A full-house in North Bay last night to hear Barlow, Calzavara and Courtney speak against the Energy East pipeline.
The Council of Canadians organized a successful town hall meeting in North Bay last night in opposition to the proposed Energy East pipeline.
The North Bay Nugget reports, “More than 200 people who crowded into St. Andrew’s United Church Tuesday night to hear foes of the proposed Energy East pipeline outline their fears about what the project will bring.” Council of Canadians chairperson Maude Barlow says the number was closer to 300. The article continues, “The event, sponsored by the Council of Canadians and Stop Energy East (North Bay), included presentations from Barlow and Mark Calzavara, Ontario regional organizer with the Council. Calzavara recently compiled the report When Oil Meets Water: How the Energy East pipeline threatens North Bay watersheds.”
The article adds, “Barlow and Calzavara stressed that opponents to the Energy East plan have a long, tough fight ahead of them. ‘It’s definitely an uphill battle’, Calzavara said. ‘But you can’t give up. You have to keep talking to people. You’ve got allies and we will stop them.'”
And the article highlights, “Steve Courtney, of Theia GeoAnalytics of North Bay and a former oil sands worker in Alberta, said Northern Ontario represents the worst terrain in the country for the pipeline to cross. ‘The Canadian Shield was difficult to put the railway through’, he noted, and the stresses exerted on the pipeline are even worse than the rails. The problem in the local area, he said, is not where the pipeline crosses the mouth of Trout Lake, which supplies North Bay’s water, but along the escarpments and across the creeks and streams that empty into the lake. Every one of them, he said, is a potential disaster for the community. He also pointed out that rerouting the pipeline won’t help. ‘TransCanada has already said they won’t reroute the pipeline’, he said, then added that it doesn’t matter, because moving it ‘just puts it upstream to someone else.'”
The forum was co-hosted by the Council of Canadians and Stop Energy East North Bay and co-sponsored by Friends of Temagami, Nipissing Environmental Watch, Northwatch and Transition Town North Bay.
The day prior to the town hall meeting, the Council of Canadians released its report ‘When Oil Meets Water: How the Energy East pipeline threatens North Bay watersheds’ at a media conference in North Bay. For the resulting media coverage on that, please click here.
Further reading
North Bay, Ontario expresses opposition to Energy East pipeline (May 5, 2013)
TransCanada schooled in North Bay: Local organizers present their side at company open houses (August 28, 2013)
‘Our Risk, Their Reward’ public forum in North Bay (April 12, 2014)
North Bay seeks to protect its drinking water from the Energy East pipeline (September 10, 2014)
Ontario government sees Energy East as threat to North Bay’s drinking water (March 6, 2015)
