BURNABY, B.C. C The nation’s Energy Board got an earful Tuesday around the first day of hearings into Kinder Morgan Canada Ltd.’s intend to expand its Trans Mountain pipeline network towards the West Coast.
Amid protests and marches outside, an NEB panel was told its process is “out-dated,” it does not have the authority to see whether First Nations have been consulted which, overall, the $5.4 billion project shouldn’t be approved.
Anthony Capuccinello, solicitor for that Town of Surrey, through which the pipeline runs, was the very first intervenor in summary his city’s arguments regarding the pipeline.
Lawyers for other local municipalities, First Nations and non-governmental organizations are preparing final oral submissions over the next fourteen days on the project, which would expand the Trans Mountain system’s capacity to deliver oil from Alberta to the West Coast by 590,000 barrels each day.
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Arguing that the NEB’s approach to granting and overseeing pipeline approvals is out-dated, Capuccinello called Kinder Morgan’s story supporting its Trans Mountain pipeline expansion project “a fiction.”
He said the pipeline company should compensate his city for the additional cost of building and looking after infrastructure such as sewers and roads, which in Surrey is complicated through the have to work around the present Trans Mountain pipeline, and he said could be further complicated by the expansion.
“It is not for the Town of Surrey and residents of Bc to pay for those costs and subsidize the shareholders of Trans Mountain,” Capuccinello said.
In a sharply worded address, he repeated the city’s written argument filed a week ago, the expansion would boost the cost of building and looking after infrastructure like sewers and roads in metro Vancouver by $93 million 50 plus years.
Surrey, unlike the neighbouring town of Burnaby, isn’t necessarily opposed to the work, but expects to be compensated for the additional infrastructure costs its construction would impose on the city.
“The city doesn’t in principle support any growth of the Trans Mountain system that negatively impacts the town of Surrey,” Capuccinello said.
He also asked the NEB to want Kinder Morgan to decommission, remove and relocate portions of the existing Trans Mountain pipeline through Surrey, a step which the city said in the written argument would “significantly reduce the costs of operating, maintaining and replacing infrastructure.”
He said the cost of removing the existing line in Surrey and relocating it is believed at $36 million, a treadmill percent to two per cent of the project’s total cost.
Later within the day, representatives in the Musqueam Indian Band expressed “great concern about the pipeline route, and not simply the pipeline route however the increased tanker traffic which goes with it.”
“Musqueam has built aboriginal rights to fish in its traditional territory,” the band’s lawyer James Reynolds told the hearing.
The Musqueam band is demanding the government “fully justify” the expansion project, which it said will infringe on its ability to fish territory such as the Burrard Inlet in Vancouver, which the Top court has recognized as its traditional territory.
“We submit the evidence that Musqueam gave has clearly satisfied the exam of showing non-trivial infringement,” Reynolds said. “The burden has become on the Crown to warrant the infringement which is not done.”
The requirement to justify an infringement on an aboriginal right, this guitar rock band noted inside a written submission filed in November, is “distinct from a regulatory process like the NEB process and also the Crown’s duty to see and accommodate unproven rights.”
The hearings are scheduled to carry on in Burnaby before shifting to Calgary, where oil and gas companies and other First Nations will be permitted to summarize their arguments.
On Wednesday, representatives from Burnaby, home to one of the project’s most outspoken opponents in Mayor Derek Corrigan, are scheduled to create final arguments.
gmorgan@postmedia.com
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