member of Douglas Channel Watch (although everyone at the public comment hearings are testifying on their own behalf) said, “The original organizers of the Clayoquot Sound clear-cut logging blockades hoped that 500 to 600 people would turn out and help them protest. Over 10,000 showed up and almost 1,000 were arrested. Those numbers will be shattered if this project gets steamrolled through the regulatory process.”

Bill C-38

Many of the witnesses voiced their concerns about the Conservative omnibus Bill C-38 which they said would destroy many of the environmental safeguards in the Fisheries and Environmental Assessment Acts.

Margaret Ouwehand said. “I have a great fear. I am afraid of Enbridge because it represents much more than a pipeline; Enbridge is an enabler of all the things that make us ashamed to be Canadian. Do we want a Canada that endangers the whole world by contributing to global warming?

Do we want a Canada that muzzles scientists who don’t say what the oil companies want them to say? Do we feel proud when Canada puts up roadblocks to treaties with other countries so that oil companies can continue to pollute? Do we really want a Canada that prefers temporary foreign workers to be used and, in many cases, abused, just to provide oil companies with cheap labour? Wouldn’t it be more ethical to encourage immigrants to come to Canada to make permanent homes and actually contribute to the country?

“Once we were proud of Canada’s leadership in protecting the environment, both in Canada and world-wide. Now we have sold out to the highest bidders and by so doing we are jeopardizing our very sovereignty. We cannot enter into agreements to limit pollution because the big oil companies who own our resources won’t allow it.

“Once we were the world’s good guys, the peacekeepers, the ones who were caretakers of the environment and of endangered species. Now it’s all about money. Now we are at the bottom of the heap, along with other money-grubbers of the world.”

Mike Langegger, who has testified at previous National Energy Board and JRP hearings on behalf of the Kitimat Rod and Gun, testified, “Today I wish to speak to the implications of the Northern Gateway Project will have on my and many coastal families who call British Columbia home and the threat it poses to a generations of culture, lifestyle, relying on healthy and productive environment and ecosystems we currently have.

“My family, along with many resident British Columbians have a strong connection to our natural environment and is as much part of us as we are of it. By nature we are hunters and gatherers who have sustainable harvest from our natural environment over the generations providing for our families. Abundant and healthy fish and wildlife populations in environment that sustained their existence is critical and must be guaranteed.

“Unfortunately, over my lifetime I’ve witnessed commercial and industrial exploitation come and go, each diminishing our areas natural environment and its ability to support wildlife and the many associated values. It is critical that not only negative implications of the Northern Gateway Project be considered but also the cumulative effects of current, proposed, and past exploitation that has or is likely to occur in our area. Often a single negative impact can be mitigated. However, when a series of impacts are allowed to compile, the end result has proven to be devastating.

“Today the Dungeness crab and our local estuary area are deemed as contaminated and not recommended for consumption. The oohlican populations have been wiped out on most of our local area streams. The Kitimat River has been negatively impacted by resource extractions rendering it reliant on hatchery augmentation. Trees on the west side of the valley have died off suspect to pollution; wildlife populations have been impacted and the list goes on.

“We have seen industries come and exploit our area and its resources, profit substantially and leave, only to pass on a legacy of toxic sites and compromised environment. What they have not left behind is any established fund for impacted First Nation’s area residents and stakeholders to manage and reinvest back into our environment for the benefit of habitat, fish, wildlife that has been impacted.

“Ultimately, industry in general has been allowed to exploit, profit, and leave without being held accountable for our forest to correct damage. That’s the history we currently witness here.

“For those of us that call coastal British Columbia home, the existing environment, fish, wildlife, and associated values are the foundation of who we are. It is those values that foster and nurture many family bonds and are the result of cherished memories with loved ones and friends. It is those values that provide a healthy lifestyle and food source. It is those values that support numerous traditions and are the base of revered culture. It is those values that the Northern Gateway Project ultimately threatens to extinguish.”
Transcript Vol.58-Mon June 25, 2012 (pdf)

Enbridge pipeline controversy now on both coasts, Maine residents object to plan to send bitumen to Portland

It didn’t take long for the plans to send bitumen eastbound, perhaps as an alternative to Kitimat, to start controversy. The bitumen would go through the Montreal-Portland pipeline, thus the terminal could be at Portland, Maine.

The Maine coast is likely even more delicate than the British Columbia coast, and environmental groups are already gearing up to fight the pipeline as reported in the Kennebec (Maine) Journal, in tomorrow’s edition, June 21, 2012.

Tar sands oil transit meets objections

As speculation grows about the possibility of tar sands oil flowing from Canada through Maine, environmental advocates are banding together to oppose what they see as a risky proposition.

On Tuesday at Portland City Hall, [fisher Brooke] Hidell joined representatives from the Natural Resources Council of Maine, the Natural Resources Defense Council and the local chapter of the Sierra Club to protest what they say is a growing threat to Maine’s quality of life.

Enbridge Corp., a major petroleum company in Canada, has applied for a permit to reverse the flow of oil between Ontario and Montreal. Dylan Voorhees of the Natural Resources Council of Maine and others predict a similar reversal of the Portland-Montreal Pipe Line, so Canadian oil could be loaded onto tankers in Casco Bay, then shipped to refineries.

Voorhees said that would provide no real benefits to Maine but would threaten the environment while increasing profits for oil companies.

If Enbridge thinks the fight in British Columbia was a headache, it is likely that any plan to use Maine as a conduit for bitumen, will be as equal, if not more controversial.

The area is often home to prominent members of the American establishment.  The Bush family compound, summer retreat for presidents George W and George H. W. Bush, is in nearby Kennebunkport.

The state is also home to a large, vibrant and vocal artistic community.

Editor’s note:  Thirty years ago, in 1983, I took an Outward Bound course on the coast of Maine at the Hurricane Island School (it has since closed).  Unlike the rugged islands of the coast of British Columbia, the offshore islands where I sailed in Maine, are considered environmentally delicate and there are restrictions on the number of visitors and use of the island.

 

 

From Pro Publica: North Dakota’s Oil Boom Brings Damage Along With Prosperity

Northwest Coast Energy News is republishing this story  on spills and other waste from the North Dakota shale oil and gas boom from the U.S. investigative site Pro Publica. Of most interest to readers here in northwest BC is ProPublica’s map of the spills in North Dakota, which is linked to in the story but not part of the republication package. You can find the map at this link or in the body of the story. That spill map, of course, could be a model for anyone tracking similar events in British Columbia.

North Dakota’s Oil Boom Brings Damage Along With Prosperity
by Nicholas Kusnetz, Special to ProPublica June 7, 2012

Oil drilling has sparked a frenzied prosperity in Jeff Keller’s formerly quiet corner of western North Dakota in recent years, bringing an infusion of jobs and reviving moribund local businesses.

But Keller, a natural resource manager for the Army Corps of Engineers, has seen a more ominous effect of the boom, too: Oil companies are spilling and dumping drilling waste onto the region’s land and into its waterways with increasing regularity.

Hydraulic fracturing 2014 the controversial process behind the spread of natural gas drilling 2014 is enabling oil companies to reach previously inaccessible reserves in North Dakota, triggering a turnaround not only in the state’s fortunes, but also in domestic energy production. North Dakota now ranks second behind only Texas in oil output nationwide.

The downside is waste 2014 lots of it. Companies produce millions of gallons of salty, chemical-infused wastewater, known as brine, as part of drilling and fracking each well. Drillers are supposed to inject this material thousands of feet underground into disposal wells, but some of it isn’t making it that far.

According to data obtained by ProPublica, oil companies in North Dakota reported more than 1,000 accidental releases of oil, drilling wastewater or other fluids in 2011, about as many as in the previous two years combined. Many more illicit releases went unreported, state regulators acknowledge, when companies dumped truckloads of toxic fluid along the road or drained waste pits illegally.

State officials say most of the releases are small. But in several cases, spills turned out to be far larger than initially thought, totaling millions of gallons. Releases of brine, which is often laced with carcinogenic chemicals and heavy metals, have wiped out aquatic life in streams and wetlands and sterilized farmland. The effects on land can last for years, or even decades.

Compounding such problems, state regulators have often been unable 2014 or unwilling 2014 to compel energy companies to clean up their mess, our reporting showed.

Under North Dakota regulations, the agencies that oversee drilling and water safety can sanction companies that dump or spill waste, but they seldom do: They have issued fewer than 50 disciplinary actions for all types of drilling violations, including spills, over the past three years.

Keller has filed several complaints with the state during this time span after observing trucks dumping wastewater and spotting evidence of a spill in a field near his home. He was rebuffed or ignored every time, he said.

“There’s no enforcement,” said Keller, 50, an avid outdoorsman who has spent his career managing Lake Sakakawea, a reservoir created by damming the Missouri River. “None.”

State officials say they rely on companies to clean up spills voluntarily, and that in most cases, they do. Mark Bohrer, who oversees spill reports for the Department of Mineral Resources, the agency that regulates drilling, said the number of spills is acceptable given the pace of drilling and that he sees little risk of long-term damage.

Kris Roberts, who responds to spills for the Health Department, which protects state waters, agreed, but acknowledged that the state does not have the manpower to prevent or respond to illegal dumping.

“It’s happening often enough that we see it as a significant problem,” he said. “What’s the solution? Catching them. What’s the problem? Catching them.”

Ron Ness, president of the North Dakota Petroleum Council, a lobbying group, said the industry is doing what it can to minimize spills and their impacts.

“You’re going to have spills when you have more activity,” he said. “I would think North Dakotans would say the industry is doing a good job.”

In response to rising environmental concerns related to drilling waste, North Dakota’s legislature passed a handful of new regulations this year, including a rule that bars storing wastewater in open pits.

Still, advocates for landowners say they have seen little will, at either the state or federal level, to impose limits that could slow the pace of drilling.

The Obama administration is facilitating drilling projects on federal land in western North Dakota by expediting environmental reviews. North Dakota’s Gov. Jack Dalrymple has urged energy companies to see his administration as a “faithful and long-term partner.”

“North Dakota’s political leadership is still in the mold where a lot of our oil and gas policy reflects a strong desire to have another oil boom,” said Mark Trechock, who headed the Dakota Resource Council, a landowner group that has pushed for stronger oversight, until his retirement this year. “Well, we got it now.”

Reaching ‘the Crazy Point’

Keller’s office in Williston is as good a spot as any to see the impacts of the oil boom.

The tiny prefab shack 2014 cluttered with mounted fish, piles of antlers and a wolf pelt Keller bought in Alaska 2014 is wedged between a levee that holds back Missouri River floodwaters and a new oil well, topped by a blazing gas flare. Just beyond the oil well sits an intersection where Keller estimates he saw an accident a week during one stretch last year due to increased traffic from drilling.

Keller describes the changes to his hometown in a voice just short of a yell, as if he’s competing with nearby engine noise. Local grocery stores can barely keep shelves stocked and the town movie theater is so crowded it seats people in the aisle, he said. The cost of housing has skyrocketed, with some apartments fetching rents similar to those in New York City.

“With the way it is now,” Keller said, “you’re getting to the crazy point.”

Oil companies are drilling upwards of 200 wells each month in northwestern North Dakota, an area roughly twice the size of New Jersey.

North Dakota is pumping more than 575,000 barrels of oil a day now, more than double what the state produced two years ago. Expanded drilling in the state has helped overall U.S. oil production grow for the first time in a quarter century, stoking hopes for greater energy independence.

It has also reinvigorated North Dakota’s once-stagnant economy. Unemployment sits at 3 percent. The activity has reversed a population decline that began in the mid-1980s, when the last oil boom went bust.

The growth has come at a cost, however. At a conference on oil field infrastructure in October, one executive noted that McKenzie County, which sits in the heart of the oil patch and had a population of 6,360 people in 2010, required nearly $200 million in road repairs.

The number of spill reports, which generally come from the oil companies themselves, nearly doubled from 2010 to 2011. Energy companies report their spills to the Department of Mineral Resources, which shares them with the Health Department. The two agencies work together to investigate incidents.

In December, a stack of reports a quarter-inch thick piled up on Kris Roberts’ desk. He received 34 new cases in the first week of that month alone.

“Is it a big issue?” he said. “Yes, it is.”

The Health Department has added three staffers to handle the influx and the Department of Mineral Resources is increasing its workforce by 30 percent, but Roberts acknowledges they can’t investigate every report.

Even with the new hires, the Department of Mineral Resources still has fewer field inspectors than agencies in other drilling states. Oklahoma, for example, which has comparable drilling activity, has 58 inspectors to North Dakota’s 19.

Of the 1,073 releases reported last year, about 60 percent involved oil and one-third spread brine. In about two-thirds of the cases, material was not contained to the accident site and leaked into the ground or waterways.

But the official data gives only a partial picture, Roberts said, missing an unknown number of unreported incidents.

“One, five, 10, 100? If it didn’t get reported, how do you count them?” he said.

He said truckers often dump their wastewater rather than wait in line at injection wells. The Department of Mineral Resources asks companies how much brine their wells produce and how much they dispose of as waste, but its inspectors don’t audit those numbers. Short of catching someone in the act, there’s no way to stop illegal dumping.

The state also has no real estimate for how much fluid spills out accidentally from tanks, pipes, trucks and other equipment. Companies are supposed to report spill volumes, but officials acknowledge the numbers are often inexact or flat-out wrong. In 40 cases last year, the company responsible didn’t know how much had spilled so it simply listed the volume of fluid as zero.

In one case last July, workers for Petro Harvester, a small, Texas-based oil company, noticed a swath of dead vegetation in a field near one of the company’s saltwater disposal lines. The company reported the spill the next day, estimating that 12,600 gallons of brine had leaked.

When state and county officials came to assess the damage, however, they found evidence of a much larger accident. The leak, which had gone undetected for days or weeks, had sterilized about 24 acres of land. Officials later estimated the spill to be at least 2 million gallons of brine, Roberts said, which would make it the largest ever in the state.

Yet state records still put the volume at 12,600 gallons and Roberts sees no reason to change it.

“It’s almost like rubbing salt in a raw wound,” Roberts said, criticizing efforts to tabulate a number as “bean counting.” Changing a report would not change reality, nor would it help anyone, he added. “If we try to go back and revisit the past over and over and over again, what’s it going to do? Nothing good.”

In a written statement, Petro Harvester said tests showed the spill had not contaminated groundwater and that it would continue monitoring the site for signs of damage. State records show the company hired a contractor to cover the land with 40 truckloads of a chemical that leaches salt from the soil.

Nearly a year later, however, even weeds won’t grow in the area, said Darwin Peterson, who farms the land. While Petro Harvester has promised to compensate him for lost crops, Peterson said he hasn’t heard from the company in months and he doesn’t expect the land to be usable for years. “It’s pretty devastating,” he said.

Little Enforcement

The Department of Mineral Resources and the Health Department have the authority to sanction companies that spill or dump fluids, but they rarely do.

The Department of Mineral Resources has issued just 45 enforcement actions over the last three years. Spokeswoman Alison Ritter could not say how many of those were for spills or releases, as opposed to other drilling violations, or how many resulted in fines.

The Health Department has taken just one action against an oil company in the past three years, citing Continental Resources for oil and brine spills that turned two streams into temporary toxic dumps. The department initially fined Continental $328,500, plus about $14,000 for agency costs. Ultimately, however, the state settled and Continental paid just $35,000 in fines.

The agency has not yet penalized Petro Harvester for the July spill, thought it has issued a notice of violation and could impose a fine in the future, Roberts said, one of several spill-related enforcement actions the agency is considering.

Derrick Braaten, a Bismarck lawyer whose firm represents dozens of farmers and landowner groups, said his clients often get little support from regulators when oil companies damage their property.

State officials step in in the largest cases, he said, but let smaller ones slide. Landowners can sue, but most prefer to take whatever drillers offer rather than taking their chances in court.

“The oil company will say, that’s worth $400 an acre, so here’s $400 for ruining that acre,” Braaten said.

Daryl Peterson, a client of Braaten’s who is not related to Darwin Peterson, said a series of drilling waste releases stretching back 15 years have rendered several acres unusable of the 2,000 or so he farms. The state has not compelled the companies that caused the damage to repair it, he said. Peterson hasn’t wanted to spend the hundreds of thousands of dollars it would take to haul out the dirt and replace it, so the land lies fallow.

“I pay taxes on that land,” he said.

At least 15 North Dakota residents, frustrated with state officials’ inaction, have taken drilling-related complaints to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in the last two years, records show.

Last September, for example, a rancher near Williston told the EPA that Brigham Oil and Gas had plowed through the side of a waste pit, sending fluid into the pond his cattle drink from and a nearby creek. When the rancher called Brigham to complain, he said, an employee told him this was “the way they do business.”

A spokeswoman for Statoil, which acquired Brigham, said the company stores only fresh water in open pits, not wastewater, and that “we can’t remember ever having responded in such a manner” to a report about a spill.

Federal officials can offer little relief.

Congress has largely delegated oversight of oil field spills to the states. EPA spokesman Richard Mylott said the agency investigates complaints about releases on federal lands, but refers complaints involving private property to state regulators.

The EPA handed the complaint about Brigham to an official with North Dakota’s Health Department, who said he had already spoken to the company.

“They said this was an isolated occurrence, this is not how they handle frac water and it would not happen again,” the official wrote to the EPA. “As far as we are concerned, this complaint is closed.”

Salting the Earth

Six years ago, a four-inch saltwater pipeline ruptured just outside Linda Monson’s property line, leaking about a million gallons of salty wastewater.

As it cascaded down a hill and into Charbonneau Creek, which cuts through Monson’s pasture, the spill deposited metals and carcinogenic hydrocarbons in the soil. The toxic brew wiped out the creek’s fish, turtles and other life, reaching 15 miles downstream.

After suing Zenergy Inc., the oil company that owns the line, Monson reached a settlement that restricts what she can say about the incident.

“When this first happened, it pretty much consumed my life,” Monson said. “Now I don’t even want to think about it.”

The company has paid a $70,000 fine and committed to cleaning the site, but the case shows how difficult the cleanup can be. When brine leaks into the ground, the sodium binds to the soil, displacing other minerals and inhibiting plants’ ability to absorb nutrients and water. Short of replacing the soil, the best option is to try to speed the natural flushing of the system, which can take decades.

Zenergy has tried both. According to a Department of Mineral Resources report, the company has spent more than $3 million hauling away dirt and pumping out contaminated groundwater 2014 nearly 31 million gallons as of December 2010, the most recent data available.

But more than a dozen acres of Monson’s pasture remain fenced off and out of use. The cattle no longer drink from the creek, which was their main water source. Zenergy dug a well to replace it.

Shallow groundwater in the area remains thousands of times saltier than it should be and continues to leak into the stream and through the ground, contaminating new areas.

There’s little understanding of what long-term impacts hundreds of such releases could be having on western North Dakota’s land and water, said Micah Reuber.

Until last year, Reuber was the environmental contaminant specialist in North Dakota for the federal Fish and Wildlife Service, which oversees wetlands and waterways.

Reuber quit after growing increasingly frustrated with the inadequate resources devoted to the position. Responding to oil field spills was supposed to be a small part of his job, but it came to consume all of his time.

“It didn’t seem like we were keeping pace with it at all,” he said. “It got to be demoralizing.”

Reuber said no agency, federal or state, has the money or staff to study the effects of drilling waste releases in North Dakota. The closest thing is a small ongoing federal study across the border in Montana, where scientists are investigating how decades of oil production have affected the underground water supply for the city of Poplar.

Joanna Thamke, a groundwater specialist with the U.S. Geological Survey in Montana, started mapping contamination from drilling 20 years ago. She estimated it had spread through about 12 square miles of the aquifer, which is the only source of drinking water in the area. Over the years, brine had leaked through old well bores, buried waste pits and aging tanks and pipes.

In the Poplar study and others, Thamke has found that plumes of contaminated groundwater can take decades to dissipate and sometimes move to new areas.

“What we found is the plumes, after two decades, have not gone away,” she said. “They’ve spread out.”

Poplar’s water supply is currently safe to drink, but the EPA has said it will become too salty as the contamination spreads. In March, the agency ordered three oil companies to treat the water or to find another source.

North Dakota officials are quick to point out that oversight and regulations are stronger today than they were when drilling began in the area in the 1950s. One significant difference is that waste pits, where oil companies store and dispose of the rock and debris produced during drilling, are now lined with plastic to prevent leaching into the ground.

New rules, effective April 1, require drillers in North Dakota to divert liquid waste to tanks instead of pits. Until now, drillers could store the liquid in pits for up to a year before pumping it out in order to bury the solids on site. The rule would prevent a repeat of the spring of 2011, when record snowmelt and flooding caused dozens of pits to overflow their banks.

But Reuber worries that the industry and regulators are repeating past mistakes. Not long before he left the Fish and Wildlife Service, he found a set of old slides showing waste pits and spills from decades ago.

“They looked almost exactly like photos I had taken,” he said. “There’s a spill into a creek bottom in the Badlands and it was sitting there with no one cleaning it up and containing it. And yeah, I got a photo like that, too.”

Keller has grown so dispirited by the changes brought by the boom that he is considering retiring after 30 years with the Army Corps and moving away from Williston. He runs a side business in scrap metal that would supplement his pension.

Still, determined to protect the area, he keeps alerting regulators whenever he spots evidence that oil companies have dumped or spilled waste.

Last July, when he saw signs of a spill near his home, Keller notified the Health Department and sent pictures showing a trail of dead grass to an acquaintance at the EPA regional office in Denver. The brown swath led from a well site into a creek.

If the spills continued, he warned the EPA in an email, they could “kill off the entire watershed.”

EPA officials said they spoke with Keller, but did not follow up on the incident beyond that. The state never responded, Keller said. The site remained untested and was never cleaned up.

“There was no restoration work whatsoever,” Keller said.

 

US National Transportation Safety Board releases photos, documents on Enbridge Kalamzoo oil spill

NTSB staff examine ruptured pipe
US National Transportation Safety Board staff examine a ruptured pipe from the Enbridge oil spill in August, 2010. The photo was released by the NTSB May 21, 2012. (NTSB)

The United States National Transportation Safety Board today released more than 5,000 pages relating to its investigation of the 2010 of the Marshall, Michigan, Enbridge pipeline rupture and oil spill.

The NTSB release says it is adding the documents to the “public docket” on the case.

About 11:17 a.m. EDT on July 26, 2010, Enbridge Energy Partners was notified of a leak on a 30-inch diameter crude oil pipeline (Line 6B) in Marshall, Michigan. The pipeline had ruptured 17 hours earlier and spilled about a million gallons of crude oil into the immediate area resulting in extensive environmental damage to Talmadge Creek and the Kalamazoo River.

Fifty-eight photographs and 170 documents totaling more than 5000 pages are in the docket. The information being released is factual in nature and does not provide any analysis.

Additional material may be added to the docket as it becomes available. Analysis of the accident, along with conclusions and its probable cause, will be determined at a later date.

This is a document release only; no interviews will be conducted.

Documents are available at this link

More than 800,000 gallons of heavy bitumen crude spilled from the pipeine near Marshall in Calhoun County, Michigan. NTSB spokesman Peter Knudson said Monday the NTSB expects to reach a conclusion on the spill sometime this summer.

On May 10, Enbridge announced it would spend $1.6 billion to upgrade and replace portions of the pipeline through Michigan and Indiana. The broken pipeline, however, would be decontaminated and “abandoned in place.”

Scientists identify major Japanese-style tsunami hazard for west coast

American scientists studying the aftermath of the March 11, 2011, Tohoku, Japan earthquake and the resulting devastating tsunami say that a similar tsunami could be generated by an earthquake in the Aleutian Islands of Alaska.

The 9.0 magnitude Tohoku earthquake created a tsunami that was a high as 10-metres. The events killed about 18,000 people. Debris from the tsunami is now appearing on the west coast of North America.

The study, published May 8, in EOS, the Transactions of the American Geophysical Society, says:

A tsunami triggered by an earthquake along the AASZ [Alaskan-Aleutian Subduction Zone] would cross the Pacific Ocean and cause extensive damage along highly populated U.S. coasts, with ports being particularly vulnerable.

A subduction zone is where one tectonic plate, in this case, the Pacific plate, is forced down under another plate, the Alaskan continental arc.

Data from the Tohoku earthquake suggests that portions of the Alaskan-Aleutian Subduction Zone could be just as hazardous.

The study, by Holly Ryan, of the Pacific Coastal and Marine Science Center of the US Geological Survey in Menlo Park, Ca. and colleagues says the Japanese earthquake surprised scientists because the magnitude of both the earthquake and the tsunami were much larger than expected for the Tohoku region off northeastern Japan. The scientists say the region was originally considered low risk because the deep water section of the tectonic plate boundary that ruptured had been aseismic [a fault where there are no records of earthquakes] prior to the March 2011 event and was thought to be too weak to accumulate the strain to trigger a major earthquake.

In Japan and the Aleutians, there are seldom records of earthquakes where the upper tectonic plate is made up of weak, water-laden trench sediment accreted [stuck or locked] to the margin along thrust faults. The accreted sediment is not strong enough to fail in an earthquake (stick-slip behaviour) but, rather usually deforms without causing an earthquake.

Now research from the Japan shows that deep water section of the Tohoku region was fully
locked (accumulating strain at the convergence rate). The continental basement rock lies within
20 kilometres of the trench in deep water above the boundary at Tohoku. That created major accumulation of strain on the fault.

So when the earthquake occurred, there were large amounts of slip on the Tohoku megathrust, as well as corresponding movement on a deep water branch fault. Both contributed to the displacement of large volumes of water, creating the giant Japanese tsunami that smashed into the coast.

The Alaskan-Aleutian Subduction Zone is similar to the Tohoku region. The AASZ begins at a deep trench where the Pacific plate under thrusts the Alaskan continental arc and the Aleutian Islands oceanic arc.

Part of that subduction zone triggered the March 27, 1964 Good Friday magnitude 9.2 Anchorage, Alaska, megathrust earthquake. It was the largest quake ever recorded in North America and the second largest worldwide since seismic events were recorded. The epicentre was about 20 kilometres north of Prince William Sound, where a fault ruptured 25 kilometres below the surface. That quake causing major damage in Anchorage, 125 kilometres to the west and in Valdez 64 kilometres to the east. The megathursts along the ocean floor shifts created large tsunamis as high as 67 metres that struck along the North American coast from Alaska to California.

In Anchorage, nine people were killed by the quake, much of the downtown was destroyed and one neighbourhood lost 75 homes in a massive landslide. Two villages near Anchorage were destroyed when the land sank.

According to Wikipedia, the damage to British Columbia alone was estimated at $10 million in 1964 dollars (about $75 million in 2012 dollars according to the Bank of Canada inflation calculator) The Anchorage quake actually shook Kitimat and caused minor damage in the town. Due to factors such as the location of the quake at Prince William Sound , the tides and other factors along Douglas Channel, the tsunami coming into Kitimat was just a few centimetres high. Across the northwest and down the coast, there was more damage, the tsunami that hit Prince Rupert was 1.4 metres. Again to the configuration of the coast, tides and other factors, Port Alberni on Vancouver Island was hit twice, washing away 55 homes and damaging 375 others.

In California, 12 people were killed at Crescent City. There was damage in Los Angeles and as far off as Hawaii.

The study says that an Anchorage type event occurs every 900 years, so that area appears to be out of immediate danger,

According to the study, there was a magnitude 8.6 earthquake near Uninmak Pass in the same region in 1946 that triggered a tsunami that caused damage along the west coast, killed 150 people in Hawaii and inundated shorelines on South Pacific Islands and as far away as Antarctica. Another earthquake near the Andreanof Islands in 1957 also triggered a dangerous tsunami.

The new danger zone could be at the Semidi Islands, southwest of the better known Kodiak Island, where a 400 kilometre-long section of the subduction zone ruptured in 1938, causing a 8.2 magnitude earthquake. In the 1938 earthquake, the study says, that quake was beneath relatively shallow water, so it generated only a modest tsunami.

The Semidi Islands area is now fully locked, the study says, and enough strain has built up to trigger a similar event.

In 1788, a major earthquake in the Semidi Islands was recorded by Russian settlers. It is that area that the study says could trigger a Tohoku type tsunami. The segment of the trench in deeper water has not had a rupture since 1788. Satellite observations show that strain along the fault is accumulating “at a high rate.” The trench is four to five kilometres deep, just like at Tohoku, so displacement of the ocean water could trigger a similar giant tsunami.

Potential rupture of the near-trench section of the plate boundary is worrisome in that similar to the plate boundary near Tohoku, it is composed of rigid basement rock that extends beneath the margin to water depths of four to five kilometres. The presence of rigid basement rock close to the trench allows for an earthquake source beneath deep water, which would significantly amplify the height of the resultant tsunami. In addition, the possible additional rupture of an as yet undiscovered splay or branch fault, similar to circumstances during the Tohoku earthquake, would further increase the tsunami height.

The authors of the study call for more studies to compare the Aleutian area with the Tohoku region of Japan. Scientists are now working on “Paleotsunami studies” so there is a a history of tsunamis generated in the Aleutians that can be correlated to specific earthquakes.

Most of the attention on the west coast of North America has been centred on the Cascadia fault from northern California to southern British Columbia, which could also trigger a major earthquake and tsunami. It is time that scientists, emergency planners and government paid more attention to Alaska.

Link to Study Tsunami Hazards to U.S.  Coasts form Giant Earthquakes in Alaska  (pdf)

 


View Larger Map

What about the Northern Gateway?

My family was just sitting down for dinner in Kitimat on that Good Friday evening in 1964 when the whole house began to shake. The quake in Anchorage lasted for four minutes, the shock that hit Kitimat was probably less than a minute.

After dinner, tuning to the local TV station, CFTK, the Friday night broadcasts was interrupted by a news special, an extraordinary even for a small station, which in those days had no microwave communications with the rest of the television universe, with the local anchor telling the story based on wire service and other reports that were already trickling in, giving the people of the Kitimat-Terrace-Prince Rupert region the news of the devastation in Alaska.

Fast forward 48 years and the big question on the northwest coast is the Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline and whether or not the pipeline and the terminals in Kitimat harbour are vulnerable to earthquake and tsunami.

In public presentations in Kitimat, Enbridge officials have always minimized the potential danger to the Northern Gateway from earthquake and tsunami. In its latest presentation, to District of Kitimat Council on April 16, 2012, Enbridge engineer Drum Cavers told council that “all of the major earthquakes have occurred well off shore on the Queen Charlotte Fault,” and that “seismic activity is low relative to south coastal BC.” Cavers also said “the Kitsumcalum-Kitimat Valley is not the site of unusual seismic events or faults.” The presentation points to an 1973 quake in the Skeena River valley that Enbridge says was small and the planned pipeline is within “seismic design parameters.”

Cavers’ presentation said “No fault breaks to surface are known near the pipeline route, but if one should be found during further work, there are methods to mitigate fault motion if required.”

There has been no mention by Enbridge Northern Gateway of the potential problems that could be caused to the Kitimat pipeline and the terminal by a major earthquake or tsunami from the Alaska Aleutian region.

I was out of town during Cavers’ presentation but I have asked questions about the 1964 quake and potential problems from Alaska at three public meetings, including a direct question to Northern Gateway president John Carruthers at the September, 2011, public forum at Kitimat’s Mount Elizabeth Theatre. Despite promises, Enbridge has so far not responded to my questions.

Enbridge to spend $1.6 billion to upgrade Michigan pipeline, old line will be “abandoned in place”

Enbridge announced Thursday, May 10, 2012, it plans to spend $1.6 billion to upgrade and replace its pipeline through Michigan and Indiana, including the site of the leak in to the Kalamazoo River in July 2010. What Enbridge calls the “6B pipeline” broke open near Marshall, Michigan and spilled more than 840,000 gallons of bitumen sands oil into Talmadge Creek and the Kalamazoo River.

That doesn’t mean, however, that the broken and now disused pipeline will be demolished. Enbridge says that pipeline will be “abandoned in place,” meaning it will be deactivated, purged of any remaining oil and then filled with an “inert gas,” a move that is permitted under United States pipeline safety regulations.

In a fact sheet, Enbridge says it plans to replace approximately 75 miles of its 30-inch diameter “Line 6B pipeline.” The 75 miles to be replaced with new pipe consists of about 10 miles in Indiana and 65 in Michigan, with replacement pipe to be either 30 or 36-inch diameter pipe in Indiana and southwestern Michigan and 30-inch pipe in the eastern Michigan segment.

Enbridge map of pipeline 6B
A map, released by Enbridge, showing its plans for upgrading and replacing the 6B pipeline in Michigan and Indiana.

Enbridge says the new pipeline will closely follow the route of the old one.

Completion of this project, scheduled for late 2012, should result in fewer integrity digs and repairs along the replacement segments in the future, resulting in fewer disturbances to landowners and local communities.

For this project, we plan to remove the oil from the pipe segments being replaced and fill them with nitrogen before abandoning in place, as prescribed in regulations. In most cases, the new pipe segments will be installed adjacent to those segments being replaced.

Enbride says the “The Line 6B Maintenance and Rehabilitation Project” is part of the company’s “pipeline integrity maintenance program” that includes:

  • Using high-quality steel and anti-corrosion coatings when constructing our pipelines.
  • Installing cathodic protection (a low-level electrical charge) to inhibit corrosion of underground pipelines. Pressure testing of new and existing pipelines with
    water.
  • Periodically inspecting the inside of the pipeline with sophisticated tools called “smart pigs” to locate
  • pipe abnormalities so they can be corrected.
  • Conducting preventive maintenance programs.
  • Continually monitoring pipeline operations from Enbridge’s control center, which has remote shut-down capabilities and can monitor pressures and conditions when the pipeline is flowing.
  • Completing regular ground and aerial inspections of the right-of-way.
  • Providing public awareness safety information to emergency responders, local public officials, excavators and those who live and work along our pipelines.

Enbridge says the aim of the project is to restore the capacity of the pipeline to meet increasing
demand driven by current and planned refinery upgrades and expansions in Michigan, Ohio
and eastern Canada.

Enbridge plans to complete the Indiana segment of the replacement pipeline by 2012. As for the Michigan pipeline, the company says four segments will be completed in 2012 and the last 160 miles will be completed in late 2012 or early 2013.

All of Enbridge’s plans are subject to U.S. Federal and state approvals.

As for the spill in the Kalamazoo River, the Kalamazoo Gazette, in covering the Enbridge announcement reported today

Although one section of small section of the Kalamazoo River that had been closed following the Enbridge spill in 2010 reopened last month – just three of the 40 miles affected – environmental officials have said significant amounts of oil still remain submerged in the river bed, although they say it is not dangerous to human health. State and federal agencies are slated to open more parts of the river in coming months pending investigation.

 

Related Links:
WOOD-TV Enbridge plans new $1.6 bil pipeline Oil pipeline will not be demolished

NPR Michigan Radio Enbridge wants to replace 200 miles of aging pipeline in Michigan

Documents 

Enbridge Handout Line 6B Phase 2  (pdf)

Enbridge Handout Line 6B Replacement Project  (pdf)

A map released by Enbridge showing its central Canada and US pipelines

 

Kinder Morgan announces plans to increase capacity of Trans Mountain pipeline to Vancouver

Trans Mountain pipelne
The Trans Mountain Pipeline (Kinder Morgan)

Kinder Morgan, of Houston, Texas,  said Thursday, April 12, 2012, it plans to proceed with expansion of the Trans Mountain pipeline system from Alberta to the BC Lower Mainland. The company made the announcement after what the energy industry calls an “open season,” a search for customers where it received “strong binding commitments” from existing and new shippers. They pledged commercial support to an additional 660,000 barrels per day of bitumen sands crude from the pipeline. Demand has been high and reports say Kinder Morgan has had to ration petroleum products for its existing customers.

The 20 year commitment from the customers means the pipeline capacity would increase to 850,000 barrels per day from 550,000 barrels. That would make the eventual capacity of the Kinder Morgan pipeline much larger than Enbridge Northern Gateway’s proposed 525,000 barrels per day.

In a release,  Ian Anderson, president of Kinder Morgan Canada said, “We are extremely pleased with the strong commercial support that we received through the open season, which reinforces the appeal of our project and our approach. This strong commercial support shows the market’s enthusiasm for expanding market access for Canadian crude by expanding an existing system.”

Now Kinder Morgan has to get approval from the National Energy Board and acceptance from the local communities along the pipeline route from the Alberta bitumen sands to the terminals and refineries in Vancouver and in Washington state and for tanker export.

“This support from the market better defines the project and enables Kinder Morgan Canada to fully engage the local communities. We are still early in the engagement process of the project,” Anderson said in the release. “We share respectful, open relationships with many communities and organizations interested in our business. We are committed to an 18 to 24 month inclusive, extensive and thorough engagement on all aspects of the project with local communities along the proposed route and marine corridor, including First Nations and Aboriginal groups, environmental organizations and all other interested parties. We will also consider providing financial support to local communities for environmental initiatives. We have been planning for this day for many years and we are keen to start in depth engagement this summer.”

Kinder Morgan says the preliminary scope of the proposed project includes:

 

  • Projected capital cost of approximately $5 billion.
  • Twinning the existing pipeline within the existing right-of-way, where possible.
  • Adding new pump stations along the route.
  • Increasing the number of storage tanks at existing facilities.
  • Expanding the Westridge Marine Terminal.

Anderson added, “We anticipate filing a facilities application initiating a regulatory review with the National Energy Board in 2014. If our application is approved, construction is currently forecast to commence in 2016 with the proposed project operating by 2017.”

In addition to extensive engagement, the company will conduct traditional land use and environmental and socio-economic studies, and undertake detailed engineering and design studies, the release says.

The Trans Mountain proposal, like the Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline is a “facilities application,” and one uncertainty facing the company will be the highly controversial decision by Stephen Harper’s Conservative government to speed up all future project applications of that type. Environmental groups have already expressed strong opposition to the speed up, while the energy industry has said faster application approval is long over due.

As well as the facilities application, Kinder Morgan says it will file “a commercial tolling application to review the company’s proposed commercial structure for the expansion. This filing, which is anticipated in summer 2012, will seek National Energy Board approval on how the company will charge its customers for transporting their product through the proposed expanded pipeline.”

Kinder Morgan says that for almost 60 years, the 1,150-km Trans Mountain pipeline system has been safely and efficiently providing the only west coast access for Canadian oil products, including about 90 percent of the gasoline supplied to the interior and south coast of British Columbia.

However, the continuing controversy over the Enbridge Northern Gateway and other pipeline projects, together with some accidents including the spill of 100,000 barrels of light crude near Abbotsford, has raised the profile of the Kinder Morgan line and therefore will likely bring more public scrutiny. Any increase in the capacity of the pipeline will also mean more tanker traffic in the already crowded waterways of the Vancouver harbour system and along the west coast.

Last June, Kinder Morgan also proposed the building of second pipeline from the bitumen sands to the west coast, roughly following the route of the Northern Gateway pipeline to Kitimat. There was no mention of that project in today’s announcement.

 

Letting salmon escape from nets could benefit grizzly bears and even the fishers, study says

Grizzly eating a salmon
A grizzly bear eats a salmon. A new study says managers must consider the value of salmon to the entire ecosystem. (Jennifer Allan)

A new study suggests that the health of the grizzly bear population is also a strong indicator of the health of Pacific salmon—and perhaps surprisingly, allowing grizzlies to consume more salmon will, in the long term, lead to more, not less, salmon.

The study, led by Taal Levi, of the University of California at Santa Cruz and colleagues from Canada, suggests that allowing some more Pacific salmon to escape the nets of the fishing industry and thus spawn in coastal streams would not not only benefit the natural environment, including grizzly bears, but could also eventually lead to more salmon in the ocean. Thus there would be larger salmon harvests in the long term—a win-win for ecosystems and humans.

The article, “Using Grizzly Bears to Assess Harvest-Ecosystem Tradeoffs in Salmon Fisheries,” was published April 10 in the online, open-access journal PLoS Biology. In the study  Levi and his co-authors investigate how increasing “escapement”—the number of salmon that escape fishing nets to enter streams and spawn—can improve the natural environment.

“Salmon are an essential resource that propagates through not only marine but also creek and terrestrial food webs,” said lead author Levi, an environmental studies Ph.D. candidate at UCSC, specializing in conservation biology and wildlife ecology.

Salmon fisheries in the northwest Pacific are generally well managed, Levi said. Managers determine how much salmon to allocate to spawning and how much to harvest. Fish are counted as they enter the coastal streams. However, there is concern that humans are harvesting too many salmon and leaving too little for the ecosystem. To assess this, the team focused on the relationship between grizzly bears and salmon. Taal and his colleagues first used data to find a relationship between how much salmon were available to eighteen grizzly bear populations, and what percentage of their diet was made up of salmon.

The study looked at Bristol Bay, Alaska, the Chilko and Quesnel regions of the Fraser River watershed and Rivers Inlet on the Inside Passage, just northeast of northern Vancouver Island.
The study says adult wild salmon are “critical” to ocean, river and terrestrial ecosystems. As well as humans, salmon are eaten by orcas, salmon sharks, pinnipeds (seals and sea lions). On land, salmon are eaten by black and grizzly bears, eagles and ravens.

Because the grizzly is the “terminal predator” the study says “if there are enough salmon to sustain healthy bear densities, we reason there should be sufficient salmon numbers to sustain populations of earlier salmon-life history predatory such as seabirds, pinnipeds and sharks.”
As is well known in the northwest, the study says “bears are dominant species mediating the flow of salmon-derived nutrients from the ocean to the terrestrial ecosystem. After capturing salmon in estuaries and streams grizzly bears typically move to land to consume each fish, distributing carcass remains to vertebrate and invertebrate scavengers up to several hundred metres from waterways.”

“We asked, is it enough for the ecosystem? What would happen if you increase escapement—the number of fish being released? We found that in most cases, bears, fishers, and ecosystems would mutually benefit,” Levi said.

The problem, the study says, is that fisheries management have a narrow view of their role, what the study calls “single-species management,” concentrating on salmon and not the wider ecosystem. “Currently,” the study says, under single-species management, fisheries commonly intercept more than 50 per cent of in bound salmon that would otherwise be available to bears and the terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems they support.”

The relationship between salmon and bears is basic, Levi said. “Bears are salmon-consuming machines. Give them more salmon and they will consume more—and importantly, they will occur at higher densities. So, letting more salmon spawn and be available to bears helps not only bears but also the ecosystems they nourish when they distribute the uneaten remains of salmon.”

When salmon are plentiful in coastal streams, bears won’t eat as much of an individual fish, preferring the nutrient-rich brains and eggs and casting aside the remainder to feed other animals and fertilize the land. In contrast, when salmon are scarce, bears eat more of a fish. Less discarded salmon enters the surrounding ecosystem to enrich downstream life, and a richer stream life means a better environment for salmon.

In four out of the six study systems, allowing more salmon to spawn will not only help bears and the terrestrial landscape but would also lead to more salmon in the ocean. More salmon in the ocean means larger harvests, which in turn benefits fishers. However, in two of the systems, helping bears would hurt fisheries. In these cases, the researchers estimated the potential financial cost—they looked at two salmon runs on the Fraser River, B.C., and predicted an economic cost of about $500,000 to $700,000 annually. This cost to the human economy could help support locally threatened grizzly bear populations, they argue.

While these fisheries are certified as sustainable by the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC), the researchers suggest that the MSC principle that fisheries have minimal ecosystem impact might not be satisfied if the fishery is contributing to grizzly bear conservation problems.
The researchers believe the same analysis can be used to evaluate fisheries around the world and help managers make more informed decisions to balance economic and ecological outcomes.

 

What do grizzlies eat in northwestern BC ?

The current study and previous studies track the grizzly’s diet by studying the nitrogen and carbon istopes in grizzly hair. In one study in the early part of this decade, the BC Ministry of the Environment used guard hairs from “passive hair snags” as well as samples from bears killed by hunters or conservation officers.

The 2005 study says “Guard hairs are grown between late spring and fall, thus integrating the diet over much of the active season of temperate-dwelling bears.” Analysis of the isotopes can show what the bears ate over the season.

The study identified four elements in the grizzly diet across British Columbia, Alaska, Yukon and the Northwest Territories: plants, “marine-derived nutrients” mostly salmon, meat (primarily from ungulates such as moose) and in inland areas, kockanee salmon.

As could be expected, grizzly salmon consumption is highest in coastal areas. Males generally consume more salmon than females, likely because a mother grizzly may avoid taking salmon if there is danger to the cubs from males. The further inland a grizzly is found, salmon is a lesser factor in the bear’s diet. In Arctic regions, grizzlies can feed on arctic char, whales, seals and barren-ground caribou.

So what do local grizzlies eat? (excerpts from the 2005 study, Major components of grizzly bear diet across North America,  National Research Council Research Press  published March 28, 2006)

Map of grizzly diet and salmon
Grizzly consumption of salmon on the northwest coast (NRC)

North Coast 54.54 N 128.90 W (north and west of Kitimat)
Plants 33 per cent Salmon 67 per cent

Mid Coast 52.50 N 127.40 W (between Bella Bella and Ocean Falls)
Plants 58 per cent Salmon 42 per cent

Upper Skeena Nass 56.80 N 128.80 W
Plants 71 per cent Salmon 5 per cent Meat 13 per cent

Bulkley Lakes 54.10 N 127.10 W
Plants 63 per cent Salmon 6 per cent Meat 16 per cent Kokanee 15 per cent

Cranberry 55.40 N 128.40 W (near Kiwancool)

Plants 30 per cent Salmon 17 per cent Meat 40 per cent Kokanee 13 per cent

Khutzeymateen 54.68 N 129.86 W (near Prince Rupert)
Plants 22 per cent salmon 78 per cent

 

###

Other authors of the 2010 study are Chris Darimont, UCSC, Misty MacDuffee Raincoast Conservation Foundation, Denny Island, BC; Marc Mangel, Paul Paquet, UCSC and University of Calgary, Christopher Wilmers, USCC
Funding: This work was funded by an NSF GRF and Cota-Robles Fellowship (TL), a NSERC IRDF (CTD), the Wilburforce and McLean Foundations, and Patagonia. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

2005 study by Garth Mowat Aurora Research  Crescent Valley BC and  Douglas Heard BC Ministry of the Environment, Nelson

Editorial: Pipeline politics are now hyperlocal. Government and energy companies must deal with it.

There’s a glaring misconception in the move by Stephen Harper’s government in Thursday’s budget to speed up the review of resource projects, including the Northern Gateway Pipeline. The government wants reviews to last between 12 and 24 months and to avoid duplication between the federal and provincial governments. The buzzword is “one project, one review.”

The misconception is that natural resource reviews can go on as they have since the 1980s when the deregulation craze made any kind of resource hearing, especially those before the National Energy Board, into a private club for the oil patch, government and energy lawyers. NEB hearings are plagued by arcane rules of procedure and evidence that were, probably in an “out of mind out of sight” way, created to exclude the public. The public, despite the consultation mandates of the review agencies, didn’t really matter a damn. It is likely with the changes brought in by the Harper government, with its vocal hostility to the environmental, the public will matter even less.

A second misconception promoted by the government, by right-wing think tanks and supported by a lot of the media is that the Northern Gateway Joint Review Panel has been sort of hijacked by the green movement with sole purpose of delay, delay, delay.

The problem is that none of these people, not Finance Minister Jim Flaherty, not the Prime Minister, not the columnists, nor academics for universities or think tanks have attended many (or any) of the hearings or read the transcripts. They don’t look at the lists of intervenors, those who have said they want the opportunity for a 10 minute comment or filed letters of comments.

What has changed in just the last five years or so, just as Northern Gateway was getting underway, was the rise of social media, blogging, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube. The widespread use of social media means that despite the efforts of Stephen Harper to stifle opposition, pipeline hearings now and in the future will be governed by —let’s call it the “British Columbia Spring.” If the hearings are curtailed by the government, social media isn’t going away and those opposed to the pipeline will simply find ways to escalate their protests.

It’s not green manipulation that is delaying the hearings, it is that pipeline hearings have become “hyperlocal”* as social media makes everyone aware of what’s going on. That means that each neighbourhood, each village, each block, each wharf now know how a pipeline will affect their lives. This applies to the First Nations across the pipeline route and down the coast; anyone who drives BC’s highways and sees avalanche gates and avalanche warnings; commercial salmon, halibut and herring fishers; the ailing forestry industry. It’s not just BC, it’s a farmer in Nebraska, a rancher in Texas, a homeowner in Michigan, a shrimp fisher in Louisiana. Their worries are available on Google, Facebook, Twitter in a way that wasn’t possible just a few years ago, when stories about NEB hearings were buried in small paragraphs on the back pages of the business section of a newspaper.

Although the right-wing media loves to concentrate on a couple of people from Brazil who may or may not have signed up inadvertently, the vast majority of the 4,000 people who are scheduled to speak before the Joint Review Panel are vitally concerned about strictly local issues. Scheduled to speak is now the operative term because it is likely that the Harper government will cut off the opportunity to speak, and that will only further decrease the already shaky credibility of the Joint Review Panel with the people of British Columbia directly affected by the Northern Gateway.

One of the most perceptive academics in the energy field, economist Andrew Leach (albeit based at the University of Alberta) led a discussion on Twitter opening it with this question

Can anyone provide a single piece of evidence that longer environmental processes, beyond a certain point, yield higher quality evaluation?

Again, no evidence of this beyond a certain pt. Long process often cited as evidence of sound analysis, but two are not same.

IMO, there’s no reason that, w proper resources, you could not fully assess impacts & set appropriate conditions for major projects in 2yrs.

Context: NGP JRP decision is expected now at the end of 2013, roughly 4 years after hearing order issued, but <2 yrs after first hearings.

Leach makes two shaky assumptions.

The first assumption is that the hearings can come up with a quality evaluation and sound analysis. But a quality evaluation, sound analysis for whom? For the private club that the NEB has been for the past quarter century? Sound analysis from a government that muzzles its own scientists and cuts funding for proper research and now wants to have the Canada Revenue Agency harass its environmental opponents? As the responses by First Nations and local groups to the filings by Enbridge show, counter analysis often takes years of research and lots of money. Sound analysis if the opponents are given limited opportunity to respond to a proposal?

The second assumption is that the current and future hearings are going to be fair, independent and transparent. In his conference call yesterday with local reporters, Skeena Bulkley Valley MP Nathan Cullen said the Joint Review and future hearings are “rigged,” predicting that “people won’t stand for this” and it “will only hurt the company it’s supposed to protect.”

The panel has already heard a large number of intervenors in various communities across the northwest tell them directly that the process has no credibility. The decision by the Harper government to speed things can only increase the belief that the hearings are unfair, are rigged, that building the pipeline is a foregone conclusion.

Or quality evaluation for the people directly affected?

Testimony before the Joint Review Panel has been about hyperlocal issues, the state of an estuary, the legacy of the poisoning of a stream by now defunct paper mills, one aboriginal family’s traditional trapline, the shellfish beds polluted by the Queen of the North sinking, the danger to culturally modified trees, the fact that the pipeline will bring no more than a handful of jobs to British Columbia, while endangering thousands fishing and tourism jobs. You might want to call that “Not In My Back Yard” but then the Calgary water supply won’t be out of operation for four years as could happen in a worst case scenario for the Kitimat River in case of a pipeline breach along the river or its tributaries.

If the public believes that future hearings are not “quality evaluation” but rigged in favour of the energy industry, then there will be resistance there as well. What kind of resistance the decision will bring remains to be seen. But that resistance, whatever form it takes will likely also be a factor in any future resource hearings.

Then there is the question of jobs. There just aren’t going to be that many jobs in British Columbia from the Northern Gateway pipeline. First Nations communities, in the unlikely event they agreed to a pipeline, will see no long term benefit from temporary construction jobs. How many Canadian jobs will there be, if the rumours that been circulating in Kitimat for months now are true that PetroChina will build the pipeline? ( recently somewhat confirmed by the Financial Post, although also characterized by Enbridge as speculation)

Don Cayo, writing this morning in the Vancouver Sun says

But the biggest deal in the budget by far, at least as far as the West is concerned, has nothing to do with spending. It is the intention to clean up, at long last, the snarl of red tape that has become such an impediment to development in the resource sector….

it’s a spurious argument to try to link the efficiency of the regulatory process and the fairness of it. “Slow” is not a synonym for “good” nor is “faster” another word for “worse.” It does immense harm to the economy and no good to anyone at all, as history proves, to have a Byzantine process that is obscenely expensive for both the public and private sectors.

Nor is the pipeline the only project in need of fair and reasonably fast assessment. The West in general and B.C. in particular are awash in potential projects — mines, energy developments and more — and we’ll all be better off knowing sooner rather than later which ones are appropriate to move forward.

This simply shows that the advocates of the fast track process don’t get it. They are stuck in the small c conservative mantra of cutting “red tape.” There have been no recent changes in the red tape. The National Energy Board procedures, as I said, are already unfriendly to the ordinary public.

What has changed is that with the web, with social media, the people directly affected, who in the past would have been frozen out of the procedures by lack of communication, are now participating to the fullest extent possible, using information gleaned from the web and empowered by social networks. That isn’t going to change.

As much as the Conservative government believes it control the agenda, and the procedures of the resource hearings, it can’t. All it takes for a hearing to be overwhelmed is a lot of concerned residents, acting on their own, not pushed by ENGOs, prodded by a single e-mail, Tweet or Facebook post.

It may be that the energy industry, a decade from now, will regret what they wished for, a fast track process that is actually bogged down in all the kinds of court challenges that lawyers can work up, regional and municipal zoning barriers, sympathetic bureaucratic delays at the provincial level, civil disobedience, including blockades on land and sea bringing Canada a growing international media black eye, beyond the current impression of the bitumen sands as Mordor. As much as Harper may not like it, if an Oscar-winning star is arrested at a pipeline blockade it will be international news.

To use a a current analogy, with the centenary of the sinking of the Titanic approaching, the Steerage passengers are now demanding a place at the First Class table, along with the haughty oil barons, the high priced lawyers and holier than thou consultants. Stephen Harper and Jim Flaherty may close some of the gates between Steerage and First Class, but eventually the Third Class passengers will find a way to the upper decks.

(Every time someone from Enbridge at a Kitimat meeting says how safe the oil tankers and their escorts will be, one audience member always brings up the Titanic in a question and answer session)

Notes

1. *What is hyperlocal?

Hyperlocal is usually a term in online journalism, referring to coverage of a specific neighbourhood. In some ways, Northwest Coast Energy News, based in Kitimat is a hyperlocal site. That is why it is easy to recognize the hyperlocal nature of those who testify at the Joint Review Hearings. It can be as hyper hyper local as the pipeline crossing a skiing/hiking trail.

For a longer, somewhat academic definition of hyperlocal, the Wikipedia entry may be valuable.

2. Scope creep and dismissing local concerns

In a paper for the conservative C. D. Howe Institute, Leach’s colleague Joseph Doucet, Interim Dean of the University of Alberta School of Business, UnClogging the Pipes; Pipeline Reviews and Energy Policy, complains about what he calls “scope creep” in NEB hearings and says:

It is not simply not efficient or effective to attempt to solve broad, far-reaching societal challenges such as First Nations land claims or greenhouse gas emissions policy through individual project reviews.

and concludes

Regulatory review should focus on relatively narrow project definitions consistent with the impacts of the project , including its relevant costs and benefits and the scope of the activity of the proponent, Other issues, broader and more general in nature should be dealt with in statue or in policy, not in regulatory review.

There is one thing missing in Doucet’s analysis. The “scope of activity” of people directly affected by a pipeline project. What he calls “scope creep” has occurred due to the rise of public awareness due to the web and social media. In his paper, the lives of the local residents and hyperlocal issues are simply written off.

Doucet ignores that fact this government’s policy, while spinning respect for the environmental issues in single paragraphs, is to bulldoze the pipeline across BC, no matter what the consequences. On one hand, the Harper government pushes the pipeline as a gateway to Asian markets. On the other hand, with the $80 million cut to the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, with cuts to Environment Canada and support for independent environmental research, cuts to the Canadian Coast Guard, the policy is clear, the Harper government is ignoring the potential catastrophe from an oil pipeline breach or tanker disaster.

Enbridge Northern Gateway, on the other hand, does have contingency plans for such events, but at meetings in Kitimat, even Enbridge officials have expressed public scepticism about how much government support there could be in the event of a disaster.  In fact, if the Harper government had more respect for the environment and actually had plans to counter a potential disaster, there likely would be less opposition to the Northern Gateway.

The only way to have any check and balance on the Harper bulldozer is to have an effective, thoroughly independent and wide ranging inquiry process, not a narrow one aimed at tweaking regulations.

 

 

Kitimat Council to consider new Enbridge forum after warning about avalanches on pipeline route

Douglas Channel Watch
Angus McLeod and Margaret Stenson, members of the environmental group Douglas Channel Watch, wear "ocean blue" scarves at a meeting of the District of Kitimat Council, March 5, 2012. The "ocean blue" scarves represent the group's determination to protect the oceans. (Robin Rowland/Northwest Coast Energy News)

District of Kitimat Council will consider a motion at its next meeting on March 19 to hold a second community forum on the controversial Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline.

The notice of motion was introduced by Councillor Mario Feldhoff after a request for a new forum by the environmental group Douglas Channel Watch.

Murray Minchin called for the forum after a presentation to council about the avalanche dangers at Nimbus Mountain, where Enbridge plans a tunnel through the mountain.

Minchin said Enbridge has not done a forest survey on Nimbus Mountain where the pipeline would emerge from the tunnel. However, a survey by Douglas Channel Watch members of tree growth on Nimbus Mountain, Hoult Creek on the pipeline route and Hunter Creek which are tributaries of the Kitimat River, shows strong evidence of previous avalanches which could cause serious damage to the twin bitumen and condensate pipelines.

Minchin says that documentation filed by Enbridge with the Joint Review Panel shows that while an Enbridge response crew could reach a breached pipeline in that area in four hours, it would also take four hours for as much as two million litres of diluted bitumen spilled in that area to reach the Kitimat River estuary.

The lower slopes in the area have a large population of young, small, closely packed trees and lumpy rock material on the forest floor that show that it is periodically “swept clean by avalanches,” Minchin told the council.

The young trees in the area are small because they are growing on rockfall, and there are no mature trees. There are large boulders on the lower slopes, another indication of avalanche or rock fall, Minchin said.

He showed images of middle aged hemlocks farther up the slope near the proposed tunnel exit that sometime in the past had their tops ripped off. Damage to the spreading branches of the trees on one side indicate that the trees were hit by an avalanche when they were young.

There is evidence of a major rockfall on the mountain about 50 metres above the proposed tunnel exit with rock fall material clearly visible on the forest floor. The curve of the hemlocks in the area indicate that there is still downhill movement on the slope, Minchin said.

That means, he said, that with the plans calling for the twin pipelines to be suspended 200 metres in the air over Hoult Creek, that could be hit by an avalanche.

He said the presence throughout the area of “avalanche alders” combined with the fact that there are no hemlocks, is an indication, Michin said, of regular avalanche activity.

Giant boulder brought to Houlte Creek by an avalanche
This photograph from Douglas Channel Watch shows a giant boulder and a fallen hemlock in area close to the proposed Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline at Houlte Creek, BC. (Douglas Channel Watch)

He showed a photo of a large boulder, perhaps the size of a carport, 100 metres from the proposed tunnel exit that was brought to the area by an avalanche.

He said a study of the age of young balsam would tell an expert when the last massive avalanche occurred “but it won’t tell us when the next one will occur.” The steep slopes on Mount Houlte, leading to the pipeline route along Houtle creek mean that area which feeds the Kitimat River has seen many avalanches in the past.

The pipeline then goes into the Hunter Creek area, which Minchin says, Enbridge’s own experts have warned is also vulnerable to avalanches. At Hunter Creek, avalanche debris could temporarily dam the creek, and then, when the debris is released by spring melt or water pressure, that could a create a flash flood; a flash flood that could damage the pipelines.

He pointed to the fact the cleanup of the Kalamazoo River spill in Michigan had been shut down for the winter because the bitumen becomes too sticky to move. He then asked how much longer would it take to clean up a spill under the winter conditions of the Kitimat area. Noting that Enbridge has admitted the Kitimat river would be closed for fishing for “at least four years” he asked “How long will the cleanup take…eight twelve? And where would Kitimat get its water?”

Minchin concluded by saying if there is a pipeline breach at Hoult or Hunter Creeks, despite Enbridge’s plans, the Kitimat River downstream from those creeks would be polluted for years.

He then asked that council organize a new public forum, with three representatives, one from the Haisla First Nation, one from Enbridge and one from an environmental group, adding. “The mayor of Dawson Creek has been trotted out at every one of these forums and is irrelevant, which is why we ask that three people speak to the forum.”