According to legal challenge, recommendation for approval by National Energy Board continues pattern of unlawful conduct
VANCOUVER, BC- The Tsleil-Waututh Nation has launched a second legal challenge of the National Energy Board’s (NEB) review of the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline expansion proposal.
Tsleil-Waututh, the “People of the Inlet,” has applied to the Federal Court of Appeal seeking to set aside the NEB report recommending project approval, referring to the NEB recommendation as “unlawful, invalid, or unreasonable” in its court documents.
The first legal action taken in May 2014 and still before the Federal Court of Appeal challenged the NEB failure to consult Tsleil-Waututh during the scoping process for the environmental review.
The second legal action includes a charge that “significant adverse environmental effects associated with project-related marine shipping activities were not considered by the NEB as required under the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act,” the Tsleil-Waututh said in a press release.
It also includes a charge that the NEB failed to consider the “landmark independent assessment for the project conducted by Tsleil-Waututh as a matter of its own law and jurisdiction.”
Tsleil-Waututh says that the NEB review process puts Burrard Inlet “at risk.”
“The NEB report does not address the many issues that concern Tsleil-Waututh. We are asking the court to make things right, both for our community and for everyone who lives around the inlet,” said Chief Maureen Thomas.
Kinder Morgan says it had engaged in consultations with approximately 133 First Nations by May, 2015.
“Kinder Morgan Canada has made repeated attempts to reach out to and meet with the Chief and Council of the Tsleil-Waututh Nation, but to date, they have refused to engage,” the company said in an earlier statement.
About 40 Aboriginal groups located along the project and marine corridor in Alberta and British Columbia have provided written letters of support for the project, according to Kinder Morgan.
“Our laws establish a sacred trust, a responsibility to care for our waters, lands, air and resources. The federal government has forced us to go to court once again to defend ourselves and our territory,” said Rueben George, project manager for Tsleil-Waututh’s Sacred Trust Initiative.
The Tsleil-Waututh Nation says the second legal challenge may take years to work through the court system and may “delay project implementation, escalate construction costs, and increase the legal and financial risk for Kinder Morgan shareholders.”
Arguments in the first legal action are complete and a ruling from the Federal Court of Appeal is expected in the near future.
If Tsleil-Waututh prevails, the environmental review of the expansion project could be sent back to the NEB to correct numerous legal errors.
The Tsleil-Waututh case is one of several legal challenges to the NEB’s report. The City of Vancouver, Squamish Nation, and a coalition of environmental groups have all filed cases challenging the controversial NEB process and recommendation, and more are expected.
If the federal government were to ultimately give approval, Kinder Morgan’s proposal would see the transport of oil sands oil triple from its present level of approximately 300,000 b/d to almost 900,000 b/d.
The Tsleil-Waututh say that a seven-fold increase in oil tankers moving through Burrard Inlet and the Salish Sea, from about one a week to more than one a day, could lead to an increase in groundings, accidents, incidents, leaks, and oil spills.
“A serious oil spill would devastate an already-stressed marine environment and risks collapses in the remaining salmon stocks and further contamination of shellfish beds, wiping out Indigenous fishing and harvesting rights,” the Nation said in its release.
According to the Government of Canada website, the only major oil spill in the last 20 years on Canada’s West Coast occurred in 2006, when the B.C. ferry Queen of the North sank with 240 tonnes of oil on board. (In comparison, the Exxon Valdez spilled approximately 40,000 tonnes of oil in 1989.)