Turn it down

Re: “Valuing land not always a strict matter of money,”Nigel Hannaford, Opinion, Dec. 20.

As a longtime investor in the oil and gas industry (and a founder/director of several oil and gas companies) as well as a landowner in the area, it is always refreshing to read a balanced viewpoint.

However, I suggest that Nigel Hannaford overlooked one pertinent piece of information. There is an alternative route for the pipeline proposed by Petro-Canada that would follow the existing industrial corridor created by Highway 940 (where clear-cut logging and oil and gas development exist). Petro-Canada identified this alternative route and it would avoid creating new disturbance in the relatively undisturbed backcountry of K-Country.

The only existing development on the proposed K-Country route is very old seismic lines that have largely grown in. The choice for Albertans in this case is not the false dichotomy of development vs. no-development, but ensuring the best route is chosen.

Petro-Canada attempted to argue at the ERCB hearing that the Hwy. 940 route is not viable (their proposed route through undisturbed K-Country has been an extended exercise in rationalization, perhaps because of the ulterior motives Hannaford suggests).

However, the Big Loop and Pekisko groups have demonstrated, through cross-examination and expert witnesses, that Petro-Canada’s claims are very much in doubt.

The ERCB’s task is to ensure the best route is chosen. Since Petro-Canada has failed to show it has selected the best pipeline route, it is reasonable to expect the ERCB to deny their application (or failing that, perhaps the Alberta Court of Appeal).

Curtis D. Bartlett, Calgary

Before a packed hall of more than 200 in the High River Memorial Centre, the Pekisko Group gave strongly compelling reasons that the PetroCanada should not drill sour gas wells nor build a 56-kilomere pipe line crossing 72 water courses. Throughout the morning, Southern Alberta residents heard Pekisko Group President Mac Blades of the Rocking P Ranch speak of the irreparable damage that the pipe line will cause to that highly sensitive ecological area. Francis Gardner of the Mt. Sentinel Ranch spoke of the commitment of generations of ranchers in the Pekisko area to protecting the land.

The final presenter Gordon Cartwright of the D Ranch took nearly two hours and several slides to show the history of the land as awell as the provincial and federal legislation to protect this area and the need to reconcile rangeland with oil and gas. He continually described the ecological sensitivity of the Pekisko area and the role that land plays with the first nations in that area.

The Energy Resource Conservation Board (ERCB) as well as the audience in the hall sat with focused interest for that morning period.

In the afternoon period including cross examination of the representatives of the Pekisko Group, the ERCB asked among other questions what management and control do the ranchers exercise to protect the land and what is currently being practiced. Their responses included banning All Terrain Vehicles (ATVs). Hunters allowed to hunt must park their vehicles at designated locations and proceed by horse or walk into the area. Mt. Sentinel Ranch posts a map indicating where the hunters can go.

The ERCB panel asked for the ranchers to help the panel decide what to do. It asked the ranchers if this was yet another example of “Not In My Back Yard (NIMBY)”. Francis Gardner responded that the panel needs to look at the opportunity costs. What will be the cost of the damage be if the sour gas drilling and pipe line construction does proceed? Gordon Cartwright gave the final comment to the ERCB panel by saying that we are destroying the land at a greater pace than it has been regenerating in the past 100 years. In some areas of the prairies, there is less than 5% left. We only need to look at the changes. Nature may survive, but what will be the quality of life for human beings?

WHEN:

• Mon. Dec. 15: 10-6 p.m.
• Thurs. Dec. 18: 8:30-1 pm
• Fri. Dec. 19: 9-5 pm.

WHERE:

Highwood Memorial Centre
128 - 5 Avenue W.
High River, AB

This is the last week of the hearing for 2008. It will reconvene sometime next year. TBD.

Lorne Fitch said today:

There are only two areas left in the foothills of Southern Alberta from the Montana border to the Bow River that are of sufficient size and biological integrity — that is, without roads and other industrial fragmentation — where we can see what the world was like before we started the massive changes that have happened to the rest of it. One is the Whaleback which has been made a heritage rangeland to keep it in a pristine and unfragmented state. This area — the headwaters region of Pekisko and Willow Creeks — falls into the same category.  It is the place where things begin.

The pipeline would mean the loss of this area. It would be like losing one of the gems in your wedding ring.