Coastal GasLink pipeline hit with $590,000 fine — its biggest one yet

The B.C. government has fined Coastal GasLink (CGL) nearly $600,000 for failing to protect the environment during construction of its contentious pipeline, bringing the total financial penalties for the project to almost $1.4 million. 

The province’s Environmental Assessment Office issued the latest penalties on Sept. 11 for breaching the terms of the project’s environmental assessment certificate last spring, when snow melt inundated pipeline construction sites, sending plumes of sediment into sensitive wetlands and waterways on Wet’suwet’en territory in northwest B.C. 

As part of its environmental assessment certificate from the B.C. government, Coastal GasLink is required to ensure no dirt or other materials from the pipeline right of way, or related worksites, enter the surrounding environment. When sediment gets into wetlands and watercourses, it can clog up fish habitat and suffocate salmon smolts.

At the time of the snow melt, the environmental assessment office had already fined Coastal GasLink more than $450,000 for dozens of infractions, most related to erosion and sediment control.

TC Energy, the Calgary-based company building the 670-kilometre pipeline project, had struggled to prevent erosion on its worksites and keep sediment out of wetlands, creeks and rivers since construction began in 2019.

In an emailed statement, TC Energy said it took “immediate and decisive action” to address the erosion and sediment control issues after B.C. officials flagged non-compliances last spring.

Since the fall of 2023, Coastal GasLink “has been fully and consistently compliant with the [Environmental Assessment Office] on erosion and sediment control,” a TC Energy spokesperson wrote in the email.

In a press release announcing the new penalties, the provincial government noted it had “escalated enforcement action to address continued concerns with erosion and sediment control” as the company failed to comply with the terms of its environmental permits. 

The pipeline project was officially completed last November.

“As a result of continued concerns, the [Environmental Assessment Office] prioritized the CGL project for compliance monitoring, with nearly 100 inspections carried out along the pipeline construction route by air and ground since the project started in 2019,” the press release stated. The assessment office said the inspections led to 59 warnings and 30 orders, including 13 stop-work orders.

Some of the stop-work orders were in place last May, when The Narwhal joined an Indigenous-led monitoring flight over the area in question. Flying over an area known as the Gosnell — about 70 kilometres west of Houston, B.C. — long stretches of the pipeline were submerged in floodwaters, leaving construction equipment stranded in murky waters. 

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“The scale of damage that is happening on the territory is heartbreaking,” Sleydo’ Molly Wickham, a Wet’suwet’en wing chief, said at the time. “But it’s also what we knew was going to happen, which is why we’ve been fighting so hard.”

TC Energy and the B.C. government signed agreements with numerous First Nations along the pipeline route, but did not receive free, prior and informed consent from the Wet’suwet’en Hereditary Chiefs, who opposed the project. Their opposition led to numerous conflicts between land defenders and RCMP and prompted widespread solidarity protests across the country in early 2020. 

B.C. officials signed off on CGL emergency plans before construction sites were flooded 

As The Narwhal reported, provincial officials signed off on the pipeline’s emergency plans two months before the incidents for which the company is now being fined. 

Assurances that Coastal GasLink had a sound emergency plan were given in a briefing note to Environment Minister George Heyman and Energy Minister Josie Obsorne, dated March 3, 2023, and released through freedom of information legislation. They were based on field inspections in January and February 2023 and a review of the company’s water quality monitoring data and photos taken by the BC Energy Regulator, the lead provincial agency responsible for protecting stream crossings from construction activity.

“[Coastal GasLink] is following the regulatory requirements and following their site-specific crossing plan; appropriate self-reporting has occurred and contingency plans have been employed to address extreme weather conditions as appropriate to mitigate potential adverse impacts to the environment,” the briefing note said. 

Yet when temperatures soared later that spring, those contingency plans failed, as snow melt swept sediment into the nearby ecosystems.

Unprepared to manage the situation, Coastal GasLink watched as sediment spilled into wild salmon habitat, including wetlands, creeks and Lho Kwa (Clore River). At one location on Wet’suwet’en territory, where Coastal GasLink used explosives to blast out a rocky ravine for pipe installation, a large slope failure sent plumes of construction debris into a fish-bearing creek, turning the water murky brown.

‘A boondoggle in every possible way’

Critics of the project, and of the government’s regulation of the pipeline, say financial penalties are not enough of a deterrent.

“For those who are considering a pipeline on their traditional territories or near their communities and municipalities, I can imagine there is an assumption that the policies, laws and legislation will protect their interests if the proponent causes damage — but that’s clearly not the case,” Shannon McPhail, executive director of Skeena Watershed Conservation Coalition, told The Narwhal in a previous interview. 

“We’ve got to collectively acknowledge that the Coastal GasLink pipeline has been a boondoggle in every possible way: an embarrassment to the industry [and] most of all an embarrassment to the province of B.C.”

For the Wet’suwet’en, the impacts on sensitive ecosystems were felt deeply. Karla Tait, a C’ihlts’ehkhyu clan member and director of clinical services at the Unist’ot’en healing centre, told The Narwhal the pipeline project was impacting wildlife populations, saying places where construction sites were overwhelmed provided important moose habitat.

“What does that mean for the wildlife that live here that we depend on as well, for hunting and subsistence? And just the health of our territory — every single part of it has a role and is important,” Tait said at the time.

“Now that we’re finally getting our people to a state and place where they’re healthy and they’re able to embrace their identity, their cultural practices, where are they going to actually learn and do those things that make us Wet’suwet’en if what’s left of our land is destroyed?”