ACTION ALERT: Coastal Gas Link Destroying Skeena Fish Habitat
- Details
- Published on Sunday, 29 November -0001 16:00
- Written by editor
When rivers fill with sediment, salmon can’t breathe and their eggs die. Coastal GasLink has botched their Skeena Valley pipeline project.
When rivers fill with sediment,
salmon can’t breathe and their eggs die.
Coastal GasLink is building a pipeline through one of the most important salmon watersheds in the world. It’s crossing hundreds of critical streams and rivers. And they are botching the job.
The basic responsibility of companies who are permitted to construct large projects in B.C. is to follow our rules. In this case, those rules protect values like fish and fish habitat, which British Columbians care a whole heck of a lot more about than foreign-owned oil and gas mega-projects.
Unfortunately, these are rules Coastal GasLink can’t seem to follow. And nobody is holding them to account. Not the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. Not the B.C. ministry for Water, Land and Resource Stewardship. And not B.C.’s Oil and Gas Commission, which, in an Orwellian twist of bureaucracy, is in charge of environmental protection for this project.
Tell Minister Osborne to halt work on the Coastal GasLink project
The mandate letter for the Minister of Energy, Mines and Low Carbon Innovation, which oversees the Oil and Gas commission states: “British Columbia has significant environmental, social and governance advantages in our partnerships with First Nations, our high standards for major project environmental protection, and our commitment to transparent and independent permitting and corporate regulation."
Coastal Gas link has promised British Columbians they will achieve “the highest standards of environmental protection” during construction.
However, a brazen culture of non-compliance, and a callous disregard for other values British Columbians hold dear, continues.
In 2020, inspectors with the B.C. Environmental Assessment Office (EAO) issued a stop work order to correct Coastal Gas Link's failure to comply with habitat surveys. As of last fall, 51 warnings, 16 orders, and two fines totalling more than $240,000 "for repeated non-compliance," were levied. A year ago, the EAO found the pipeline project continually failed to meet erosion and sediment-control requirements and just issued a third fine of $213,600.
Today, it is anything but clear who is in charge.
A stop work order is required until:
- it’s crystal clear how our rivers and streams will be protected from this renegade Alberta pipeline company, and
- CGL faces real consequences for their brazen disregard for our salmon watersheds.
Join us in calling on Minister Osborne to issue a stop-work order on the Coastal GasLink project.
Thanks for stepping up to protect the vital Skeena Watershed.
David, on behalf of the CodeBlue BC team.
View photos of damage to the Clore River.
Read more about Coastal GasLink's track record.
CodeBlueBC · British Columbia, BC, Canada
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