Take action on Line 9

NEB’s green light for Line 9
sacrifices waterways, public health and the climate

The National Energy Board (NEB) gave the green light to Enbridge Inc.’s contentious Line 9B pipeline on February 6, 2015, despite the company’s failure to make necessary safety improvements. The decision means that critical safety measures will not be implemented before Enbridge starts running highly volatile tar sands crude oil through the 40-year-old pipeline. Line 9 crosses every major river and tributary that supplies southern Ontario with most of its drinking water.

In October 2014, the NEB ordered Enbridge to meet several safety conditions prior to operating Line 9, including the installation of shut-off valves within 1 km on both sides of major water crossings. Enbridge spent the next four months convincing the NEB that the current 62 valves they have in place are sufficient to meet this condition despite there being over 300 water crossings along the pipeline, including the Don, Humber, and Rouge. If there was any question the NEB is a rubber stamp, this back-pedalling puts that to rest. The correspondence from Enbridge on the valve issue would have us believe they won the topographical lottery, and that amazingly there are hills in all the right places and gravity would prevent an oil spill, and therefore really there was no need for so many new valves.

On April 2, 2015, City of Toronto councillors passed a motion 31 to 2 asking for valves to be put on each side of Toronto’s waterways to help protect those waterways which are sources of the city's drinking water, but there is no certainty at all that this will happen. Enbridge plans to pump highly controversial and toxic diluted bitumen through this 40-year-old pipeline – a substance that the pipeline was never built to carry and one which would increase the internal pressure on the pipe drastically.

Municipalities and First Nations along the pipeline route have sounded the alarm, citing a high probability of spills resulting in contamination of water and land. “The (NEB) process is unable to discharge the duty to consult and accommodate, lacks transparency in decision making, and is contrary to the principle of free, prior and informed consent,” states Stan Beardy, regional chief of 133 First Nations in Ontario, in his letter to the NEB on February 5, 2015.

In 2010, Line 9’s sister pipeline in Michigan, Enbridge's Line 6B, built at the same time and from the same materials, ruptured, spilling over a million gallons of diluted bitumen into the Kalamazoo River. It was the largest inland oil spill in U.S. history.

People living with Line 9 under their houses, schools, hospitals, farms need to very loudly and publicly tell Enbridge they will not allow their health and water to be sacrificed for profit.

The NEB clearly has no intention of upholding their own safety measures to ensure the health of our water and communities. It is not in the public interest to go on supporting tar sands development projects which contribute exorbitantly to climate change, when basic precautions to protect our drinking water are not observed.

To prevent Enbridge’s Line 9 project from going ahead an intense campaign of public opposition that requires renewed efforts from municipal and provincial governments, alongside continuing efforts of First Nations and community groups.

Communities working together to resist these pipeline projects has been proven to work – look at how long the Keystone XL has been stalled, look at the Northern Gateway Pipeline through BC, NEB-approved, but basically abandoned by Enbridge because they can’t get social license to build it. The planned TransCanada Energy East pipeline is poised to face the same doomed fate: public opposition to pipelines is a wildfire.

Contact your local city councillor, your MP and MPP
to express your concern about Line 9


To get involved in Toronto, contact:

East End Against Line 9
info@eastendnotar.org
www.eastendnotar.org
Facebook.com/pages/Toronto-East-End-Against-Line-9

Scarborough Bitumen Free Future
scarboroughbff@gmail.com

West End Against Line 9
westendnoline9@gmail.com
Facebook.com/TorontoWestEndAgainstLine9




Related Topics:
Aboriginal Communities/Environmental Issues Climate ChangeDrinking Water Protection Energy/Environmental Issues Environmental Emergencies Environmental Impacts Environmental Protection Oil & Gas/Environmental Issues Oil PipelinesOil SpillsOntario EnvironmentPipeline ConstructionPipeline SafetyPipelinesPublic SafetyTarsandsToronto/Natural AreasWater/Lakes/Rivers Water Pollution