B.C. Environment Minister Mary Polak announced today she is revoking a permit granted to Cobble Hill Holdings for the disposal of 5 million tonnes of contaminated waste in a local quarry in the Shawnigan Lake watershed, roughly 40 kilometres north of Victoria on Vancouver Island.

“Effective immediately, I am cancelling the waste discharge permit for Cobble Hill Holdings because the company has failed to meet the requirements outlined in my Jan. 27 letter,” the minister stated in a press release.

Polak said the company did not provide B.C. with proof of financial security in the form of a letter of credit by a determined deadline.

“Cobble Hill Holdings has been given multiple opportunities to respond to outstanding non-compliance and has repeatedly missed deadlines with respect to its permit requirements,” the minister stated.

The company was cited for non-compliance both this fall and last for failing to control water runoff from the waste site, a fact that heightened concerns of Shawnigan Lake residents who felt that the project would contaminate their drinking water.

Project Pushed Ahead Without Community Support

“We’re ecstatic about the permit being cancelled,” Shawnigan Lake resident and municipal official with the Cowichan Valley Regional District, Sonia Furstenau, told DeSmog Canada.

“I’ve never doubted for a second that we would win because this project was so outrageous.”

Fursteanu, who is now running for the region’s provincial Green Party seat in the upcoming election, says the fact that such an ill-fitting project could be forced on a community is what pushed her into politics.

“I’ve learned over the last two years how broken things really are at the provincial level.”

Furstenau said she can still remember an early public consultation meeting about the project where 299 out of 300 residents in attendance said they did not want hazardous waste in their community.

The permit granted the company the permission to dispose of industrial waste contaminated with furans, dioxins, chlorinated hydrocarbons, glycols, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, benzene, toluene, xylene and other materials know to cause cancer, brain damage, and birth defects in humans.

“At that point the government should have said, ‘okay, this is not what the community wants.’”

Furstenau said the waste disposal project is emblematic of other major projects in B.C. where local community voices are left out of the decision-making process.

“We’re the canary in the coalmine. We’re what’s happening everywhere,” she said.

“It’s the story of the government that chose a business over the community, despite — and this is the part that drives me crazy — despite the overwhelming evidence that showed we were right.”

A report by independent experts found local drinking water aquifers had not been adequately mapped by the B.C. Ministry of Environment and that the movement of groundwater within rock formations surrounding the quarry was underestimated.

Torrance Coste, campaigner with the Wilderness Committee, said at both the provincial and federal level, environmental reviews of projects push community concerns aside.

“There is a purposeful exclusion of communities in environmental assessments and project assessments,” Coste told DeSmog Canada.

“The B.C. Environmental Assessment Office is a big culprit for this. The reviews really prioritize the needs of the proponents, of the company, over the needs of the community.”

Coste said there are obvious parallels with the Raven coal mine proposed for a small community on Vancouver Island.

“It was a no-brainer, stupid project with no community support but lots of support from the government. The company throughout that process was always given the benefit of the doubt.”

He said with the coal mine, as with the waste disposal site in Shawnigan Lake, community organizing and opposition eventually won out, but despite seemingly blind government support.

“You have two companies that are glaring incompetent, not following the rules, winning zero trust, zero social licence from the community and the government is sticking by them until the eleventh hour.”

“That’s not how government should operate.”

B.C. Cancels Controversial Hazardous Waste Disposal Permit in Shawnigan Lake Watershed https://t.co/iV6Kcx7vOu @SRA_INFO #bcpoli pic.twitter.com/mAeY38snwc

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) February 24, 2017

Pulled Permit Could Be Used for Political Benefit

Coste said it’s also worth noting the B.C. government’s decision comes close to the provincial election.

“This is something the community has been working around the clock on since 2012 and now a couple of months before an election we see a move that ‘s going to be popular in the community.”

“That should be noted.”

Shawnigan Lake resident Georgia Collins also said the timing of the decision is notable given the importance of the Shawnigan Lake riding in the next provincial election.

“The B.C. government is clearly acting in their best interest. It’s just common sense not to have contaminated soil above a source of drinking water.”

“It’s hard to swallow because all along minister Polak said she absolutely could not interfere politically. It’s hard to swallow but of course we’ll take the win,” Collins said.

She added, “I really hope in all of this that people are able to see that it is the product of a community effort. I do fear that it’s one of those things you could take and spin for your own political benefit.”

Coste said it’s ultimately the government that holds the keys to major projects, meaning they always have the capacity to pull permits.

“That goes for Site C, for Kinder Morgan, old-growth logging and all sorts of activities that are occurring without social licence.”

The government has been preoccupied with delivering on it’s “getting to yes” tagline, but “it should be about doing what’s right for communities,” he said.

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Kinder Morgan’s proposal to expand the Trans Mountain pipeline has failed to meet British Columbia’s standards when it comes to marine and land spill response plans, according to the province’s submission provided to the National Energy Board (NEB) Monday.

Environment Minister Mary Polak told reporters the province outlined five conditions that must be met to receive the province's support for any oil pipeline in its submission to the National Energy Board. She said two of those conditions, pertaining to marine and land spill response, have not been met.

“Today we are putting forward our final submission to the National Energy Board hearings on the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion,” Polak said.

“You will see once again our five conditions outlined. We see those as our basis for defending British Columbia’s interests in terms of environment, but also First Nations and benefits to British Columbia.”

“We have not at this time seen evidence in the NEB process that those conditions have been met,” she said.

Polak added B.C. has received encouragement from both government and industry leaders for its decision to uphold the five conditions.

Although not all levels of government have expressed support for the province’s position.

Thomson Nicola Regional District Chair John Ranta expressed disappointment the government is “turning its back” on the project which he says would benefit communities along the pipeline route.

“Billions of dollars were expected to be spent, employing thousands of people during the construction phase,” Ranta told a local radio station in Merritt. “It surprises me a project of this magnitude would be rejected by the provincial government.”

Minister Polak defended B.C.’s position, saying, “I think perhaps Mr. Ranta is forgetting the basis upon which we are providing this submission to the NEB.”

“This is about the NEB process and based on the evidence within the NEB process,” she said.

“We have seen that the company has been vocal in saying they believe they can meet our five conditions,” Polak stated, adding, “they are welcome to work towards that.”

Peter McCartney, climate campaigner with the Wilderness Committee, said his organization is “cautiously optimistic” about B.C.’s submission to the NEB. "Of course they have their conditions laid out but if you read through their submission they say if these conditions are met, they will approve the pipeline," added. 

“I think it’s a good sign that the B.C. government recognizes a spill on our coast would be disastrous,” he said. “We’ll see what Kinder Morgan comes up with, if they even do come up with a proper spill response plan in the eyes of the government.”

As DeSmog Canada first reported, Kinder Morgan refused to release full spill response plans to the B.C. government, citing safety concerns. The company released those same spill response plans in full to the public in the U.S. for segments of the Trans Mountain pipeline network that cross the B.C.-Washington border.

Beyond oil spill concerns, McCartney said B.C. has no condition to address the climate impact of pipelines. 

“Even if that oil makes it to Asian markets without spilling into the Salish Sea it’s going to spill into the atmosphere via greenhouse gas emissions.”

Adam Scott from Environmental Defence said the current regulatory system doesn’t take the risks pipelines post to Canadians and environment seriously enough.

“The National Energy Board is increasingly seen by Canadians as a rubber stamp for the oil industry,” Scott said in a statement. “The NEB for too long has only asked how to get projects built. Instead, a reformed pipeline review process must first ask if these projects are in the best interest of Canadians.”

During the federal election Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said the Liberals would overhaul the National Energy Board review process by making it more evidence-based. Trudeau said a new revamped process would be put in place and that ongoing reviews, such as for the Trans Mountain pipeline, would start fresh under a new, more robust system.

However, in November Natural Resources Jim Carr announced ongoing oil pipeline reviews will continue on under the current regime, adding that changes may retroactively apply to ongoing reviews if and when they are implemented at the National Energy Board level.

Scott said the federal government is “backtracking on its election promise” but the final decision regarding the fate of the pipeline rests with cabinet.

“Any meaningful review has to investigate if energy projects will undermine Canada’s policy goals like promises made in Paris to cut carbon pollution,” he said. “It also means listening to the best available science, such as the recent NAS study on the safety risks of diluted bitumen.”

The Tsleil-Waututh First Nation is currently engaged in a legal challenge of the National Energy Board review process. The nation argues the process has been compromised by a number of “procedural errors” and the government has failed to meet its duty to consult with First Nations.

The proposed pipeline expansion would increase the line’s capacity from 300,000 to 750,000 barrels of oil per day and could quadruple the number of oil tankers in the Burrard Inlet, from five to more than 20 each month. 

Eugene Kung, staff counsel with West Coast Environmental Law, said he is “pleased the province has recognized that this project doesn’t meet their five conditions.”

Kung is a representative for the Tsliel-Waututh First Nation in the NEB hearings and is also counsel for the Tsliel-Waututh Sacred Trust Initiative, the branch of government tasked with fighting the Trans Mountain expansion.

Kung added that beyond marine and terrestrial spill response, there are two additional conditions that have yet to be met by Kinder Morgan.

The first condition, that the project go through an environmental assessment process, has yet to be met, according to Kung.

“It’s an open question whether the NEB process as it currently stands would fulfill that first condition given how widely criticized that process has been including by the province,” Kung said.

Kung added the fifth condition which pertains to First Nations rights needs further discussion.

“Based on where the state of Canadian law on aboriginal rights is today and in particular the practical requirements for consent as set out the in Chilcoltin decision — combined with the Tsliel-Waututh and other Fist Nations well-grounded and well-founded rejection of the project — makes it difficult for a linear project like a pipeline to meet all those conditions.”

“It’s hard to imagine those conditions being met if the aboriginal law rights and title requirements do have to be met because that clearly hasn’t happened,” he said.

“I haven’t seen anything from the minister on their position on that.”

This article was updated January 11, 2016 at 4:00pm to include comments from Eugene Kung.

Image: Environment Minister Mary Polak via Flickr

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