Beverly Swamp pipeline stopped
Spencer Creek is Hamilton’s largest stream with headwaters in the Beverly Swamp. It flows through Valens and Christie Conservation Areas before passing through Dundas to Cootes Paradise. - photo by Jim Quinn
The controversial plan to push a new fracked gas pipeline across rural Hamilton has been abandoned by Enbridge, although the company suggests it may re-launch the project next year. The company cites the pandemic as a factor in determining “there is no longer a need for the project in the time frame as originally proposed.”
The brand new 48-inch diameter pipeline would have run through parts of the Beverly Swamp and across both Spencer Creek and Bronte Creek in a path north of Safari Road from Valens Road to just east of Highway 6. It has been opposed by dozens of groups including the Hamilton 350 Committee and Environment Hamilton.
Enbridge sent a letter this afternoon to the Ontario Energy Board (OEB) formally “withdrawing its application” but indicating it “will reassess customer demand” next year “and expects that as sufficient need can be confirmed in the future” that it will submit a new application.
Nearly one kilometre of the pipe would have crossed lands owned by the Hamilton Conservation Authority (HCA) which promises on its website that what it has purchased will never be developed or bulldozed. Enbridge’s plans show a 44-metre wide permanent easement plus additional HCA lands temporarily required for construction staging for a total of nearly 12 acres of mostly forested lands.
Last February, in response to arguments of the Hamilton 350 Committee, the conservation authority board voted unanimously to require an ecological study of the pipeline route and an independent peer review before it would consider providing the easements sought by Enbridge. That position was subsequently endorsed by Hamilton City Council with both expressing strong concern that the pipeline could be approved by the OEB prior to such studies being undertaken.
HCA staff told Hamilton 350 last week that the ecological study had been received and the peer review would be submitted by the end of this month after which both will be made available for public comment before an easement decision was made. Today’s letter may defer this commenting opportunity.
Both the HCA and city council wanted the OEB to examine the climatic impacts associated with the pipeline, both from the hydraulic fracking used to extract it and from the emissions when it was subsequently burned. However, the OEB ruled that climate concerns are not part of its mandate.
The city joined sixteen other intervenors when the OEB hearings were launched in January. The intervenors generated over 850 questions that Enbridge was required to answer, but on the deadline day the company instead asked the OEB to pause the process while it re-examined the project.
That was last May and Enbridge promised to communicate with the OEB by mid-November at the latest. The letter today is expected to bring an end to the current process and if the company does decide to revive the project it will need to file a new application and begin the process again.
In its now abandoned application, Enbridge argued the pipeline expansion was needed to help the company meet two gas markets in particular. One is the expectation that the Ontario government will replace aging nuclear reactors with a ramp-up in gas-fired electricity generation.
The Ontario Clean Air Alliance and over 40 other groups are campaigning against this provincial plan, arguing that it will reverse much of the reduction in pollution and greenhouse gas emissions achieved by the Liberals in shutting down all of Ontario’s coal-fired electricity facilities. They calculate that the gas-fired ramp up would result in a 300 to 400 percent hike in emissions and would cost more than purchasing clean hydro-electric power from Quebec.
The second market cited by Enbridge in its application is expected demand in the New England portion of the US. The company acknowledged that most of its gas now comes from fracking in Pennsylvania but that public and government protests are preventing direct shipments of gas across New York State which has banned fracking and recently blocked a new gas pipeline because it violates the state’s climate commitments.
The alternative route envisaged by the Enbridge project would see the Pennsylvania gas pumped west and north to Sarnia and across southern Ontario to Quebec before being sent back to the US. The rural Hamilton pipeline would have been added to Enbridge’s southern Ontario system that runs from Sarnia to Toronto.
