Enter July 27 and 9 am.

CALGARY - Lingering concerns over a romance between an oil company staffer and an employee at Alberta’s energy industry regulator may once again hold up a contentious hearing on sour gas development in the Eastern Slopes.

At the heart of a new legal challenge from Longview-area ranchers is unanswered questions about whether the “personal relationship” affected the hearing’s proceedings.

Following an investigation, the Energy Resources Conservation Board (ERCB)concluded the couple’s relationship earlier this year did not compromise the ongoing hearing process for the Sullivan Field sour gas project, proposed by Petro-Canada.

But a collection of landowners known as the Big Loop Group has asked for permission to appear before Alberta’s Court of Appeal to appeal the validity of the ERCB’s decision.

Court filings say the board’s examination of the “personal relationship” was flawed on numerous fronts.

“The applicants submit that the ERCB committed a number of errors of law,” said the notice of motion.

Representatives for landowners did not get to participate in the in-camera investigation, while Petro-Canada did, documents say.

It was last February when, in a highly unusual move, the board announced it would suspended the application process based on concerns the relationship influenced the controversial hearing.

An investigation report released the next month said the ERCB employee had a crush on the Petro-Canada employee during the public hearings– which began last November –but only handed over a business card on Jan. 30, the last day of public presentations in High River.

However, the investigation found the two worked in different areas and likely didn’t influence one another.

The identity of the couples has never been revealed. Court documents from the landowners’ group say a public naming is not required, just transcripts of investigation interviews and other documents, with names blacked out.

Big Loop lawyer Stan Carscallen would not comment on the proceedings this week.

But landowners have long been opposed to Petro-Canada’s Sullivan Field project, which proposes 11 new sour gas wells and two pipelines in Kananaskis Country–26 kilometres west of the town of Longview. The ranchers say the proposed pipeline route would ruin one of the last remaining bits of near-pristine land in the province.

However, Petro-Canada says other routes were dismissed due to environmental considerations and the feasibility of construction. The company also said it has given the ERCB a comprehensive environmental assessment.

Last week, the ERCB turned down the landowners’ bid to freeze the hearing process while issues are heard in the Court of Appeal.

Petro-Canada spokesman Kyle Happy said the company’s original position stands. “We believe the board took the appropriate steps to make sure the integrity of the hearing was not compromised,” Happy said.

One of the key issues of the sour gas project hearing is how close the pipeline will be built to the Eden Valley reserve. Petro-Canada wants to build a pipeline within 300 metres of the reserve boundary and 440 metres from the nearest home.

Douglas Rae, the lawyer representing the reserve, questioned the safety setbacks from the pipeline.

Rae’s client is applying as an intervener to the Court of Appeal.

kcryderman@theherald.canwest.com

You may or may not remember that YouTube removed the audio when we first posted it in January because we didn’t have Joni Mitchell’s approval. Well, it took a while, but we got it! Joni saw the video and approved Sophie’s use of her music on the video – for free. We looove Joni Mitchell!

So here’s the video with sound!

WOOT!

The significant positive factors for watershed management from past government policy have been:

1) The creation of forest reserves, and grazing leases. (Grazing lease dispositions in effect parallel the modern day conservation easement, with the covenant between the user and province. The mosaic of private and public lands, provide a framework for ranches to evolve to economic and ecological scale.)

2) The recognition of need to upgrade range management in forest reserves in the 1940’s.

3) The creation of Kananaskis country, which reversed the trend for high impact random camping and ATV abuse.

4) Advances in wildfire management that prevent destructive fires.

5) Introduction of fire as an ecological tool, (as exemplified by Barry Adams collaborative approach with Mt. Sentinel and D Ranch projects, and Park’s management integration of controlled burning).

6) The initiative driven by Barry Adams and Lorne Fitch to introduce the first Riparian management workshop in Alberta, and the Creation of the Cows and Fish Program.

7) Range schools, set up by Public lands, which promote ecological awareness and skills.

Public policy setbacks:

1) Introduction of agricultural deficiency payments by the Nixon administration led to the commoditization and industrialization of agriculture. Human and agricultural capital bled from rural lands as commodity prices plummeted. (The Omnivore’s Dilemma- Michael Pollen, End of Food- Paul Roberts).

2) The evolution of agriculture as substrate for public wealth transfers to agribusiness. (Against the Grain – Richard Manning)

3) Alberta Agriculture’s support for intensive grain based cattle production, instead of an industry based on rangeland, forage, and solar energy.

4) The semantics of sustainability. All government departments should be focused on sustainable development. The departments that look after lands, forests, soils and watershed need to focus on natural capital preservation and fostering regenerative economies. These departments represent regenerative resources.

5) We need to confront ideology that facilitates the privatization and monetization of public assets, and the socialization of liabilities. Much of Alberta’s resource wealth has flowed to shareholders around the world, and Albertans present and future are left to pay the bills for infrastructure and environmental deficits and liabilities. After years of record oil and gas development, and record commodity prices, the government can’t meet its operating obligations without drawing on meager savings or borrowing money.

6) Corporations which monetize our public assets, have tremendous resources to advocate their position, by PR, by political lobby, and by their ability to buy legal and professional support in quasi judicial, and judicial proceedings. In this province we reward those who liquidate our assets, and penalize those who steward and conserve our natural capital.

7) Our government looks to markets for direction, but leadership and stewardship is about giving markets direction and protecting opportunity for future generations.

8 ) Democracy struggles between representatives who follow public opinion, and representatives who lead opinion. Free societies, are about having choices, but healthy and prosperous societies are about making good choices. Good choices have to come from sound, enduring principles and reason, not fads, lobbyists, or popular opinion.

Required changes:

1) We have been brainwashed to believe that we need to sacrifice the environment to build economies. In his book Economics and Ethics (1923), Sir John Arthur Marriot noted Adam Smith’s observation in the Wealth of Nations “No equal capital puts into motion a greater quantity of productive labor than that of the farmer.. in agriculture Nature labors along with man.”

Nature herself is the ultimate capitalist. Consider how this world evolved from a desolate inhospitable orb to the splendid abundance and diversity of life on Planet Earth. All we are and all we have, has come from nature.

Lasting prosperity and quality of life can only maintained by stewarding our life support, and natures’ capacity for regeneration.

2) The Alberta government needs to prioritize the sale of assets by selecting projects that provide the most benefit and least harm.

3) As we liquidate non renewable assets we need to reinvest in regenerative assets, which include; knowledge, ecological and economic literacy, and the preservation of working rangelands, especially between the Highwood and Oldman Rivers. This is where the most precipitation falls on the south eastern slopes, and encompasses arguably the most effective watershed area in the South Eastern slopes. (Kananaskis Sub Regional Resource Plan, Eastern Slopes Policy document (1984), and inference from Spray Lakes Management Plan hydrology data, Pekisko and Trap Creek precipitation reports)

4) We need to garner financial resources to purchase voluntary conservation easements. Today a ranch of 4,000 acres on prime range can sustain about 200 mother cows which might net a $40,000 return to a rancher holding ten million dollars of assets. The Rancher could simply monetize the land and at a four percent return receive annual investment income of $400,000. Ranch families have made considerable economic sacrifices, to hold together working landscapes.

5) We need to identify the value of ecological goods and services. For instance: The upper 50,000 acres of Pekisko watershed receives about 108,000 acre feet of annual precipitation. If the yield to streams and aquifers is sixty percent, and if that captured precipitation was priced at the Eastern Irrigation District delivery rates, the annual value from those fifty thousand acres would be 1.6 million dollars or $33/ acre/year. If priced at Calgary water customer rates, the average annual value would approximate 94 million dollars, or more than $1,850 dollars per acre, per year.

6) Water yield and releases depend upon vegetative cover. Whatever plans, policy and platitudes are offered, at the end of the day, watershed value is the product of plant and animal interaction on the landscape within the variables of weather and fire. Ranches are not simply an interest group, but an integral part of working ecological landscapes and effective watersheds. Each percent of water yield performance carries a high value.

7) Timber harvest on the Eastern Slopes needs to be coordinated and sometimes integrated with ranch operations. Priority should be given to optimizing water infiltration and yield, biodiversity, energy flow, and resilience. Intrusive roads and activity are unnecessary if small seasonal timber harvests proceed with small equipment and footprints. Planning would involve expertise of government, industry, and ranch operations to achieve landscape goals and stable local employment. Spray Lake would process and market timber, but harvest procedure would enhance local landscape and community, while preserving esthetics.

Community Action:

Our Community has been concerned with the forces threatening the eastern slopes particularly, between the Highwood and Oldman Rivers.

Ranchers created the Southern Alberta Land Trust Society, to avoid landscape fragmentation and preserve regenerative capital of land community and culture.

Ranchers Initiated the Southern Foothills Study to provide objective insight into our current trajectories.

Since April of 2003, our community has requested a moratorium on invasive footprints until a plan is place for the area between the Highwood and Oldman Rivers, which would preserve the working landscapes, and a full complement of ecosystem goods and services.

In January of 2006, three Pekisko Group members met with Petro Canada, Nexen, and Shell to seek support for halting development until a land use framework was in place. They declined.

There is support from area landowners outside the MD of Ranchland to have contiguous rangelands annexed by the Ranchland MD to preserve open landscapes, and all their potential.

Today we stand at a cross roads. The fate of the eastern slopes will impact the future well being of Albertans, and their quality of life. Time will tell if we align policy with ecological reality or political pressures and ideology. I remember Grant MacEwan in the 1970’s requesting Albertans to resist an “economy of plunder”, and to embrace stewardship and citizenship. How will we answer the call?

So far we have been able to get permission from Joni Mitchel and her agent to use part of her song ‘Big Yellow Taxi’ as the background audio track for the video. It also contains the sounds of gas pipeline compression stations and various oil and gas industrial installations. We are hoping that we will be able to get the audio passed through YouTube, finally, and get things going.

The province introduced landmark legislation Monday aimed at harmonizing the duelling wants and needs of economic growth and environmental protection.

Bill 36, the Alberta Land Stewardship Act, tinkers with 26 different laws already in place and puts a framework in place to assign seven regional planning boards across the province. Regional plans should be done by 2012.

“With Bill 36 our province enters a new era of land and resource stewardship, one that meets the needs of the present generation without compromising the opportunities of the next generation,” said Sustainable Resource Development Minister Ted Morton, who tabled the bill.

It may be a mistake to emphasize the potential power of local advisory councils, however, Green Party Leader Joe Anglin said Monday.

“Whether the minister listens to them or not is strictly up to the minister,” he said.

The proposed Act pays special attention to community, business, landowner and aboriginal stakeholders in maintaining Alberta’s biodiversity. But Anglin warned cabinet members will be able to override everything.

Edmonton-Strathcona NDP MLA Rachel Notley offered a similar caution, noting how the provincial government rules on matters that pit environmental sensibility against business interest will be very important. “At the end of the day, not all of this is going to come together through some magical consensus.”

So far, the province has appointed a regional advisory council in the Lower Athabasca region, which includes Fort McMurray and the majority of northeast Alberta. The South Saskatchewan regional council is next in line, encompassing most of southern Alberta.

Nanton-area rancher Mac Blades said he likes the sound of what the government is pro-posing, but wants details on the tools the government will use to conserve land.

Particularly, Blades would like to see a major expansion of conservation easements, which are agreements to conserve the ecological integrity of a parcel of land. The easement is registered on the land title with restrictions on land use, but landowners retain ownership.

“There’s so much more pressure on the land,”Blades said, adding that more and more farmers and ranchers are interested in this program.

© Copyright (c) The Calgary Herald

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