Dear Editor:
If you listen to Kinder Morgan you would be led to believe that their expansion plans to triple the flow of fuel into their Burnaby tank farm on Burnaby Mountain and from there to be shipped by tanker to Asia is really nothing to worry about.
However, if you listen to the Burnaby fire chief or live directly downstream from the tank farm as I do or if you watched an oil tanker burn up off the coast of Japan this Thursday, you might come to a different conclusion.
You might conclude, or at least worry, that at some point there could be a fire or a spill which could endanger life and cause long lasting harm to our pristine environment.
There needs to be an assessment of the risks of this project and the wisdom of having a large densely packed tank farm holding toxic bitumen located just upstream from a fairly densely populated urban neighbourhood in the middle of Northeast Burnaby.
There is an elementary school and many housing complexes just downstream from the tank farm. You just need to watch the news or Google “oil spills” in order to see the potential dangers of a leak or a fire?
The local fire chief has told us that the situation is fraught with danger and I think that the National Energy board should turn down this proposal.
Burnaby and Vancouver don’t want to take the risk and I doubt whether a majority of people living along the route are in favour of assuming the risk.
Dan Theal, Burnaby
