Burnaby mayor Derek Corrigan is raising concerns that the National Energy Board could approve Kinder Morgan's pipeline expansion plan without addressing the city's concerns around safety and emergency response capacity.
Corrigan's comments came after the board released a set of conditions Kinder Morgan would have to meet should the new oil pipeline be approved.
"We are being told that Kinder Morgan will not have to submit most of its critical plans -
Including its emergency response, security, environmental protection, navigation safety, route alignment, and emissions plans - until after the pipeline proposal is approved," Corrigan said in a media release. "All of (the) most important issues are being deferred until after approval. This is dangerous and completely unacceptable."
According to Corrigan, Kinder Morgan would not have to submit its emergency response plan until 90 days before operations start.
"We're being told by the NEB just to 'trust us' on the key issues for Burnaby that should result in the pipeline being rejected," Corrigan said.
Gregory McDade, the lawyer representing the city in the National Energy Board hearing, said the board is demonstrating "disdain" for the public hearing process.
"The NEB proposes to approve the pipeline based on plans that haven't been written yet. This is an approve-first/study-later approach and is insulting to everyone who will participate in the hearings," he said in the media release. "It's clear that the NEB intends to approve the project."
The city has raised concerns that an incident with the pipeline could require all of the city's emergency response capacity, leaving no resources left over for local residents. Mayor and council have adamantly opposed the pipeline expansion, which would require building a new line through Burnaby, expanding the tank farm on Burnaby Mountain and building new berths at the Westridge Marine Terminal.
The city, which was granted intervenor status, is also taking issue with the hearing process itself, in particular the absence of oral hearings and opportunities for cross examination of evidence and the May 2 deadline to file information requests.
Sarah Kiley, spokesperson for the National Energy Board, said all of the concerns the city raised can be put to Trans Mountain (Kinder Morgan) in the form of an information request, and the company would be required to respond. If the city found the response was missing information or not complete enough, they could ask the NEB to have Kinder Morgan supply more information.
As for the board’s conditions, Kiley said they are in draft form only and subject to change. The city has an opportunity to comment on them, and the NEB will take that into consideration, she added.
“These are the conditions that are fairly standard, but if someone is not happy with them ... certainly we expect to hear about that," Kiley told the NOW. “These are just draft at this stage, and we know they are going to change.”
The deadline for the first round of information requests was May 2, but following a request for an extension from the city and other intervenors, the board bumped that deadline back to May 12.
According to Kiley, any parties who miss that can apply during the second round, which ends on Sept. 11.
The pipeline hearing starts in late January, and oral aboriginal hearings are slated for later this year. The board members have to have their final report in the hands of the Minister of Natural Resource by July 2, 2015.
According to Kiley, questions, responses and evidence filed as part of the hearing has to be in written form, but intervenors’ final arguments are made orally. However, the process does not include an oral cross examination.
“In this case, we’ve had more intervenors than we’ve ever had in any other hearing,” she said.
