LETTER — How can communities accept money from pipeline?

LETTER — I just don’t understand how it has come to be that some mayors and councils and even colleges in the Thompson region appear ready to accept cash offers from Kinder Morgan, before Canadians have even said yes or no to this project.

In Langley, major and council has refused this money to date, some citizens even calling it a “bribe.” The Kinder Morgan website notes the following will be “to compensate for the disruption” during pipeline construction: Kamloops $700,000, TRUniversity $500,000 Clearwater $390,000, Barriere $290,000 and Vavenby, Birch Island, Black Pool, Blue River, Avola, Little Fort and Black Pines, $845,000.

I have been coming to the North Thompson region for 50 years for business and pleasure. The sport and First Nations fisheries, and other river industries, are and always will be more economically important than the local valley pipeline industry. In fact the proposed new pipe is not for Canadians at all, but is a Texas company supplying China with tar sands bitumen. As a businessman and as an enjoyer of the outdoors of the North Thompson, I can see only negative economic benefits coming from this tar sands pipeline.

This is because tar sands bitumen is the worst polluting of all oils, and would coat the Thompson and Fraser river gravel and sloughs for 1000s miles and as we know from the Alaska and the Kalamazoo spills this oil would be unrecoverable and would kill the river for a generation or more.

There have been many spills on the Trans Mountain pipeline and there will be many more, this is just another statistic. In my experience this company does its utmost to keep these spills from public view. I can forward a summary report of these past spills to concerned citizens who might wish to now present this to mayor and council (my email is davidellis@lightspeed.ca).

DAVID ELLIS

Roving bookseller to the small towns of B.C.