The sign in the foreground says call before you dig???
TORONTO — Marilyn Eriksen’s family rides the subway nearly every day, getting on at the Finch station where Line 9 runs just 60 centimetres above the transit structure.
She’s lived near the pipeline around Bayview Ave. and Cummer Ave. in North York for 30 years. Her two sons, now university students, attended Cummer Valley Middle School on Maxome Ave., right beside the hydro corridor that Line 9 follows across the GTA. It’s been there all their lives.
The family walked by the markers announcing its presence; they knew it was there. But that was before Enbridge’s application to transport crude oil from Alberta’s oilsands and North Dakota’s Bakken region.
Heavy crude from Alberta’s booming oilsands is so thick — think molasses — it must be diluted with chemicals before it can flow through a pipe. Pipeline companies insist the process is safe, while critics fear diluted bitumen, sometimes called “dilbit,” is especially corrosive and more difficult to clean up. And light crude extracted from North Dakota is more flammable than traditional crude, U.S. regulators warned on Jan. 2, after the oil was involved in a string of fires and explosions following train derailments.
“We knew that there was a pipeline there but we knew that it was built for other purposes than fracked oil (from North Dakota) and diluted bitumen,” said Eriksen.
During Toronto’s floods in July 2013, Eriksen’s niece was trapped on the subway for five hours as water seeped into the tunnels. Imagine, says Eriksen, if that was oil.
“That really frightens me,” she says.
Eriksen heard about Enbridge’s plans for Line 9 in a newspaper ad in March 2013, announcing public hearings on the project.
She was struck by how difficult it was to participate. Under new federal legislation, introduced in the 2012 omnibus budget bill C-38, members of the public had to apply to comment, filling out a nine-page form justifying their right to weigh in. And the board can still refuse anyone not directly affected. The legislation is currently the subject of a court challenge that argues it violates Canadians’ right to freedom of expression.
“I was appalled,” says Eriksen, who recently retired from a career working in public health for both the federal government and private industry.
In government, “unless you’ve got a big stick and tough laws, industry can get away with a lot. The public has to be vigilant,” says Eriksen. “That’s part of why I decided to get involved.”
She successfully applied for intervenor status, meaning she could comment and ask questions during the hearings process.
Her concerns were myriad. Emergency spill response times of between 1.5 and 4 hours in the GTA; emergency plans that lacked site-specific protocols for potentially catastrophic spill locations like the Finch subway (Enbridge has since agreed to create these plans); drinking water; property values.
Eriksen wasn’t impressed with company responses to her questions, some of which referred to her requests as “fishing expeditions.” Enbridge characterized information requests from municipal and provincial governments similarly in some cases.
“There was a lot of almost arrogance on the part of Enbridge to the intervenors,” says Eriksen.
The company noted in its final arguments that the term “fishing expeditions” is routinely used during energy board proceedings and said it “certainly intended no offence.”
When the hearings ended, Eriksen turned her attention to pushing the province and municipal governments to ban diluted bitumen and Bakken crude, and to making sure more people know about Line 9.
“There are a lot of frightening aspects about this thing, and so many people are unaware of it.”
