The current National Enerby Board hearings on the pipeline expansion route in Burnaby are exposing the Kinder Morgan spokespeople to some pretty direct questioning from the City of Burnaby’s lawyer, Greg McDade.
Our story on page 1 details just one slice of the interrogation by McDade. In an effort to determine how, or why, Kinder Morgan planned the pipeline route in a Burnaby nature conservation area, we discover that Kinder Morgan used maps off of the city’s website. The company didn’t, apparently, bother to get more information from city hall. Kinder Morgan rationalizes this lack of due diligence by saying that the City of Burnaby had not been cooperative in their dealings with them.
Kinder Morgan is relying on an NEB ruling that gave the company the right to bypass the city’s zoning and tree-cutting bylaws. The NEB’s ruling said that Burnaby had behaved unreasonably while dealing with Kinder Morgan on applications. So, the NEB just said, “Heck, bypass the city.”
So, why wouldn’t Kinder Morgan just use a website to create a pipeline route? In fact, they might as well just use Google maps.
The NEB has effectively created a situation where Kinder Morgan does not have to deal with the city. In fact, the NEB has, by its actions and ruling, encouraged Kinder Morgan to not deal with the city.
This should make the NEB give their collective heads a shake.
By providing Kinder Morgan with a one-excuse-fits-all for the pipeline route and expansion, it has virtually created a situation where there is little or no incentive for Kinder Morgan to get into the nitty-gritty of the route with the city. Just blame city hall if you didn’t know there was a nature area on the route. Oh, and those trees? They weren’t on the website either. Just blame city hall.
The problem is that the NEB has already approved the pipeline, which means that this hearing, in our opinion, is really about making sure Kinder Morgan can situate the route and how it can do so without slowing construction down. When, or if, the NEB board finds that Kinder Morgan’s route is in some way completely unrealistic, we hope it will act. But even then, it will probably just ask Kinder Morgan to reroute it a bit or possibly compensate landowners. Or build a better tunnel, overpass or containment field. Or give fire extinguishers to everyone on the route.
Do we sound cynical? No, not at all.
