Urgent: Enbridge Line 9 Site has been occupied close to Burlington, Ontario this morning
Krystalline Kraus
| May 20, 2014
Early this morning, anti-tar sands activists are currently blockading the access road to an exposed section of Enbridge’s Line 9 pipeline. They have pledged to remain on site for, “at least twelve hours, one hour for every thousand anomalies Enbridge has reported to exist on the line.”
The blockaders arrived on site at 7:00 am and began to turn Enbridge Oil employees as they began to arrive for their morning shift.
Line 9 is being prepared to carry tar sands bitumen across Ontario, and right through Toronto despite this being the most populous city in Canada. In fact, “this particular work site is adjacent to the Bronte creek, a major waterway flowing to Lake Ontario, the water source for more than ten million people.”
“Enbridge calls these developments integrity digs,” said Danielle Boissineau, one of the blockaders, “but to anyone watching the Line 9 issue, it’s clear Enbridge has no integrity. This work on the line is just a band-aid, a flimsy patch over the most outrageous flaws in the Line 9 plan.”
“Line 9 has nearly 13,000 structural weaknesses along its length” said Brian Sutherland, a Burlington resident. “And yet Enbridge is only doing a few hundred integrity digs. Enbridge has been denying the problems with the pipe for years, and they still refuse to do the hydrostatic testing requested by the province. Are we really supposed to trust Enbridge when they tell us that this time they’ll do it right?”
Are these fears unfounded?
Just last week in Los Angeles, California Streets, oil spilled out onto American streets with an initial geyser that shot crude oil 20 feet into the air, and over an area half a mile (0.8km) in length, according to the Los Angeles Fire Department.
The above-ground oil pipeline by Plains All American broke in the early hours of Thursday May 15, 2014, near San Fernando Road, a major road in Los Angeles. A total estimated amount of 10,000 gallons (45,000 litres) spilled into the streets.
Canadians can also remember the disastrous spill from Enbridge’s line 6b into the Kalamazoo River in Michigan in 2010, where millions of litres of oil spilled and have so far proven impossible to clean up.
More info on the blockade to come…
