From Woodstock to North Toronto….
Toronto’s NOW Magazine reports that activists, part of the Citizens’ Response Unit for Decontaminating our Environment (CRUDE) interrupted work at a large Enbridge Line 9 worksite near Dufferin and Finch in North Toronto at sunrise this morning with members of our Toronto and York University chapters attending. The action is one of several in recent weeks as Enbridge continues with “integrity digs” to uncover and repair suspected weak points along the Sarnia to Montreal pipeline. The company received approval last March to ship Alberta crude through the pipe to refineries in the east.
According to the Rising Tide Toronto Facebook page, the protest today comes in solidarity with a group of protesters at an Enbridge site near Woodstock ON. Five activists were arrested Sunday night after a 6 day work interruption of a Line 9 work site on the west side of the Thames River near Woodstock. Enbridge served a notice of injunction Sunday morning to several dozen protesters demanding they stop blockading construction on the Line 9.
Umair Muhammed, a media spokesperson for the group interrupting construction today, points out to NOW Toronto that a similar pipeline, Enbridge’s Line 6B in Michigan, ruptured spilling huge amounts of diluted bitumen into the Kalamazoo River. “Reversal is going to end up resulting in tar sands being transported through the pipeline,” Muhammad said. “And that’s something of concern, because we continue to expand production of the tar sands in Alberta, and that’s going in completely the wrong direction as far as the situation for the climate is considered.”
Police informed Rev. Maggie Helwig, the police liaison for the group, that the demonstrators are trespassing and may face arrest.
At both Innerkip (Woodstock) and North York sites, Enbridge is doing work that is necessary before the company can bring the reversal of Line 9 into operation. The reversal of flow is set to transport tar sands bitumen and Bakken crude through Ontario. Throughout the summer, concerned community and chapter members in the the region have been engaging in actions to prevent the completion of the work.
“My hope is that people further our efforts in these kinds of direct actions. We hope that these actions will continue to spread and that other individuals and groups blockade Enbridge’s Line 9 sites. We will not be deterred. We will not stop.” – Wolf Chrapko, Dam Line 9 Protestor
For more information:
http://www.nowtoronto.com/news/story.cfm?content=199190
https://www.facebook.com/RisingTideToronto
damline9.tumblr.com/
