Photo by Ute Schmid Jones
The Council of Canadians has been opposing the tripling of the existing 63,000 barrel per day Enbridge Line 10 heavy crude pipeline since November 2015.
Yesterday, the Hamilton, South Niagara and Guelph chapters took part in the ‘Rally Against Line 10 Tar Sands Pipeline in Hamilton!’ at the corner of Homestead and Upper James, Mount Hope, Hamilton.
Chapter activists Don McLean, Fiona McMurran, Kathie Clark, Mary Love, Paul Costello, Timothy Healey, and Ruth Pickering were there.
As noted on the Calgary-based transnational Enbridge corporation website, “Line 10 is a 143-kilometre export pipeline that carries oil from Enbridge’s Westover Terminal in Hamilton, Ontario to West Seneca, a suburb of Buffalo, New York. From there, the oil travels via the Kiantone Pipeline to Warren, Pennsylvania, where it is refined into gasoline, diesel, propane, butane, asphalt and other petroleum products.”
While the pipeline is 143 kilometres in length, the company is reportedly doing the pipeline expansion in segments given projects less than 40 kilometres in length are exempted from a federal environmental assessment (even though the overall route would cross approximately 64 watercourses and impact 13 wetlands).
On August 28, Hamilton-based Citizens at City Hall (CATCH) reported, “Thousands of trees are being cut down across rural Hamilton to make way for the controversial expansion of the Enbridge Line 10 oil export pipeline… Enbridge crews are currently bulldozing land at more than twenty-five spots between Nebo Road on the east mountain and the company’s pipeline hub in the Flamborough hamlet of Westover.”
The outreach for yesterday’s protest highlighted, “We are opposed to the tree cutting. We are opposed to the construction. We are opposed to the flow of tar sands bitumen through our city. And we know that the National Energy Board decision to allow it does not respect the sovereignty of Haudenosaunee and Anishinaabe peoples in this area, and it does not serve the long term health, safety, and wellbeing of the people who live in the pipeline’s path or the increasing number of people around the world whose lives are being devastated by the impacts of climate change.”
Enbridge expects the pipeline to be in service by 2018.
More photos of yesterday’s protest can be seen on Facebook here.