EDITORIAL – New pipeline plan is a sure sign that we live in a world gone insane

An editorial by Mel Rothenburger.

HAS THE WORLD gone stark raving mad? The announcement of plans to build the proposed Alberta-through-B.C. oil pipeline is being greeted as some sort of perfect solution because it will allow the north coast tanker ban to remain in place.

But wait — where will it go instead of Alberta Premier Danielle Smith’s favoured northern route. Right through Kamloops, that’s where. Because the agreed-to-route is now to piggy back on the Trans Mountain route.

Seriously, we need to think about that. New grass has barely grown — and some of it is pretty crappy grass — over the trench dug for the Trans Mountain expansion, and now we’re going to be faced with going through it all again?

See also: ROTHENBURGER – Living in the path of the Trans Mountain juggernaut

Some of the right of way for the Trans Mountain is wider than a multi-lane super highway. Expanding it even further to add another pipe to the two existing ones will likely require that right of way to be widened to hundreds of yards in places. In some parts of the TM route there’s simply nowhere else to go.

Trans Mountain caused a lot of pain along the way, despite efforts to be a good citizen. In our own part of the province, land was torn up through forests and farm land, our cherished Lac du Bois grasslands, through town and under the Thompson River as it headed south. Wildlife was disrupted along with humans.

The completed expansion currently carries a maximum of 890,000 barrels per day. The new pipeline, running beside it, is projected to carry a billion barrels. The way I read it, that’s on top of TM’s capacity, which will be topped up in future. That would mean about twice as much oil is going to be surging past us a very few feet underground.

Yes, affected land owners received “inconvenience” payments during the TM expansion but I doubt there’s one among them who would have preferred it not to have happened at all (and I, by the way, am one of them). And now they’re expected to go through it again? And every community and eco-system that lived through that expansion is supposed to watch it again?

And let’s not forget that the Trans Mountain expansion was a financial disaster to build, rising in cost from an estimated $4.5 billion to $35 billion, causing the original owner, Kinder Morgan, to seek and get a bailout in the form of a purchase by the federal government. Imagine how many billions upon billions this new pipeline will cost taxpayers.

No, this is not good news. It will take a few years to complete this new venture but when it slowly makes its way through our neck of the woods, it will feel like a recurring nightmare, and the TM expansion will seem like yesterday.

Mel Rothenburger is a former regular contributor to CFJC-TV and CBC radio, publishes the ArmchairMayor.ca opinion website, writes for the Kamloops Chronicle and is a recipient of the Jack Webster Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award, and was a Webster Foundation Commentator of the Year finalist. He has served as mayor of Kamloops, school board chair and TNRD director, and is a retired daily newspaper editor.  He can be reached at mrothenburger@armchairmayor.ca.