a reply to:
canucks555
You're right: Anyone who is a true British Columbian will fight it. Add in the B.C. First Nations groups that have been winning land claim cases from
top to bottom. The Natives aren't just winning their land claims, they are also becoming self governments. They are empowering themselves. With the
rising knowledge about the Canadian genocide of the first peoples they simply aren't going to take it anymore. We had Idle No More last year that
petered out but I believe the awareness of what is possible is still simmering - it just has to be brought back to life.
Harper is having secret meetings, without informing Canadians, about deals with China. Does anyone on this forum buy anything from China and not
expect it to break? I would hope anyone that has done any reading would know not to buy any food products for themselves or their pets. It's simply
not safe. China treats their own people with disregard as to safety and concern about their land and resources and we think they are going to care
about our land any better? They will eat us alive if we give them any kind of power.
And so we need to inform ourselves and fight the government. We didn't elect our leaders to hold secret meetings so that we get dirty money. We have
too much to lose. The salmon from the ocean hatched in the rivers of B.C. The bears eat the salmon and drag the bodies to decompose in the forest
which feeds the great trees. It's all interconnected. And it is our responsibility to ensure that just for the sake of a quick convenience of turning
on a light or having the biggest house on the block doesn't impact our surroundings. We are all a circle and all connected to each other. This is
what Harper and his oil will destroy.
Again I'm not trying to be a hypocrite - we need oil. But there are ways of using less oil and of using it responsibly. Let's look at options and
not sell Canada and our people out.
The problems with Kitimat - RE: LNG
Gale-force winds. Thick fog. Crushing snow. Landslides. Waves the height of office buildings. The northern coast of British Columbia is a nexus of
nasty elements that descend upon a place abundant in marine life - humpbacks, orcas, a buffet of shellfish - and coastal creatures, including the
much-celebrated white Kermode bear, or spirit bear.
No one denies the severity of the region, not least Enbridge, which has laid in place sophisticated plans to manage it, including tugboat support for
tankers, new navigation aids and even an expensive tunnelling operation that would send pipe directly through a mountain, rather than around its
landslide-prone slopes. The company's plans recently won a major stamp of approval from Transport Canada, which reviewed plans for the marine routes
- where tankers would sail, how fast and under which conditions - and declared them sound.
Yet those who live in the area say it is home to natural forces so violent that even the best-laid plans are prone to founder. Navigation
A recent Transport Canada study concluded the water is deep enough and the passages are wide enough. But residents are concerned about the margin for
error. In four places, the route goes through channels less than two kilometres wide. At a minimum, supertankers need nearly half a kilometre in width
for safe travel. They need 33 metres in depth; in one area, the route passes over a spot 35 metres deep.
Northwestern British Columbia is home to a seismically unstable landscape assaulted by incredible amounts of rain and snow - Kitimat, for example,
averages 2,387 millimetres of precipitation a year. That often creates problems. A 2005 study found 38 "large, catastrophic landslides" in northern
B.C. in three decades, and noted that "the frequency of large landslides in northern British Columbia appears to be increasing, suggesting a link to
climate change." The study specifically names pipelines as a type of infrastructure "at risk from these large landslides."
Underwater earthquakes are another hazard, causing localized tsunamis that have been recorded along the B.C. coast. One in Kitimat Inlet, in April,
1975, produced an 8.2-metre-high wave.
There is only one place in the entire series of coastal marine routes that can adequately accommodate proposed 320,000-deadweight-tonne supertankers.
Kitimat Harbour does not meet minimum anchorage requirements, and would require tug support for supertankers. Another, called the Coghlan Anchorage,
is "not suitable to anchor vessels of the design vessels size, on a single anchor," according to Enbridge documents.
If the project is approved, oil tankers will first have to navigate a series of island-pocked, reef-strewn channels famous for heavy currents that
change direction every six hours with the tide. After running this narrow, 105-kilometre gauntlet, the tankers will cross Hecate Strait, described by
Environment Canada as "the fourth most dangerous body of water in the world." This is due to the hurricanes that drop in with little notice, on
water so shallow the ocean bottom is often exposed in the troughs between waves. Few ships could sail away from a bottom strike.
In the next 30 years, at least 6,600 oil tankers - some twice as big as any that have come before are expected to cross between Kitimat and Hecate
Strait. The problem? This route provides only one emergency anchorage big enough to harbour an oil tanker in the certain event of a surprise storm.
This is the land of the Only: the only place on Earth where wolves still feed on salmon, where black bears are sometimes white, the only place on
earth where five species of salmon fertilize the forest with their bodies hauled in by wolves, bears and birds who leave the half-eaten carcasses of
coho, chinook, sockeye, chum and pink salmon to rot into the moss and feed the trees (Salmon-specific isotopes have even been discovered in the
uppermost needles of these conifers). The trees here are among the world's oldest. Combined, oceans and woods harbour the greatest biomass density of
any ecosystem on Earth.
Enbridge has promised Kitimat 52 jobs - total.