![]() On Wednesday, Burnaby Mayor Mike Hurley called that decision disappointing, but not surprising, and said his chief concern now is protecting residents like Durrant, and coming up with strong evacuation and emergency plans. “I think the decision is on the wrong side of history,” Durrant said. While Trans Mountain addressed the alarm on the tank farm gate, Durrant said the noise from the nearly non-stop gravel trucks, bulldozers and diggers is “just as bad as it ever was,” and with Tuesday’s decision, she only expects it to get worse. “Some weeks I’m so sleep deprived, I can’t drive,” she told CTV News at the time. ![]() on nearly a daily basis, including a beeping front gate, rumbling sounds and voices. It’ll be like our Pompeii.”ĭurrant, whose leafy, idyllic backyard lies just steps from the pipeline terminus and a storage tank farm that’s now set to expand from 13 tanks to 26, says she hasn’t slept well in months.ĬTV first met her in April when she pulled out videos and documents of the noise she said woke her up as early as 4 a.m. “If there is a fire or a spill, we won’t even have time to get out of our homes,” Durrant said. Now she says she’s worried about losing her life.ĭurrant has lived on Burnaby Mountain for almost three decades and Ottawa’s decision Tuesday to approve the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion once again has left her both frustrated and worried. West Coast will continue to fight Trans Mountain by supporting our Indigenous clients in their legal efforts by continuing to revitalize, apply and enforce the Indigenous law decisions to ban the project and by working with the climate justice movement around the world.Īs demonstrated by the fight against Enbridge, when communities stand together with First Nations, we can stop tar sands pipelines.įor our latest updates and analysis on the Trans Mountain project, check out our recent blog posts here.Lesley Durrant has accepted she’s lost her patch of paradise. You can view a timeline of the legal challenges over Trans Mountain here. Six First Nations were granted leave to appeal the new approval in September 2019, but the Federal Court of Appeal upheld the government's decision, and in 2020 the Supreme Court of Canada dismissed further appeals. Then, in 2019, the NEB once again recommended approval of the pipeline project (reusing much of its old report) and the pipeline was re-approved by the federal government. In fall 2018, the federal government announced plans to launch a new NEB review of the project within a 22-week window and to consult with Indigenous nations along the route. This federal buyout ignored the legal risks associated with the ongoing court challenges and in obtaining free, prior and informed consent from Indigenous communities along the route. In the meantime, the federal government opted to buy the Trans Mountain pipeline in May 2018 for $4.5 billion, after Kinder Morgan had decided to abandon the project. On August 30, 2018, the Court quashed the project’s approval based on inadequate consultation with First Nations, and a failure to follow the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act, 2012. The Province of British Columbia announced its approval in January 2017.ġ7 legal challenges filed against the NEB process and Cabinet approval were heard by the Federal Court of Appeal in the fall of 2017. The federal Cabinet approved the project in November 2016, largely based on the NEB’s recommendation. A spill could make over one million residents sick within hours, and a worst-case spill in the Fraser River estuary could kill up to 500,000 birds.įollowing a flawed and controversial process, Canada’s National Energy Board (NEB) recommended the approval of the Trans Mountain Expansion in May of 2016. The pipeline and tanker route passes through some of BC’s most densely populated areas – including Vancouver, Victoria, Kamloops and the Fraser Valley.Įxpert reports have found that a large tanker spill in the Salish Sea could result in more than $380 million in losses to the local economy and cost $9.4 billion to clean up. Similar to Enbridge’s Northern Gateway project, Trans Mountain faces massive opposition from affected First Nations, local communities and municipal governments who bear most of the risk of an inevitable spill. It would also require doubling the storage capacity at the company’s oil tank farm on Burnaby Mountain. Initially proposed by Texas-based Kinder Morgan, the expansion would increase oil tanker traffic passing through Burrard Inlet and the Salish Sea by seven times – from about one tanker per week to more than one per day. The Trans Mountain Expansion Project aims to construct a new tar sands pipeline across British Columbia, tripling the amount of diluted bitumen flowing from Edmonton, Alberta to Burnaby, BC. ![]() ![]() ![]() The Trans Mountain Expansion Project is all risk, little reward for BC and the coast. ![]()
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