By Jeff Nagel, Oak Bay News,October 01, 2010
A controversial pipeline that would carry oil sands crude from Alberta across northern B.C. to tankers on the north coast has taken a hit from the Union of B.C. Municipalities.
An oil tanker loads up crude oil in Burnaby from Kinder Morgan's Trans Mountain Pipeline. (File) |
Civic leaders at the annual conference in Whistler passed a resolution opposing Enbridge's Northern Gateway proposal.
They also voted to call on senior governments to formally legislate a ban on offshore oil drilling and to ban oil tanker traffic in the waters surrounding Haida Gwaii.
Opponents of crude oil exports were jubilant, particularly delegates from the Village of Queen Charlotte, which sponsored some of the resolutions.
"It is simply too much to risk, the consequences too high, our knowledge too insufficient and the wrong place to put our hopes and dreams," Queen Charlotte Mayor Carol Kulesha said, adding she hopes the endorsement adds more fuel to the fight against the Enbridge project.
Critics say oil sands petroleum comes with a higher carbon footprint and the pipeline would bring unacceptable risks of pollution – both inland and offshore – in the event of a spill.
"The enormous environmental damage done in the Gulf of Mexico is something we don't want to see here," Metchosin Coun. Moralea Milne said.
Other delegates said the Enbridge pipeline would cross hundreds of northern streams and rivers and bring 225 tankers a year to Kitimat, through north coast waters prone to hurricane-force winds.
One of the few politicians who bucked the anti-oil sentiment was Chetwynd Mayor Evan Saugstad.
He said UBCM shouldn't try to short-circuit the federal and provincial environmental reviews examining the Enbridge project or entrench the existing informal moratorium on offshore exploration.
"To simply say we can't do something based on popular opinion isn't, I think, the right thing to do for an institution like UBCM."
There were no resolutions related to the increasing use of an existing Kinder Morgan pipeline that already delivers oil sands crude to tankers that dock in Burnaby, which set off alarm bells earlier this year among Vancouver city councillors.
