Kitimat locals are calling on the municipal government to adopt a suite of bylaws that safeguard ecological and recreational values as the northwest B.C. town navigates its way through an industrial boom. 

The Kitimat Rod and Gun Club — a non-profit organization that promotes outdoor recreation, fishing and hunting — partnered with the Environmental Law Centre at the University of Victoria to present the District of Kitimat a report outlining a framework of local bylaws that would ensure industrial development doesn’t negatively impact environmental health.

“We’re really in the midst of this gold rush, this energy industrial boom,” Mike Langegger, president of the rod and gun club, said in an interview. “There’s a host of concerns and many of these projects are looking at potentially expanding … outside of the current industrial zone right into some really key habitat areas.” 

Langegger stressed that members of the rod and gun club are not anti-industry, but they are concerned about the cumulative impacts that increased industrial development will have on an already heavily impacted ecosystem.

“Not having bylaws and proper provisions in place can and will have a very negative impact on fish and wildlife [and the] lifestyle and culture of our community,” he said.

‘We’re in crisis, and we shouldn’t be here’

Deborah Curran, executive director of the Environmental Law Centre and supervising lawyer for the report, told The Narwhal the municipality has the legal means to work with industry in a way that supports and promotes development while making sure environmental values are protected.

“My view is that no local government in British Columbia … uses even 80 per cent of their environmental protection powers,” she said in an interview, adding that she has spent over 20 years working on municipal law. “There is a vast untapped potential within a pro-growth legal regime that local governments can tap into and do a way better job of [protecting] all these things that we know we need in order to have healthy ecosystems.”

Deborah Curran, executive director of the Environmental Law Centre at the University of Victoria, says communities need to do more to incentivize developers to build in existing industrial zones. Photo: Taylor Roades / The Narwhal

The report, which Langegger presented to the District of Kitimat on March 1, outlines key recommendations including strategies for how, when and where the municipality approves industrial development. He said the town has an existing community plan, which identifies a need to manage ecosystem health and protect biodiversity but lacks the tools to do so.

“We have to start putting fish, wildlife habitat, ecosystems and biodiversity higher on the priority scale within all our governments, whether it’s municipal, provincial or federal,” Langegger said. “Quite frankly, we’re at a point now where we’re in a crisis, and we shouldn’t be here.”

The report recommends that Kitimat prioritize ecosystem connectivity by creating a green infrastructure network. The community plan includes goals to support walking and cycling corridors but it doesn’t acknowledge the need to prevent habitat fragmentation, which imperils wildlife and degrades ecosystem health.

Mike Langegger, president of the Kitimat Rod and Gun Club, says we have to start putting fish and wildlife habitat higher on the priority list. “Quite frankly, we’re at a point now where we’re in a crisis, and we shouldn’t be here,” he told The Narwhal. Photo: Steve Perih / The Narwhal

New projects should be built in industrial zones, on brownfield sites: report

The report also suggests the district develop and implement growth management policies that would encourage any new proposals to make use of existing industrial infrastructure and land. 

Much of Kitimat’s current industrial development does this. For example, LNG Canada is building its $40 billion natural gas liquefaction and export facility on the site of Kitimat’s former methanol and ammonia plant. A pair of proposed LNG facilities — Kitimat LNG and Cedar LNG — would also be built on existing industrial land. According to the community plan, there are 985 hectares of undeveloped land in the industrial area and Langegger said there are also brownfield sites, which are old industrial sites no longer operating.

According to a statement provided to The Narwhal by the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change Strategy, redeveloping brownfield sites has a host of challenges.

“Brownfield redevelopment is a challenge in many small and rural communities because the cost of assessing and, if necessary, remediating sites in these areas often exceeds the value of the property.”

But municipalities can encourage development that reclaims brownfield sites by providing incentives such as property tax abatement, and the province said there are various sources of funding that support communities, including through the Federation of Canadian Municipalities. 

Curran said that’s not enough. 

“It’s just easier to develop on a greenfield site or in an estuary or something like that,” she said. “The question is, how do you create incentives or say, ‘No, we’re not going to rezone any areas to allow new industrial development — you need to locate in those existing areas.’ ”

A growth management bylaw could establish clear guidelines for the municipality to ensure the existing industrial zone is fully developed before any undeveloped land is cleared to support new projects. 

The District of Kitimat is home to the Rio Tinto aluminum smelter and several proposed LNG projects, as well as a proposal for a new propane export facility, which would entail building a rail yard in a wetland. Photo: Province of B.C. / Flickr

District of Kitimat could take years to consider recommendations  

Kitimat’s industrial, residential and commercial areas were not created organically, like most communities in Canada. The town is a planned community, built on the back of industry when Alcan set up its aluminum smelter in the valley in the 1950s. 

“Kitimat is unique in that we exist to support and service industry — we are not a resort town,” Mayor Phil Germuth said during council discussions following the presentation.

Lani Gibson, a councillor with the district, told The Narwhal she worries that the report, which she described as a gift to the municipality, will be left to gather dust. She said the local government needs to have a robust legal framework to address increased industrial activity before it overruns the community.

“Maybe it wasn’t such a big deal when there was an economic slump here, but now that there is activity, it highlights for us that we are not remotely prepared to assess these projects and ensure that they go in the right places,” she said in an interview. She added that the goal is to find balance and ensure industrial development doesn’t negate future economic opportunities such as tourism, recreation and forestry.  

The municipality agreed to discuss the report later this year and consider implementing some of the recommendations when it conducts its next review and update of the community plan, which would start in the spring of 2022 at the earliest. But district staff cautioned the process could take two to three years to complete. 

“We need to have a discussion and say, ‘Let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater,’ ” Gibson said. “If it’s just too offensive to people to talk about a hard line that [industry] can’t go beyond, then we don’t do that one. But we should still be adopting a whole bunch of the other stuff.”

Germuth told The Narwhal in an interview that the council also received a letter from the Kitimat Economic Development Association, stating its opposition to the green bylaws report. 

“We have to wait — we’ve got to look at both sides of the story,” he said. “We have to make sure that we’re not cutting ourselves off at the knees, so to speak. We need to make sure that we’re not going to limit options in the future.”

Rio Tinto’s Kitimat smelter facility. Photo: Rio Tinto

Fears that Kitimat  could become a ‘community surrounded by smokestacks’ 

According to Langegger, if the council waits to implement some of the report’s recommendations until the community plan review is completed, it could be too late to protect important habitat like the Goose Creek wetland, where Pacific Traverse Energy proposes to build a 300-car railyard as part of its plans to set up a 1.25 million tonne per year propane export facility. The company would connect the railyard to a marine terminal it would build on the shores of Douglas Channel via a 15 kilometre pipeline. 

Langegger noted the project would include developing land above the town’s only source of drinking water and allowing it to proceed would set a dangerous precedent for permitting industry to sprawl beyond the prescribed zone.

“Instead of having industry to the south of the community and wild places to the north and surrounding us, we’re just going to be this community surrounded by smokestacks.”

He said the members of the rod and gun club aren’t opposed to the company setting up shop in Kitimat but they want the company to find an alternative location. 

Gibson said the company has yet to submit a request for rezoning the land, which means the local government has an opportunity to adopt bylaws now, instead of reacting on a case-by-case basis.

“You don’t allow a shopping mall in the middle of a residential neighbourhood,” she said. “This is the same thing.”

Last fall, the Haisla Nation Council signed a partnership agreement with the company to support its proposed Cedar LNG export terminal. The Narwhal requested interviews with Pacific Traverse Energy and the Haisla Council but did not receive a response.

Langegger is concerned about a proposal by Pacific Traverse Energy to build a rail yard in a wetland, which he fears could set a dangerous precedent. Photo: Steve Perih / The Narwhal

Hunters, fishers, environmentalists work together to protect Goose Creek wetland

Langegger, like many others in Kitimat, grew up hunting and fishing in the surrounding landscape after his parents relocated to the community in the 1950s to work for the new Alcan aluminum smelter. 

While locals are concerned about the cumulative effects of Kitimat’s increasing industrial activity on the community’s health and surrounding environment, the rod and gun club is focused on preventing any further impacts to fish and wildlife habitat. Langegger said habitat is key.

“When you talk to scientists and biologists, residents [and] guide outfitters, there is one underlining factor that’s really impacting our fish and wildlife: loss of habitat, degradation of habitat and fracturing of habitat.”

An unlikely coalition between the rod and gun club and two local environmental groups — Douglas Channel Watch and the Kitimat Valley Naturalists — emerged to voice concerns about the proposed propane export facility.

“It really doesn’t matter if you want to hunt and fish or take photos, if the habitat’s not there you’re not going to get in it,” Elizabeth Thorne, an active member of both environmental groups, told The Narwhal in an interview. 

She said while the naturalists and the rod and gun club members don’t always see eye-to-eye on issues, they agree that Goose Creek and other important local watersheds should be protected for other uses, like ecotourism.

“I am hoping that with patience, we can point out that there are jobs to be made in a non-industrial way and they can figure out how to put the railyard somewhere else over on the industrial area.”

She added that the groups are exploring economic opportunities for the second-growth forest, which the proposed project would cut down to clear land for the railyard.

Langegger said he’s grateful for the support of the Environmental Law Centre and for the alliance with the environmental groups.

“We’ve all come to that conclusion that if we don’t work together for fish and wildlife, well, we’re all going to lose.”

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There was a telling comment from Shell Global’s Maarten Wetselaar — representing five multinational investors in a $40 billion project to ship B.C. liquefied natural gas to Asia — amidst the hoopla that accompanied Tuesday’s LNG announcement.

“The governments of Canada and British Columbia have helped to ensure that the right fiscal framework is in place to make sure that the pie is divided in a just and fair way,” Wetselaar told a Vancouver news conference hosted by LNG Canada, which will oversee construction of a 670-kilometre pipeline carrying natural gas from northeastern B.C. to a processing plant in Kitimat, where it will be liquefied for transport in ocean tankers.

“And that fiscal framework leads to why we believe LNG Canada is in the right place.”

The “right” fiscal framework amounts to a bouquet of government subsidies for B.C.’s largest carbon polluter, including tax reprieves, tax exemptions and cheaper electricity rates for some of the largest and most profitable multinationals in the world — the LNG Canada quintet of Royal Dutch Shell, Mitsubishi Corp., Malaysian-owned Petronas, PetroChina Co. and Korean Gas Corp.

At a technical briefing for media, a B.C. senior government official pegged the province’s total financial incentives for the project at $5.35 billion.

The first of the incentives, a break on provincial sales tax during project construction, was approved Tuesday by the B.C. Cabinet.

“LNG under the existing framework was not going to be competitive in British Columbia,” said the official, noting that the LNG investors said they could not do business in B.C. without a new “cost-competitive” framework. (Media are not permitted to name government officials giving technical briefings.)

The official also noted that the Trump administration’s tariffs on steel — which have added considerably to the cost to building a new LNG facility in the Gulf Coast — and China’s retaliatory 10 per cent tariff on U.S. LNG now “makes our gas more competitive.”

Patrick DeRochie, climate change and energy program manager for Environmental Defence, pointed out that just two weeks ago in Halifax the federal government re-committed to ending fossil fuel subsidies by 2025, a promise that includes subsidies from provincial governments.

“It’s hard to see how the federal and provincial governments can continue to fund fossil fuel projects to the tune of billions of dollars, and meet this 2025 commitment,” DeRochie told The Narwhal.

“It’s completely contradictory.”

Canada provides more government support for oil and gas companies than any other G7 nation and is among the least transparent about fossil fuel subsidies, according to a June report from a coalition of NGOs.

DeRochie defined a subsidy as “any tax provision, or benefit from the government that has the effect of giving one sector an advantage over another in the economy.”

To entice the LNG Canada investors, the B.C. government has offered a break on the carbon tax, the elimination of the LNG income tax it previously supported and cheaper electricity rates than those set by the previous Liberal administration.

A PST exemption means that LNG Canada will not have to pay provincial sales tax during the project’s five-year construction period. A natural gas tax credit gives companies an additional three per cent corporate income tax cut, according to B.C. Green Party leader Andrew Weaver.

The corporate income tax act exemption will require legislation but the government said it will not be introduced during the current session because that particular tax break will only kick in when LNG production begins around 2023.

The B.C. Liberals hailed the LNG announcement as a “great day” for British Columbia, while Weaver called it a “tax giveaway.”

“Adding such a massive new source of GHGs means that the rest of our economy will have to make even more sacrifices to meet our climate targets,” Weaver said in a statement.

The LNG project will emit 3.45 megatonnes of greenhouse gas emissions annually, according to the provincial government, which promised the cleanest LNG in the world even though claims of “clean LNG” have been thoroughly debunked.

This Vigilante Scientist Trekked Over 10,000 Kilometres to Reveal B.C.’s Leaking Gas Wells

The project’s emissions will represent more than one-quarter of B.C.’s legislated targets for carbon pollution in 2050, set at about 13 megatonnes a year.

A beaming B.C. Premier John Horgan said at the LNG Canada press conference that carbon emissions from the LNG project will fit within a “robust and aggressive climate action plan” to be unveiled this fall, while noting that “it will be significantly challenging for all of us.”

“Today LNG Canada has sent a signal to the world that British Columbia and Canada are open for business,” the premier said.

The government said B.C. will still be able to meet its obligations under the 2015 Paris climate agreement.

But the NDP’s long-awaited climate action plan will only take the province to 75 per cent of its emissions targets, according to senior officials at the technical briefing.

Karen Tam Wu, B.C. managing director for the Pembina Institute, said B.C. is headed in the wrong direction with the LNG Canada project unless the province has a clean growth strategy that puts B.C. on track to meet its climate targets.

“The task of reducing B.C.’s carbon pollution must not be underestimated,” Wu said in a statement. “With B.C.’s climate action having stalled in recent years, we have to be ambitious to make up for lost time.”

In addition to the climate considerations, scientific research has not fully caught up on the many impacts of unconventional gas development, Wu said.

“Recent research demonstrates evidence of risks posed by hydraulic fracturing to our water resources and public health. In the absence of further investigation, we should be cautious about putting our communities at risk.”

Fracking wells in the Farmington area of northeastern B.C. Photo: Garth Lenz / The Narwhal

Exporting liquefied natural gas involves fracking for gas in B.C.’s northeast, a process that uses a proprietary mix of chemicals and massive amounts of water. The industry’s growing need for fresh water has resulted in the construction of at least 90 unlicensed dams in northeast B.C.

‘Time Bombs’: 92 Fracking Dams Quietly Built Without Permits, B.C. Government Docs Reveal

About 60 per cent of the gas for the LNG facility will come from new fracking, according to the government.

Northeast B.C. — a boreal region rich in biodiversity that is home to endangered woodland caribou and many other species vulnerable to extinction — is already ground zero for resource development in B.C. Existing linear disturbances in the region, including roads and seismic lines, are so extensive they could wrap around the planet four and half times, according to Global Forest Watch.

The fracked gas will be shipped through TransCanada’s new Coastal GasLink pipeline to Kitimat, where it will be cooled in massive compressors to minus 162 degrees Celsius, the point at which gas turns into liquid and becomes easier to transport in ocean tankers.

How this man’s legal challenge could stall LNG Canada

LNG Canada will burn its own natural gas for the energy-intensive compression process, resulting in substantial greenhouse gas pollution.

The government justified the project on the grounds that it will create 10,000 jobs and generate $23 billion for provincial coffers over the next 40 years.

The project is supported by elected councils of 25 First Nations communities along the pipeline route and the Haisla First Nation, on whose traditional territory the LNG facility will be built. Several Wet’suwet’en Hereditary Chiefs oppose the project, pointing to tactics they say have created division and strife.

The hereditary system has been tested in court several times and has helped form the laws most aboriginal rights and title cases have been based upon. “The Wet’suwet’en Hereditary Chiefs do not endorse nor support pipeline projects that threaten the health and well-being of our lands and our people,” said Debbie Pierre, executive director of the Office of the Wet’suwet’en.

DeRochie said research shows that six or seven times more jobs are created for every dollar invested in a renewable energy project instead of in fossil fuels.

“If our objective is wider jobs and indirect economic benefits there are better ways to spend public money than attracting resources for a sunset industry that we cannot continue to expand if we are going to meet our climate targets.”

Weaver pointed out that a significant portion of the investment will be spent on a plant manufactured overseas, with steel produced outside Canada.

“B.C. taxpayers will subsidize its power by paying rates twice as high and taking on the enormous public debt required to build Site C.”

The hugely over-budget Site C dam, under construction on B.C.’s Peace River, will generate 1,100 megawatts of power that will cost at least $120 megawatts per hour to produce, according to independent energy experts. Any difference between the cost of producing the power and its selling price will eventually have to be shouldered by British Columbians.

Of the 19 export LNG projects proposed under the previous Liberal administration, only one other project, the relatively small Woodfibre LNG championed by NDP insider and lobbyist Moe Sihota, has received a final investment decision.

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LNG Canada has announced that the international consortium is ready to proceed with Canada’s largest ever infrastructure project, but, in a David and Goliath scenario, a challenge by a Smithers environmental consultant is aiming to temporarily derail or delay the $40-billion megaproject.

Michael Sawyer is arguing that the Coastal GasLink Project, a 675-kilometre pipeline running from Dawson Creek to Kitimat, should have faced a federal review by the National Energy Board instead of relying on provincial approval.

Although the $4.7-billion pipeline is set to be built entirely within B.C. — which would usually put it under the jurisdiction of the province — the pipeline, which would supply the LNG Canada export terminal in Kitimat, connects to an existing pipeline system that is federally regulated.

Also, Coastal GasLink Pipeline Ltd. is a wholly owned subsidiary of TransCanada Pipeline Ltd., which means under the Constitution Act the pipeline is within federal jurisdiction and should be regulated by the National Energy Board, Sawyer says in an application to the board.

Sawyer-Challenge-CoastalGasLinkProject-NEB by The Narwhal on Scribd

“A pipeline that crosses international boundaries or provincial boundaries would normally be federally regulated,” Sawyer told The Narwhal, pointing to a 1998 Supreme Court decision that said if a provincial pipeline is “functionally integrated” with an existing federally regulated line, it becomes an extension of the federal line.

Sawyer wants the National Energy Board to conduct an environmental review of the pipeline and, if that application is turned down, he is prepared to ask the Federal Court of Appeal for leave to argue to overturn that decision.

It is a process already familiar to Sawyer, who, last year, launched a similar action dealing with the Prince Rupert Gas Transmission pipeline.

That application was rejected by the National Energy Board, but the Federal Court of Appeal then ruled that the National Energy Board had erred and sent it back to the board for reconsideration. The question became moot when Petronas killed the Pacific NorthWest LNG project because of depressed natural gas prices.

Sawyer is hoping the previous ruling will give LNG Canada and the provincial and federal governments, which both support the project, pause to reflect on the financial ramifications of a delay.

It is a wrinkle that is likely to be top of mind for the federal government because of delays in the Trans Mountain oilsands pipeline, which was kicked back to the National Energy Board after its approval was rejected by the Federal Court of Appeal.

“I think I have a really good chance of winning. I think I am on really good legal ground, although I don’t think everyone is going to roll over and say they agree with me,” Sawyer said.

Challenge presents legal risk to LNG Canada

West Coast Environmental Law staff lawyer Erica Stahl agrees there is a risk to LNG Canada going ahead before the application is resolved.

“This case means there is a legal risk to them going ahead without a full resolution of the matters raised by Mike Sawyer,” Stahl said.

“They would be wise to take this seriously because of the Federal Court of Appeal’s previous ruling in the Prince Rupert case,” she said.

West Coast Environmental Law is helping fund the case through its Environmental Dispute Resolution Fund, a grant provided by the Law Foundation of B.C. to help pay for legally meritorious environmental cases.

If the National Energy Board turns down the application and the case has to wend its way through the courts it could be several years before there is an ultimate decision and Sawyer said that, if it becomes necessary, he could apply for an injunction.

A letter sent in August to the National Energy Board by Catherine Davis, TransCanada Pipelines Ltd. vice-president of natural gas pipelines law, calls Sawyer’s application “vexatious” and asks the board to decline to hear the application as the project is not functionally integrated with the federally regulated NCTL pipeline system.

“The application is an attempt by Mr. Sawyer to use the NEB to indirectly challenge natural gas development in B.C. He chose not to participate in the provincial regulatory processes for the project and chose not raise his concerns over the last four years, when he knew he could,” said the letter.

“Instead, he has brought this application on the eve of a FID (financial investment decision) in an obvious attempt to frustrate that project and its associated upstream development.”

Davis concluded that Sawyer has failed to demonstrate any specialized expertise or produce information that would warrant the National Energy Board spending time and resources on reviewing a project that obtained valid provincial permits four years ago.

“I believe that when the government doesn’t follow the law it is incumbent upon citizens to hold their feet to the fire.” — Mike Sawyer

So why is Sawyer, a former whitewater rafting guide, spending his time and money challenging the pipeline project?

“We are told we are living in a society based on law and order and good governance and I believe that when the government doesn’t follow the law it is incumbent upon citizens to hold their feet to the fire,” he told The Narwhal.

LNG and climate change

Sawyer is also concerned about the effect of LNG Canada on climate change.

Although supporters are touting natural gas as the clean alternative to coal used in Chinese industry, when everything from fracking and methane leaks to transporting the gas to China is considered, studies have shown that LNG, over its life cycle, is more carbon intensive than coal, Sawyer said.

With the approval of LNG Canada, there is expected to be an explosion of hydraulic fracturing operations in northeastern B.C., like this one near Farmington, B.C. Photo: Garth Lenz / The Narwhal

An August submission to the B.C. government from Marc Lee, senior economist with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives says that LNG Canada’s emissions, ranging from fracking to liquefaction, would be between nine and 12 megatonnes a year — an amount likely to be a problem when B.C.’s emissions target for 2050 is 13 megatonnes in total.

Premier John Horgan, who is set to unveil a clean-growth strategy this fall, has said he believes climate targets can be met if LNG Canada goes ahead, but there will have to be sizeable reductions in other sectors.

Sawyer also wants a National Energy Board review to look at how LNG Canada will affect caribou herds.

A driving force behind the court decision to send the Trans Mountain pipeline back to the National Energy Board was the failure to consider the effect on endangered southern resident killer whales and Sawyer said the same situation is true of the LNG Canada project because of endangered caribou herds.

The caribou guardians

“There are caribou herds in northern B.C. that are protected under the Species At Risk Act that will go extinct if this project goes ahead,” Sawyer said.

“In the caribou range the government is allowing pipelines and wells to go ahead and that has never been considered so my goal in bumping this to a federal review is to actually have a meaningful analysis of whether this is in the public interest in regard to the monumental impact on greenhouse gases and on endangered species,” he said.

“Right now we have not done an honest assessment of the impacts and we are just salivating at the thought of all the money it is going to bring in.”

Sawyer received threats after filing application

Opposition to the project has come at a high personal cost for Sawyer who received intense criticism and threats from LNG supporters after he submitted the application.

“In the first few weeks after my original application was filed with the NEB I got a real stack of almost vitriolic comments and some of those were implicit threats like ‘we are coming to get you,’ and another guy commented ‘you had better have your house insurance up to date.’ ”

Sawyer reported the threats to the RCMP, but, so far, no action has been taken as the statements were implicit rather than explicit, Sawyer said.

“The way I have interpreted that is that they are angry people who are just expressing their frustration. So, I am paying attention, but I am not taking it too seriously,” he said.

In a September 6 letter sent to Sawyer with a copy to West Coast Environmental Law, 14 northern B.C. mayors reminded Sawyer that, although he has the right to file a jurisdictional challenge, northern communities support the LNG Canada project and the pipeline because of the “financial benefits of employment and economic activity that would follow.”

Others have suggested that Sawyer’s office should be picketed and that local businesses should put pressure on him to drop the legal challenge.

Sawyer, who has worked with the oil and gas industry, First Nations and NGOs, said his interest in natural gas dates back to an incident in Alberta in the late 1980s when he was a whitewater rafting guide.

Shell was working in the area and, unbeknownst to Sawyer and his 75 clients, who were camping beside the Red Deer River, a nearby well blew out releasing gas high in toxic hydrogen sulphide.

“Everyone woke up in the morning feeling really ill and when I walked up to the road a guy from an air monitoring truck roared down wearing a respirator and asked what the hell we were doing there,” Sawyer said.

The group was evacuated safely, but if the wind had been blowing in a slightly different direction it would have been a mass casualty event, he said.

“That kind of opened my eyes. Before that I was a typical Albertan who was just watching things unfold. I really wasn’t knowledgeable about oil and gas,” he said.

But, after talking to Shell and the regulators, who did not want to deal with the issue, he started to watch more carefully.

“It really was an education for me about the nature of the industry,” he said.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

The Environmental Appeal Board recently ruled B.C. was in its right to grant Rio Tinto Alcan a permit to increase sulphur dioxide emissions (SO2) from its 60-year old Alcan aluminum smelter in Kitimat.

The permit, granted in 2013, allowed Rio Tinto to increase sulphur dioxide emission as part of the company’s modernization of the aging Kitimat aluminum smelter. The modernization project, which nearly doubles the plant’s production, decreases the release of greenhouse gas emissions but raises sulphur dioxide emissions by 56 per cent.

The B.C. Ministry of Environment granted Rio Tinto permission to modernize the smelter but did not require the company to install scrubbers, commonly used in smelters to remove airborne pollutants from emissions.

Two Kitimat elementary teachers, Lis Stannus and Emily Toews, challenged the permit through the B.C. Environmental Appeal Board, saying the increased pollution would negatively and unnecessarily impact Kitimat residents.

Sulphur dioxide is a pungent pollutant released from the combustion of fossil fuels, such as the petroleum coke used to smelt aluminum. It is known to irritate skin, mucous membranes and lungs. Exposure to sulphur dioxide is also known to aggravate the respiratory systems of asthmatics, children and the elderly.

Stannus said she is disappointed in the December 23 ruling.

“Being a teacher of young children I see a lot of respiratory illness as it is,” Stannus told DeSmog Canada. “I will also now question whether any respiratory problems are a result of these increased emissions.”

According to a 2012 study published by Northern Health, Kitimat has a 60 per cent higher incidence of death from bronchitis, emphysema and asthma than the B.C. average.

Stannus said the Environmental Appeal Board made nine recommendations to Rio Tinto Alcan, seven of which “speak to health studies or the need to monitor emissions as to impacts on health.”

Appellant Lis Stannus in Kitimat, B.C. Photo: Carol Linnitt.

“We have been saying all along that there needs to be more study as to the health impacts on Kitimat residents before the permit amendment is granted to increase emissions,” she said. “It would have been prudent to conduct these studies before the permit was granted rather than after.”

She added the decision acknowledges the fact that sulphur dioxide can be harmful to human health.

“Any increase in respiratory illness should not be considered trivial when it has to do with an individual's health,” she said.

Kitimat Mayor Phil Germuth also expressed disappointment with the decision.

“We’re a bit disappointed in the decision,” he said. ”I believe the scrubbers should have been installed right from the beginning.”

Germuth noted he is not criticising Rio Tinto Alcan for the decision. “It’s the government’s responsibility to protect human health and the environment, not Rio Tinto’s.” He added government subsidies could play a role in the development of expensive technologies like scrubbers, to ensure a balance is struck between development and protecting human health and the environment.

Germuth said Kitimat is “thankful” to Rio Tinto for investing $5 billion in the smelter and “securing the future of the aluminum industry in B.C.”

But, he added, this recent decision has created uncertainty for Kitimat residents and future industries eyeing the region for further development.

“Besides the human health and environmental effects of SO2 in the atmosphere, my other concern is that having this much SO2 in the atmosphere could also potentially restrict any other industry from coming here that might have SO2 emissions as the airshed might already have too much in it.”

Emissions can be seen rising from the Rio Tinto Alcan Kitimat smelter on June 4, 2015. Photo: Carol Linnitt.

A 2014 report commissioned by the B.C. government found the Kitimat community and environment can handle increased industrial expansion, including more oil, gas and smelting operations.

Environment Minister Mary Polak said the Kitimat airshed can “safely accommodate” high industrial growth.

During hearings conducted by the Environmental Appeal Board, Brian Scarfe, economist and cost-benefit analyst from the University of Victoria, testified B.C. and Rio Tinto Alcan were externalizing the costs of sulphur dioxide emissions onto the health of Kitimat residents.

Scarfe told the board the overall cost placed on human health and the environment will outstrip the cost of installing scrubbers on the smelter.

“I don’t like to think of this as a zero sum game, but that is what we have,” Scarfe told the board. “Costs are going to fall one way or another, benefits are going to fall one way or another.”

“We can think about households on one side and RTA on the other: clearly if nothing is done to limit SO2 there will be costs to the environment and costs to households in the area,” he said.

A December 24 statement released by Rio Tinto B.C. General Manager Gaby Poirier states “there is more work to do to address community concerns regarding air quality in the Kitimat Valley.”

“In providing their confirmation, the EAB included a series of recommendations,” Poirier wrote. “Over the coming months, we will be working to fully assess them and we will continue to involve the local community including residents, stakeholders and our employees as we do so, noting that some of the recommendations have already started to be implemented.”

A Rio Tinto Alcan poster explains why SO2 scrubbers are not necessary at a public information centre in Kitimat, B.C on June 4, 2015. Photo: Carol Linnitt.

The fight against Rio Tinto Alcan’s emissions permit was one of the largest cases ever heard by the B.C. Environmental Appeal Board, the same body that ruled in favour of the contentious contaminated soil landfill site near Shawnigan Lake. During the lengthy trial the tribunal heard of a cozy relationship between Rio Tinto Alcan and the B.C. government and allegations of regulatory capture. 

Lawyers for Stannus and Towes were unable to provide comment on the ruling or whether they will pursue an additional appeal process.

Kitimat Unifor local 2301 is also appealing the Rio Tinto Alcan permit through the Environmental Appeal Board after winning the right to do so through the B.C. Supreme Court.

“Expanding the smelter without a scrubber is a terrible health risk to my community,” Sean O’Driscoll, Unifor Local 2301 President, said in a statement.

“We’re very pleased that Rio Tinto’s proposal will have to go through an environmental assessment. It’s a shame that it takes a Supreme Court Judge to force the B.C. Liberal government to do the right thing.”

Image: RTA

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Lis Stannus remembers how serious the problem of acid rain was in Ontario when she lived on a farm near Lake Huron as a child. So when Rio Tinto Alcan informed Kitimat residents of its plans to increase sulphur dioxide pollution — a key contributor to acid rain —she couldn’t understand why no one fought back.

“Nobody was speaking out,” Stannus said, “and I found it amazing that those people who should have been speaking out weren’t.”

Rio Tinto Alcan received a permit from the B.C. government in 2013 that allowed the company to increase production of aluminum at its smelter in Kitimat, leading to a 56 per cent increase in sulphur dioxide emissions. Currently, both the government and Rio Tinto Alcan are defending that permit in front of a tribunal acting for the B.C. Environmental Appeals Board in Kitimat.

Rio Tinto Alcan says its ‘modernization’ of the smelter is now 94 per cent complete although the tribunal has the power to rescind the province’s permit, putting the immediate future of the plant in question.

The Muzzle Effect: Small Town, Big Company

Stannus said when she first heard about the emissions increase she contacted the city, the Kitimat health authority and local environmental groups to push back against the company’s plans, to no avail.

But it didn’t take long for Stannus to realize “there was a lot of muzzling” going on, she said. “We are all muzzled here.”

Part of the problem, Stannus said, is that the aluminum plant is a major job provider for Kitimat.

“Without Alcan, Kitimat would be nothing,” she said. “Kitimat literally wouldn’t be here.”

Alcan, now owned by multi-national mining magnate Rio Tinto, used to be fondly referred to as “Uncle Al” by Kitimat residents.

The company created Kitimat as an artificial township in the 1950s to support a growing workforce. Although the planned city was originally created with 150,000 residents in mind, its current population is between 8,000 and 9,000 — about 1,400 of which rely on the smelter for employment.

“It’s like nobody would speak out if they worked for Rio Tinto Alcan,” she said. “You just wouldn’t speak up.”

Stannus said she recently spoke to an employee of Rio Tinto Alcan who said he was reprimanded by company officials for posting about sulphur dioxide emissions on his Facebook page.

Morris Amos from the Haisla First Nation said his band council and Rio Tinto Alcan entered into a $22 million “Legacy Agreement” that acts as a gag order on Haisla officials.

“Part of the language of the agreement, which is really more of a contract, includes a clause that talks about the Haisla Nation never coming forward to question anything that Alcan does as long as the agreement is in effect,” he said.

The Legacy Agreement, signed in 2010, guarantees employment, business opportunities and a trust fund for the Haisla Nation as an outcome of Rio Tinto Alcan’s modernization project.

Amos, brother of former elected Haisla chief Gerald Amos, said the agreement means his nation can’t officially question the increase of Rio Tinto Alcan’s sulphur dioxide emissions.

“I take that as a muzzling clause,” he said. “It remains to be seen if that has any force or effect legally — it hasn’t been challenged yet.”

Amos says the Legacy Agreement explains why the Haisla Nation hasn’t played a role in fighting for pollution reductions.

The Legacy Agreement, “is part of the reason why there’s no band council presence in this Environmental Appeals Board hearing,” he said.

Amos said he can speak out about the Legacy Agreement and Rio Tinto Alcan’s sulphur dioxide emissions because he’s not a part of the band council.

“I work for a heredity chief, so that’s another thing altogether.”

Rio Tinto Alcan’s Permit to Pollute

B.C. approved a permit in April 2013 that granted Rio Tinto Alcan the right to increase its sulphur dioxide emissions by 56 per cent.

Stannus, along with fellow Kitimat resident Emily Toews, is appealing that permit approval in the Environmental Appeals Board hearing, arguing the increase in sulphur dioxide emissions unnecessarily threatens human health.

“I was really mad,” Stannus said. “Because it seemed like an infringement of our rights and it went against everything the government told us we were working towards: reducing emissions, keeping the air clean.”

Stannus realized she needed to speak out. “ I thought, ‘I can do it. I don’t have anything to lose.’”

Pollution Reduction Measures Not Required by Province

Rio Tinto Alcan’s ability to reduce its sulphur dioxide emissions is central to the appeal hearings.

Giving testimony before the appeal panel, Ian Sharpe, director of environmental protection with the B.C. Ministry of Environment, said before granting the permit he required evidence Rio Tinto Alcan “could and would” install pollution reduction technology called scrubbers “should there be a need to have emissions lower than what they applied for.”

But rather than require the company to install scrubbers, which would prevent the increase of sulphur dioxide emissions, the province granted Rio Tinto Alcan a permit to increase its emissions for an indefinite amount of time.

Sharpe told the panel he decided not to impose sulphur dioxide limits on Rio Tinto Alcan because both B.C. and the federal government are considering updating their own standards in coming years.

Stannus said she doesn’t understand why the province will allow emissions to go up if the company has already prepared for the installation of scrubbers.

“I learned there was a place put at the plant for wet scrubbers. That was a backup plan,” she said. “I thought, ‘if scrubbers aren’t feasible, why would they do that?’”

Stannus thinks it comes down to penny pinching. Rio Tinto Alcan initially announced its modernization project would cost just over $2 billion but that number has recently skyrocketed to nearly $5 billion.

The Environmental Appeal Board hearings are currently taking place in Kitimat and are now in their third week. The panel could rescind Rio Tinto Alcan’s permit or order the company to install scrubbers.

Image Credit: Lis Stannus courtesy of Doug Keech.

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Move over Duffy diaries. There’s a new black book in town.

That’s the detailed work journal of B.C. Ministry of Environment senior official Frazer McKenzie, which recounts conversations between ministry officials and Rio Tinto Alcan while the company was applying for a permit to increase aluminum production at its Kitimat smelter.

“Frazer McKenzie was a diligent and thorough employee. He documented ongoings with Rio Tinto Alcan within government that we’d otherwise never know about,” lawyer Chris Tollefson told DeSmog Canada.

During the application process, Rio Tinto Alcan financed McKenzie’s position at the Ministry of Environment through a secondment agreement and government officials repeatedly refer to the company as a “client.”

DeSmog Canada has learned this parlance has become commonplace between ministry officials and industry. Indeed, much of what occurred in the Rio Tinto Alcan case appears to be standard operating procedure. 

McKenzie's journal — made public due to an appeal — offers a rare glimpse into the inner workings of B.C.'s Ministry of Environment. 

The ministry has argued that it agreed to allow the company to fund McKenzie’s position because of concerns there would be “inadequate staffing to deal with the application” otherwise. Such arrangements with industry are not entirely unusual due to chronic underfunding.* 

Rio Tinto Alcan’s application, which was approved by B.C. in 2013, granted the company the right to increase sulphur dioxide emissions in the Kitimat airshed by 56 per cent.

Sulphur dioxide is released from the combustion of sulphur-laden fossil fuels — such as the petroleum coke used to smelt aluminum — and irritates eyes, noses, throats and lungs. People with asthma, children and the elderly are at increased risk from sulphur dioxide exposure.

Two Kitimat elementary school teachers — Emily Toews, who suffers from asthma, and Lis Stannus — are now challenging that permit approval through the B.C. Environmental Appeals Board, arguing the project threatens human and environmental health. The appeal, being heard by a tribunal in Kitimat, is in its third week.

“This case really does represent a situation where you have a regulator that has gotten too close to a powerful and well-resourced private interest that it is supposed to be independently regulating,” Tollefson told the tribunal.

Central to the tribunal are the extensive notes McKenzie took while the Ministry of Environment, including manager of environmental protection Ian Sharpe, and Rio Tinto Alcan discussed the company’s permit application.

On Monday, Sharpe told the appeals panel Rio Tinto Alcan was “after comfort in the authorization process” and that he discussed the possibility of creating “some kind of comfort letter or document…that would give Rio Tinto Alcan’s board the comfort they needed to get on with funding.”

“This is B.C.’s version of the Duffy senate scandal: it shows how deeply comfortable government and industry are with one other,” said Richard Overstall, counsel for Emily Toews.

Notebook Shows B.C. Left Sulphur Dioxide Limits Unanswered

McKenzie’s notes show the provincial government was aware of scrubbing technology — used to eliminate sulphur dioxide emissions from smelters around the world — but chose not to require Rio Tinto Alcan to put that technology in place.

Under cross-examination, McKenzie read aloud his notes, which referenced Rio Tinto Alcan’s request to eliminate the mention of scrubbers from an internal memo. He also noted a phone call from a deputy minister who “did not want to let a little SO2 get in the way” of Rio Tinto Alcan’s project.

McKenzie’s journals also show the company was anxious about the projected increase of sulphur dioxide emissions from the modernization project and wanted regulatory certainty to calm investors.

Rio Tinto Alcan requested specific sulphur dioxide discharge limits during the creation of a joint memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the province. Under the MOU, the province committed to regulate Rio Tinto Alcan under sulphur dioxide standards from the 1970s — and guaranteed those weak rules would stay in effect for the project until at least the end of 2018, even though the province introduced much stronger interim standards in 2014.

Those weak standards were eventually dropped altogether by Sharpe, who said he began to consider them “obsolete,” but told the panel he could not recall when. No new standards for Rio Tinto Alcan’s smelter have been put into place and, according to Sharpe, won’t be in place until B.C. or the federal government mandate them after conducting a full public consultation.

McKenzie’s notes make numerous mentions to Rio Tinto Alcan’s desire for “certainty” regarding potential SO2 standards.

“SO2 is troubling to Alcan,” McKenzie wrote in one entry entered into evidence. “Insisting they have limit ahead of time — something in writing.”

McKenzie noted in one internal correspondence, “Alcan is anxious to get green light…to provide good news on project to stakeholders.”

The province approved the company’s permit in 2013 but did not release an environmental monitoring plan until 18 months later. Although the modernization project is very close to complete, it remains without sulphur dioxide emission limits.

Appellants Point to Regulatory Capture

Between the period of 2007 and 2013, McKenzie was seconded to Rio Tinto Alcan, which funded his position. He worked closely with the company during the permit application process.

Tollefson argues Sharpe's close ties with Rio Tinto Alcan influenced and ultimately fettered his decision-making.

The evidence shows that government of B.C. and Rio Tinto Alcan “deliberated carefully over the language” contained in their agreement “knowing that it might be challenged in court on the ground that it fettered the discretion of the decision-maker charged with granting the permit,” he told the panel.

“We need to reinvigorate the idea of a regulator as a fearless public defender,” he said.

That was not the case with Ministry of Environment officials, who, according to Tollefson, throughout years of documents refer to Rio Tinto Alcan as a “client” and tend to view the world through “industry-coloured glasses.”

Overstall said there was a “slow creep” of industry’s interests into government activities.

“That’s what we see with the Duffy scandal: these guys get so involved they lose their compass,” he said.

“No one wakes up one morning and decides, ‘I’m going to get cozy with industry.’ It’s more of a slow creep,” Overstall said. “They make small decisions one after another behind closed doors thinking what they’re doing is okay until suddenly the public spotlight is shone on them.”

* This story was updated after publication to add more context about the frequency of secondments and the use of the term "client" to refer to companies applying for permits with the Ministry of Environment.

Image Credit: Rio Tinto Alcan

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When the B.C. Ministry of Environment approved Rio Tinto Alcan’s application to modernize its aluminum smelter in Kitimat, B.C., local resident Emily Toews assumed that would mean an improvement in the plant’s emissions.

But the modernization project, which will increase the plant’s production, will raise sulphur dioxide (SO2) emissions by 56 per cent from 27 to 42 tonnes per day.

Toews, who suffers from asthma, told a tribunal in Kitimat Monday she decided to remain in Kitimat in 2010, rather than move to West Kelowna with her husband, because she had “previous knowledge that the modernization project would reduce emissions.”

The tribunal, hosted by the B.C. Environmental Appeals Board, is entering its third week in Kitimat after two weeks in Victoria. The board began investigating the government's approval of the Rio Tinto Alcan modernization project after Toews and fellow Kitimat resident Lis Stannus asked it to overturn the decision, saying increased sulphur dioxide emissions endangered their community's health.

The project, granted approval from the B.C. government in 2013, will reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the smelter, but not sulphur dioxide emissions because Rio Tinto Alcan was not required to introduce scrubbers, commonly used in smelters to remove the pollutant from airborne emissions.

Toews, who has a 10-month old child and is a kindergarten teacher, said she’s worried about the impact the increased pollution will have on the community’s children.

Sulphur dioxide, a pungent pollutant that results primarily from fossil fuel combustion, irritates the skin as well as the mucous membranes of the eyes, nose, throat and lungs. Exposure to sulphur dioxide aggravates the respiratory systems of asthmatics and is known to negatively affect the respiratory systems of children and the elderly. 

She told the tribunal that several children in the Kitimat school where she teaches suffer from asthma.

“Working at an elementary school there are a lot of illnesses going around,” she said. “During allergy season I often have to help kids, or help administer their medication before they go outdoors.”

”I’m concerned for other people in the community,“ she said.

Toews questioned why, if solutions like scrubbers are a possibility, the province didn’t require them when approving the smelter modernization project.

Scrubbers, which can either create dry sulphur waste or can use seawater which converts SO2 to sulfates for a benign release into the ocean, are commonly used in European smelters.

Toews told the panel she cannot see why the province wouldn’t require Rio Tinto Alcan to employ scrubbers to eliminate the SO2 emissions problem in Kitimat.

“No I’m not opposed to the modernization project, however I am opposed to increasing one emission — sulphur dioxide — and I don’t understand why that emission was left out of this 'state of the art' modernization process,” Toews said.

“I’d like this panel to consider having Rio Tinto produce the best state of the art reduction in emissions possible with the technologies that are available and to my knowledge there are technologies that are available to do that.”

An expert witness who previously gave testimony during the hearings told the panel Rio Tinto Alcan was avoiding paying for the installment of scrubbers and thereby externalizing the costs of SO2 emissions onto the health of local households.

Chris Tollefson, a lawyer representing Toews’ co-apellant Lis Stannus, said the company is primed to install scrubbers in a “plug and play” manner.

“There’s no dispute on the evidence that these scrubbers can be installed with relative ease,” he told the panel. “In fact, the [Kitimat modernization project] has been designed and built with an onsite area specifically set aside for scrubbers to be retrofitted…on what the experts describe is a ‘plug and play’ basis.”

Tollefson said the company’s issue with scrubbers is cost — an estimated $100 to $200 million for installment, not including operating costs. The company estimated the modernization project would cost $3.3 billion but overruns have the project nearing $5 billion last summer.

Rio Tinto Alcan has “made this very clear to the provincial government…that they simply do not want to spend the money.” Government officials from the B.C. Ministry of Environment were also too concerned with Rio Tinto’s interests, Tollefson previously argued, alleging the project’s approval without scrubbers at the provincial level is the result of regulatory capture.

Tollefson said he is asking the panel to “weigh the financial benefit to Rio Tinto Alcan of not being held to a rigorous environmental standard against the cost to the environment and human health of allowing Rio Tinto Alcan to increase its SO2 emissions by 56 per cent.”

The hearings, conducted by the B.C. Environmental Appeals Board, are currently underway in Kitimat.

Image Credit: Rio Tinto Alcan

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Increased sulphur dioxide (SO2) pollution from the expanded Rio Tinto Alcan (RTA) aluminum smelter in Kitimat, B.C. will result in increased health costs for local households, an expert witness told an Environmental Appeals Board panel in Victoria, Monday.

Dr. Brian Scarfe, an economist and cost-benefit analyst from the University of Victoria, testified before the tribunal that the externalized health costs placed on residents living near the Kitimat smelter will outstrip the cost of introducing scrubbers — which remove SO2 pollution from effluent — to the RTA plant.

In 2013 the B.C. government approved RTA’s permit to increase production of the smelter. The ‘modernization’ project will limit the release of other aluminum-associated emissions including greenhouse gases, but will result in a 56 per cent increase of sulphur dioxide being pumped into the airshed.

B.C. ruled RTA was not required to install scrubbers to prevent the SO2 increase from 27 to 42 tonnes per day.

Two Kitimat elementary teachers, Emily Toews and Lis Stannus are appealing the $3.3 billion project upgrade, saying it poses an unnecessary threat to human and environmental health. Appellant Emily Toews suffers from asthma, which heightens her sensitivity to even low SO2 levels. Children and the elderly are both at higher risk to SO2 exposure.

Before the appeal panel Scarfe argued the issue comes down cost distribution.

“I don’t like to think of this as a zero sum game, but that is what we have: costs are going to fall one way or another, benefits are going to fall one way or another,” he said.

"If you have a process that is generating some form of pollution you need to consider that an impact on the environment and perhaps on human life — that’s an externality."

“We can think about households on one side and RTA on the other: clearly if nothing is done to limit SO2 there will be costs to the environment and costs to households in the area and that’s one kind of distribution," he said.

"The costs fall on one side while the other avoids costs.”

High Sulphur Content of North American Petroleum Coke a Factor

According to Scarfe, the petroleum coke or petcoke, a byproduct of refined hydrocarbons, being used in RTA’s smelting operations is very high in sulphur content.

He said the higher the sulphur content of the petcoke, “the larger the SO2 emissions will be in relation to the production capacity of the plant.”

Scarfe added the low-sulphur petcoke market has dried up in recent years and that the higher levels of sulphur present in petcoke feeds may be the outcome of increased unconventional hydrocarbon production like fracking. Petcoke is also a waste product of bitumen upgrading in the Alberta oilsands, where the sulphur content is extremely high.

“The sulphur content of petroleum being extracted in North America has gone up in number over time,” Scarfe said. The weighted average sulphur content in U.S. refineries has risen from 0.9 per cent in 1985 to 1.4 per cent in 2014.

RTA’s modernization proposal says the smelter expects to use petcoke with an average of 2.9 per cent sulphur but could be as high as 3.8 per cent.

These levels of sulphur would exceed the acceptable limits for smelters without scrubbers in foreign countries such as Iceland, Scarfe said.

“If you were looking for solutions for large amounts of sulphur dioxide one of the options would be to buy petcoke, even if more expensive, with lower sulphur content.”

He added that given a consistent supply of low-sulphur petcoke can’t be guaranteed, a safer long term solution for the Kitimat airshed would be for RTA to install scrubbers.

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The B.C. Ministry of Environment was too concerned with the interests of Rio Tinto Alcan when it granted the company a permit to dramatically increase the release of sulphur dioxide (SO2) emissions in the Kitimat airshed, attendants of a tribunal heard in Victoria on Monday.

“This case raises the specter, in a very real way, of regulatory capture,” Chris Tollefson, lawyer for the University of Victoria’s Environmental Law Centre, argued in his opening statement.

Tollefson said the B.C. Ministry of Environment put senior official Frazer McKenzie in a conflicted position when it allowed Rio Tinto Alcan to pay his salary between 2007 and 2013 — during which time McKenzie was tasked with reviewing an upgrading application for the company’s Kitimat smelter.

In 2013, the province, acting through Ian Sharpe, environmental manager for the Ministry of Environment,  granted Rio Tinto Alcan permission to proceed with a $3.3 billion modernization project that would increase production and the amount of sulphur dioxide emissions released into the Kitimat airshed.

Two Kitimat residents, Emily Toews and Lis Stannus, appealed the project’s approval in 2013 with the B.C. Environmental Appeal Board, arguing the 56 per cent increase in sulphur dioxide emissions would threaten human and environmental health. Toews and Stannus are both elementary school teachers in the region.

“This case really does represent a situation where you have a regulator that has gotten too close to a powerful and well-resourced private interest that it is supposed to be independently regulating,” Tollefson told the tribunal, an independent body tasked with hearing appeals submitted to the Environmental Appeals Board.

Tollefson alleged Rio Tinto Alcan was granted too much authority in the decision-making process and “in the end got exactly what it wanted.”

The province announced the project did not require an environmental assessment because overall emissions will be reduced as a result of the modernization project — even though SO2 emissions are set to increase.

Tollefson argued that because Ministry of Environment officials were too wrapped up with Rio Tinto Alcan’s interests, they did not order the company to install scrubbers, designed to ‘scrub’ SO2 pollution out of the smelter’s effluent.

However, Rio Tinto Alcan has “covered its bets,” Tollefson said, by “setting aside the ability to install these scrubbers on a plug and play model” should the province decide to require them.

“If this Panel decides to order the installation of scrubbers, there is no technological or logistical reason why Rio Tinto Alcan can’t comply with that,” he said.

The province has not required scrubbers be installed — at an anticipated cost of between $100 and $200 million to the company — because “this concern to keep Rio Tinto Alcan content…in the end overshadowed the concern that should have been shown for the public interest.”

Ben Naylor, co-counsel for the Ministry of Environment said there was no conflict of interest and that Rio Tinto Alcan funded McKenzie’s position because of concerns there would be “inadequate staffing to deal with the application, including the application to increase sulphur dioxide.”

“This agreement allowed the government to secure funding for a complicated position,” he told the tribunal. “Without this funding this permit would not have been dealt with in the timeframe provided or with the amount of scientific rigour needed.”

Dan Bennett, a lawyer representing Rio Tinto Alcan, said the appellants have raised “no credible concerns” with the smelter’s modernization project. Doyle argued the changes will reduce the plant’s environmental footprint including reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 42 per cent.

But, he added, he does “acknowledge that suphur dioxide emissions are intended to increase and that results from the increased level of aluminum production.” 

Co-counsel for Rio Tinto Alcan Jana McLean added the “appellants request in this appeal to amend the permit to require scrubbers lacks any evidentiary foundation and is without scientific merit.”

The hearing will continue in Victoria for two weeks (April 27 – May 1 and May 11 – May 15) before continuing in Kitimat.

Image Credit: Robin Rowland

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In spite of the ink that has been devoted to arguing about how many jobs Enbridge Northern Gateway is promising to Kitimat residents, one of the most compelling bits of evidence may be an update to a community planning document produced by the District of Kitimat in 2008. 

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The newly appointed head of the B.C. government’s communications branch is a former lobbyist for Enbridge Inc., the company that hopes to build the $7.9-billion Northern Gateway pipeline stretching 1,200 kilometres from the Alberta oilsands to Kitimat on the B.C. coast.

John Paul Fraser, who DeSmog Canada has learned became acting deputy minister in charge of Government Communications and Public Engagement (GCPE) earlier this month, worked as a lobbyist for National Public Relations from 2008 until shortly before moving to the B.C public service in 2011.

He previously worked for Burrard Communications Inc. — a company founded by Premier Christy Clark’s former husband Mark Marissen — where he was registered with the Federal Office of the Commissioner of Lobbying of Canada as a lobbyist on behalf of Enbridge Inc.

Fraser is a long-time friend of Clark who worked on her election campaign and, until this summer, was assistant deputy minister for strategic planning and public engagement. He is the son of B.C.’s conflict commissioner Paul Fraser.

It is not the first time Clark has included an Enbridge lobbyist in her inner political circle. Ken Boessenkool, her former chief of staff who resigned in 2012 after admitting to inappropriate conduct towards a female staff member, was also an Enbridge lobbyist.

The question for opponents of Northern Gateway is whether having former lobbyists in government corridors of power could make a difference to how Clark treats the project. Northern Gateway was conditionally given the green light by the federal government in June, subject to Enbridge meeting 209 conditions listed by the Joint Review Panel, but Clark has never been enthusiastic about the project.

Clark has set out five conditions that must be met before B.C. gives its support, including strict environmental protections, adequate consultations with First Nations and a greater share of economic benefits. B.C. also has its hand on the controls through numerous provincial permits that will be needed if Northern Gateway manages to overcome legal challenges launched by First Nations and environmental groups.

It is possible that having high-level bureaucrats who intimately understand the Enbridge file is an advantage as they will know the odds are stacked against the project, said Will Horter, executive director of Dogwood Initiative, a democracy group fighting against the oil pipeline and tanker project.

 “There’s a revolving door of people associated with Enbridge, either directly or as advocates, coming into the close circles of the premier . . . . But they must understand that this is a big mountain to climb or even that this is a zombie project,” Horter said.

Joe Foy, Wilderness Committee’s national campaign director, worries about a system that allows those with partisan or business interests to take up high-level positions in the civil service.

“I do have a concern when we have powerful players in our government that seem to slip seamlessly between the partisan world, corporate world and bureaucracy,” he said.

“I am not suggesting there is anything untoward, but I think it shows up a fairly major flaw in our system of government, because it is very important that citizens know who they are talking to.”

Fraser previously worked for David Anderson, former federal Liberal environment minister and a Northern Gateway opponent.

Anderson said he has no idea whether his opposition to bitumen-laden tankers in B.C.’s coastal waters could have rubbed off on Fraser, but he cannot see that someone as bright as Fraser could have had much to do with the Northern Gateway project.

“I have great admiration for John Paul Fraser. Enbridge has done such an appalling, hopeless, ridiculous job in managing its public relations, they couldn’t have taken advice,” he said.

Fraser could not be contacted for an interview.

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