If people are to coordinate a possible fight back against the tar sands, there needs to be voices from all sectors. This is not an Albertan fight alone, and pipelines will also be running over the landowners of farms through Saskatchewan, Manitoba and if Enbridge has their way, British Columbia. These voices, when linked to a brutally undemocratic process & an environmental nightmare, ironically may turn around their historical placement as the the displacers of indigenous peoples from their lands, and may instead be a great ally in a quest against the modern day oil corporations-- who work much as those who laid down the railway over a century ago, cutting more than just the land.
Today, attacks on landowners and nations are a part of the largest industrial project on earth-- ever-- a project built to help make up losses for the North American energy market. Those "losses" are in the inability to "pacify" people in Iraq, conquest new fields and to make up for the depletion of "easy oil" in a world where conventional oil is peaking as we speak and type.
--M
Marie Lake monitoring demanded
By MAX MAUDIE, SUN MEDIA
http://www.edmontonsun.com/News/Edmonton/2007/04/16/4033593-sun.html
An Edmonton man is fighting to have the province weigh the impact of proposed oil exploration on a popular northern Alberta lake.
Calgary-based Oilsands Underground Mining (OSUM) Corporation owns the mineral rights underneath Marie Lake - near Cold Lake - and the company has held public consultations on its plans for seismic activity and oil exploration.
Marie Lake is a popular recreation spot for Edmontonians.
Edmonton's Chris Goss, who has a cabin at the lake, fears the seismic testing and eventual wells beneath the lake will damage its ecosystem.
"It's very important for me to use the lake because now my great nephews are starting to make use of it," Goss said yesterday.
"My dad built that cabin with the plan of passing it down through the family."
OSUM has hosted two open forums in Edmonton on plans for the lake, most recently April 3,
But Goss said no one from the province attended either meeting.
"We want the government to actually hold an environmental impact study on this, because we feel it impacts the bottom of a fish-bearing lake bed," he added.
Goss said he's been told by the province that OSUM's proposal doesn't involve disturbances to the lake bed, therefore Alberta doesn't have a regulatory responsibility in the matter.
But Goss doesn't buy that.
OSUM president and CEO Peter Putnam has told Sun Media he understands the public concerns.
He said working underground allows the resource to be accessed without any surface impact.
