LandKeepers News Archive
Environmentalists Say Spill Adds Doubt to Pipeline Safety
April 14 2010 | News ArticlesPipeline News | The Interior News
British Columbian environmentalists are pointing to Enbridge’s recent Manitoba spill as another failure of the company to protect the environment while Virden’s mayor says his community is not particularly panicked.
“Enbridge keeps telling us that their record is really solid and that they have so few spills for the amount of oil that they move and yet there just seems to be news that pops up again and again about them spilling oil,” said Nikki Skuce, a ForestEthics campaigner. “This recent spill that they had in Manitoba was into a creek and I think that’s what people are really worried about across the pipeline route.”
She said events like this cement further doubt into the project.
“We all care about wild salmon and the health of our rivers and I think that’s why there’s such strong and growing opposition to this Enbridge pipeline,” she said. “People don’t trust what they’re saying.”“
On April 7 it was reported in the news that an Enbridge oil pipe had spilled in a creek near Virden, a community in southern Manitoba.
The pipe in question runs underneath the creek.
“If this spill had happened in a similar sized waterway along the Bulkley or Copper Rivers at this time of year, thousands of emerging salmon would be put at risk,” said Todd Stockner, a fishing guide in Hazelton. “An incident like this underscores the importance of protecting our waterways for our economy and lifestyle.”
Jennifer Varey, Senior Manager of Corporate and Business Communications with Enbridge, said current estimates have the spill at 16 barrels worth of oil.
She said that the company is treating the situation very seriously and that they are continuing to monitor water quality.
“We’ve tested water quality in a number of locations, including areas immediately down stream of the release site, and the sample results … show no hydrocarbon impacts above applicable drinking water standards,” said Varey.
Clean-up time is hard to predict, she continued, but said that, ‘It will take as long as we need to make sure we return the site to as close to its original condition as possible.”
Bruce Dunning, Virden’s mayor, said that he’s aware of one fish, called a Creek Chub, that has been affected by the hydrocarbon in the water.
However faith in not shaken in the oil transport company in him or his community, he said.
“I think that people have a lot of faith in Enbridge,” he told The Interior News. “Enbridge is very professional and a very environmentally conscious company and they’re doing everything absolutely right to clean this up and remediate any impact that has occurred.”
He continued, “I don’t think there’s a lot of concern on behalf of the citizens.”
Over the past 60 years that oil has been produced in Manitoba, Dunning said that there have been many oil spills and that this one is only unique in that it happened in flowing water.
“The majority of them are always on land or non-flowing water,” he said, noting that normally this creek doesn’t have high activity and it only did now because of the spring.
Oil is a major economic contributor to the community.
“There’s lots of oil surrounding us, has been … for 60 years,” said Dunning. “Virden depends on both agriculture and oil but oil does drive the economy a lot in town.”
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