The Mackenzie River has long attracted the interest of Exxon Mobil and its subsidiary Imperial Oil. In 1942, the oil company worked alongside the U.S. military’s 388th Engineer Battalion to provide a secure source of oil for the wartime effort. The battalion’s role was to construct a road and lay four inch pipes along the [...]
Continue reading about Mackenzie Pipeline: same as the Canadian Oil Road?
Who wants to dam the Similkameen River in southern BC? Shanker’s Bend Hydropower Project is an 80 metre high, $260 million US water storage and hydroelectric project. The dam would be located eight km northwest of Oroville, WA. The dam would flood 10-15 miles into Canada, inundating Palmer Lake, the town of Nighthawk, and the [...]
Continue reading about Kayakers unite: save the Similkameen River
With the recent passing of Bill C9, the federal Canadian Environmental Assessment Act has been radically altered, allowing for projects to be entirely under the discretion of the Minister of Environment. Instead of a study of the potential environmental impacts of an entire project, the minister could narrow it to only one small part. “There [...]
Continue reading about Canada – no more environmental assessments?
The next time you throw away your computer or laptop, do you wonder what happens to it? This video tracks e-waste from places all over North America to e-waste brokers in Hong Kong who know how to circumvent laws and send e-waste to China where women and children burn mountains of computers. Hard drives with [...]
Drew Landry, a crawfisher from Louisiana, sings about the impact of the oil spill on his way of life and the lives of other Acadians in the Gulf of Mexico. What will happen to their homeland when hurricane season starts? Will this be a new expulsion? As he talked, I couldn’t help but notice all [...]
Can you help save the Rockfish of Davie Bay? Texada Island lies in the Strait of Georgia, a short ferry ride from Powell River on BC’s Sunshine Coast. On the southeast part of Texada Island is Davie Bay, the sight of a proposed cement quarry. Friends of Davie Bay are fighting a proposal by Lehigh [...]
Environmentalists have been asking for a new national park to be created in the South Okanagan area of British Columbia. To understand the significance of this contentious area, you only have to look as far as Kilpoola Lake near Osoyoos. Bird Studies Canada lists Kilpoola Lake as an “Important Bird Area” with the following rare/endangered [...]
Continue reading about Why the South Okanagan needs protection
This video from Mining.com shows an interview with Preston McEachern, adjunct professor at the University of Alberta and Sayta Das, Principal of Cambridge Strategies. Sayta Das is a former journalist and a really good PR guy who has written a book called “Green Oil”. Here’s an excerpt from his blog: Already, it is becoming clear [...]
Did you know there was an oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 1979? It happened in June caused by Sedco’s malfunctioning equipment. Sedco has since become Transocean. Sedco was also responsible for the Ocean Ranger platform which sank in 1982 off the coast of Newfoundland. In 1979, crude oil kept gushing in the [...]
In January 2007 when thousands of migratory seabirds were travelling through the Grand Banks off Newfoundland, 74,000 litres of synthetic drilling lubricant was spilled by one of Chevron’s oil platforms. No environmental assessment was ever done. Chevron did not perform any clean-up – referring to the lubricant as “mud”. The Hebron field is located 340 [...]
