By Amy Lubik, Ben Parfitt and Grand Chief Stewart Phillip

Just two days before B.C. Energy Minister Michelle Mungall announced a completely inadequate “independent scientific review” of fracking in our province, an international team of scientists issued a stark warning about the human health risks associated with the natural gas industry’s rampant use of this brute force technology.

“Our examination…uncovered no evidence that fracking can be practiced in a manner that does not threaten human health,” concluded the scientists, who were affiliated either with the Concerned Health Professionals of New York or the Nobel Peace Prize-winning group, Physicians for Social Responsibility.

Tellingly, the scientific review just announced by the B.C. government will expressly not investigate the human health impacts of fracking.

Fracking involves pressure-pumping immense quantities of water, sand and chemicals underground with such force that earthquakes are frequently triggered. Northeast B.C. has the dubious distinction of being home to some of the most powerful fracking operations on earth, and much of the resulting damage occurs on Indigenous territories.

The evidence reviewed by the scientists included nearly 1,300 peer-reviewed articles. That fact alone tells you something. The “science” on fracking is already in.

And here’s just a smattering of what it says:

People living near gas drilling and fracking operations are more prone to asthma. Pregnant women living near drilled and fracked gas wells face elevated risks of giving birth to newborns with congenital heart defects. Workers servicing gas well sites are exposed to high levels of silica, diesel exhaust, and volatile organic compounds that raise concerns about higher incidence of occupational lung diseases, including silicosis, asthma, and lung cancer.

For Indigenous people living in fracking zones, the impacts of fossil fuel industry operations only add to the disproportionately poor health statistics they already face.

A preliminary scientific study published this January by health scientists at the University of Montreal, for example, found that pregnant women in northeast B.C. have elevated levels of benzene metabolites (benzene is a carcinogen) in their blood. The 15 pregnant Indigenous women in the study had levels six times higher than the Canadian average.

For these reasons and others, the organizations we represent and 14 others last fall called for a full public inquiry into all aspects of fracking operations in our province. We made that call because of abundant evidence that fracking in northeast B.C. was intensifying and that B.C.’s energy industry regulator, the Oil and Gas Commission, was failing to provide reasonable checks on fossil fuel industry excesses.

In issuing our collective call we said then — and we restate now — that a scientific “review” will not deliver meaningful changes. The people who live in the northeast, who drink the region’s water, who breathe its air, deserve nothing less than a full public inquiry into all aspects of fossil fuel industry operations.

It must also fully addresses the question of free, prior and informed consent, a cornerstone of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which Michelle Mungall and all her Cabinet colleagues are tasked by Premier John Horgan to implement.

Now, sadly, we have even more reason to oppose a “scientific review.” Here’s why.

The review will be extremely narrowly focussed. Minister Mungall has tasked three scientists to look at water usage in fracking operations, examine earthquakes triggered by such operations and determine what methane may be vented into the atmosphere during fracking operations themselves. The panel is to make “recommendations” on how to “minimize” environmental risks.

Troublingly, at least one senior member of Mungall’s ministry (an assistant deputy minister) communicated with the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP) well before the panel was struck. Consequently, the association, which represents the very companies that are fracking in the province, received generous forewarning that the review would not look at the human health impacts associated with fracking or at the fossil fuel industry’s ballooning greenhouse gas emissions.

(A recent study in Alberta found emissions of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, were 15 times greater than what fossil fuel companies operating in the Red Deer area were reporting to the provincial government).

Not only was CAPP forewarned about the limited B.C. fracking review, but it was encouraged well in advance of anyone else to get going on lining up its “expert” witnesses.

The public interest is clearly not being served here. Instead, the interests of an industry with a vested stake in maintaining the status quo are.

In just two years, Encana, one of the major companies drilling and fracking for natural gas in northeast B.C., says it will double its natural gas production and quintuple its gas liquids output, much of which will be destined for Alberta’s tarsands. That translates directly into increased health risks for the region’s Indigenous and non-Indigenous residents.

British Columbians deserve better. What’s needed are comprehensive changes to public policy. A full public inquiry could provide a needed roadmap. The government’s science panel most certainly will not.

Amy Lubik is a health researcher with the B.C. Chapter of the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment. Ben Parfitt is a resource policy analyst with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. Grand Chief Stewart Phillip is president of the Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs.

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B.C.’s scientific inquiry into fracking won’t address risks to public health, the government quietly assured the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP) nearly six weeks before government publicly announced the inquiry on Thursday.

B.C. also assured CAPP the inquiry would not address industry’s contribution to greenhouse gas emissions, according to documents obtained by DeSmog Canada.

“You have the preeminent industry association in the country given six weeks advance notice not only about the inquiry itself but a clear indication that key things are simply not going to be addressed,” Ben Parfitt, an investigative journalist with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, told DeSmog Canada.

”I’m deeply troubled by that.”

In November the CCPA, along with 16 partner organizations, called on the B.C. government to launch a broad-reaching public inquiry into all aspects of the fracking industry, after Parfitt revealed several companies had built unlicensed dams to hold water for frack operations.

The groups renewed that call in December after a leaked report showed the B.C. Oil and Gas Commission had kept information about potentially hundreds of leaking oil and gas wells hidden for four years.

“I am extremely worried and all the groups that signed on to a call for an inquiry are extremely concerned about what we see here,” Parfitt said.

Nearly six weeks before B.C. announced its review of the fracking process, CAPP was notified the inquiry would focus only on water usage and induced earthquakes from fracking operations.

Government also made CAPP aware the province would not conduct a full public inquiry as had been requested by civil society groups, that the panel would consist of three academics and would conduct its work in April and May.

None of the 17 organizations that made the call for a public inquiry into fracking were notified of government’s intentions to launch a scientific panel.

The B.C. Ministry of Mines and Petroleum Resources did not answer questions about the nature of its consultation with CAPP or whether the industry association made specific recommendations regarding the province’s scientific inquiry. CAPP did not respond to a request for comment.

Significant harms to human health associated with fracking

The announcement of B.C.’s scientific inquiry this week coincides with the release in the U.S. of the most authoritative study of fracking’s threats to human health ever published.

The compendium, a 266-page report which draws from nearly 1,300 peer-reviewed studies, reports and investigations, was released by the Physicians for Social Responsibility and the Concerned Health Professionals of New York.

The report found “no evidence that fracking can be practiced in a manner that does not threaten human health” and puts B.C.’s avoidance of health impacts in its scientific inquiry conspicuously on display according to Barbara Gottlieb, director for environment and health at Physicians for Social Responsibility and one of the co-authors of the study.

“I’m so glad to hear there is going to be a government scientific review of fracking,” Gottlieb told DeSmog Canada. “I’m struck there are no health voices on the panel.”

The body of information addressing the threats fracking poses to human health is enormous, Gottlieb said, adding the bulk of the research has been conducted in the last five years.

“The most important thing to note is that we can say with certainty fracking causes harm to human health.”

Recent research has demonstrated a real statistical correlation between those living close to fracking sites and an increase in hospitalization for numerous causes, including increased asthma, harm to fetuses and premature birth which is the leading cause of premature death in infants in the U.S., Gottlieb and her co-authors found.

“For a long time the information was largely anecdotal, largely at the level of symptoms, so we’d see people living near fracking sites had headaches or sudden and severe nosebleeds.”

The research now shows a strong connection between serious harm and proximity to fracking operations, Gottlieb said, noting the occupational risk to those working for the oil and gas industry.

“The extraction sites are dangerous,” she said.

Amy Lubik, member of the Public Health Association of B.C., one of the groups that called on government to launch a public inquiry into fracking, said much of the research into the impacts of fracking on human health has been done in the U.S.

“There aren’t a lot of studies in B.C. around the impacts on health,” Lubik told DeSmog Canada. “It’s one of the reasons why we were hoping the government was going to examine fracking in a public inquiry.”

Lubik, who is an environmental health scientist with the B.C. Centre for Disease Control, said many other jurisdictions that have placed a ban or moratorium on fracking have done so precisely because of risks to health.

“I think we need to do a hell of a lot more research,” she said. “We talk about the chemical issue a lot with the different groups in public health. What about the people that are living and working in these industries?”

Lubik added when it comes to public health, emissions associated with the industry are also of significant concern.

“Climate change is the biggest public health risk of our time. If we aren’t meeting our Paris targets, we will put a lot of people’s health at risk.”

Emissions impact of fracking overlooked

Scientist John Werring with the David Suzuki Foundation, also a signatory of the call for a broad public inquiry into fracking, has spent the last several years measuring the impacts of leaking methane from oil and gas infrastructure in B.C.

Werring’s research found fugitive methane — an extremely potent greenhouse gas — is escaping at much higher rates than previously estimated by government or industry. A report published in collaboration between the David Suzuki Foundation and St. Xavier University recommended B.C. require industry to provide regular monitoring and reporting of fugitive emissions.

Werring said he’s disappointed B.C.’s scientific review of fracking was designed to exclude looking at those fugitive emissions.

“I think unfortunately that this is a very, very, very narrowly focused scientific review,” Werring told DeSmog Canada.

While there are environmental hazards associated with the fracking process itself, Werring said much of the impacts of fracking happen above ground.

“When we’re talking, for example, about the issue of fugitive emissions, they contain potentially toxic components that have adverse impacts on human health. These are things like benzene, toluene and hydrogen sulfide gas.”

“There is nothing here in government’s scientific review that they are going to look at the human health impacts. Nothing,” Werring said.

Gottlieb said tracking methane is important for tracking the larger movement of contaminants away from fracking sites and into communities. She added there is no known safe threshold for exposure to benzene, which causes cancer.

“The fracking site is where the gas is extracted but then the methane is carried to processing stations and then carried often hundreds of miles to power stations or increasingly in the U.S. there is a push to liquify natural gas,” she said.

Those pipelines carry with them some of the dangerous substances that come out of the ground with the methane, including particulate matter, volatile organic compounds and often radioactive material, Gottlieb said.

“These dangerous substance are not only causing sickness and hospitalization and so on where this is extracted but this whole pipeline and infrastructure system carries this toxic material with them and into communities hundreds of miles away.”

“We’re all stakeholders in regards to fracking.”

Stronger review needed

Gottlieb said in her home state of Maryland, where there is a current ban on fracking, Physicians for Social Responsibility pushed for health voices to be included in reviews of the industry’s impacts there.*

She said B.C. may be well counselled to embed a health professional in their review.

Lubik said there is still time for B.C. to alter the scope of its inquiry.

“I think there’s definitely still an opportunity — they haven’t even started yet.”

Parfitt said beyond assessing the health and emission impacts of the fracking industry in B.C., a meaningful inquiry would address the efficacy of the regulatory environment in the province.

“This review isn’t going to come anywhere remotely close to what our organization and other organizations felt was critical to be addressed by a much broader, fulsome public inquiry,” Parfitt said.

There have been too many examples of the regulator failing to protect the public’s interest, Parfitt said.

“We believe very strongly they’re not going to wrestle this beast to the ground if they’re not willing to look at how this industry is regulated.”

Fracking Inquiry Correspondence March 2018 by DeSmog Canada on Scribd

*Update: Wednesday March 21, 2018 6:45 p.m. PST. This article has been updated to reflect the fact that the state of Maryland has a ban on fracking and not a moratorium as previously stated.*

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For years British Columbians have been left in the dark about the most expensive public project in our history.

All of that came to an end on Wednesday when the B.C. Utilities Commission (BCUC) issued its final report on the Site C dam.

The results are, well, damning.

"This report indicates had the Liberals put this to the commission four years ago, Site C would not be built,” Mark Jaccard, a professor at Simon Fraser University's School of Resource and Environmental Management, told the Globe and Mail.

Normally the construction of new electricity generating facilities can’t begin without B.C.’s independent regulator issuing something called a “certificate of public convenience and necessity.”

But the Site C dam never had such a certificate. Why not? It was exempted from review under the previous BC Liberal government.

That means construction on the dam began without any independent, in-depth examination of the costs of the project or the demand for the project. Seriously. The B.C. government skipped the regular review process and instead ploughed ahead with a mega project with no idea whether it was a) needed or b) the most cost effective source of electricity.

That’s led to calls this week for a public inquiry into how (and, perhaps more importantly, why) BC Hydro and the BC Liberal government made that decision

“I would like to see a full inquiry to investigate how BC Hydro executives and the previous government essentially conspired to manufacture the case for Site C,” Marc Lee, a senior economist with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, told DeSmog Canada.

“As someone who strongly believes in public sector institutions and Crown corporations, to have our electricity utility lying to us, making up numbers and doing all sorts of spurious comparisons between its preferred option and the alternative is shameful.”

Shameful indeed.

Here’s just one example. In August, BC Hydro submitted to the BCUC that it had screened out solar energy on the basis of a cost estimate of $97/MWh in 2025. In response to a follow-up question from the commission, BC Hydro admitted the cost of solar is now only half that at $48/MWh.

While BC Hydro has argued for years that alternatives weren’t viable, the panel found that actually — even factoring in a $1.8 billion cost to terminate Site C and remediate the site — an alternative portfolio would still likely come in at a similar cost to Site C.

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Can you imagine what would have happened if we’d actually reviewed the options before beginning construction?

Given the unit energy cost of renewables is significantly cheaper than Site C ($32/MWh compared to $44/MWh in the panel’s assessment), it’s pretty clear we wouldn’t be building a mega dam if we’d done the analysis.

Since the panel couldn’t rely on BC Hydro’s assessment of alternatives, they came out with their own alternative portfolio. What did that look like?

Under the most likely demand scenario, B.C. won’t need any new electricity generation at all until 2039, when we’ll need to start building 444 megawatts of wind (Site C is an 1,100 megawatt project). The rest of demand growth can be met through increased efficiency, conservation and measures to decrease demand spikes (such as offering cheaper rates if you use power at night, rather than during the supper hour).

So for all of the propaganda about the need for the Site C dam, essentially the panel found that instead of flooding 100 kilometres of river valley, infringing on treaty rights and pushing farmers out of their homes, we could chill for 22 years and then build a bit of wind power. Seriously.

The panel found BC Hydro’s mid-load forecast for electricity demand in B.C. “excessively optimistic” and noted there are risks that could result in demand being less than even BC Hydro’s lowest demand scenario. This is why we have independent reviews, people.

The icing on the cake? The panel was “not persuaded that the Site C project will remain on schedule” and found “the project is not within the proposed budget of $8.335 billion.”

Completion costs may actually be in excess of $10 billion, the panel found, and could be up to 50 per cent more than budgeted.

When DeSmog Canada first reported that Site C was behind schedule and over budget more than a year ago, what did BC Hydro do? They attacked us via a press release and co-ordinated with the premier’s office to discredit our reporting.

It turns out BC Hydro and the premier would have been better off spending some time assessing whether they were making the right choice, rather than smearing journalists reporting the facts. 

British Columbians deserve to know why the people in power ignored all common sense and pushed ahead with a project that is damaging, unnecessary and fiscally irresponsible. A public inquiry is the only way we’ll ever get those answers.

This article also ran in the Victoria Times Colonist on Nov. 8, 2017.

Photo: Province of British Columbia

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Widespread criticism of B.C.’s mining rules is undeserved according to Energy and Mines Minister Bill Bennett, who has turned down a recommendation from the University of Victoria’s Environmental Law Centre for a judicial inquiry into mining regulation.

“Given the significant changes this government has made to how mining is undertaken and overseen in British Columbia, including changes to law and policy, additional resources to improve permitting processes and significantly strengthened compliance and enforcement, Government categorically disagrees that a Commission of Public Enquiry (sic) into the Province’s mining industry serves the taxpayers of B.C. Such a process would be demonstrably redundant,” Bennett wrote in a letter to the ELC.

The response has exasperated Calvin Sandborn, ELC legal director, who said the rejection is likely to cost B.C. taxpayers dearly because of immense costs of mine reclamation where environmental damage has been caused by poor government oversight and minimal enforcement of the polluter-pay principle.

“You can pay for an awful lot of public inquiries if you avoid just one disaster,” said Sandborn, who points to how previous public inquiries have improved regulatory systems and helped restore public confidence.

An ELC report, commissioned by the Fair Mining Collaborative, said the regulatory system governing B.C.’s mining industry is profoundly dysfunctional and the public has lost confidence in the province’s ability to protect the environment and communities from poor mining practices.

A Commission of Public Inquiry is needed because mining is an industry that can create “catastrophic and long-lasting threats to entire watersheds and to critical public assets such as fish, clean water, wildlife and public health,” says the report.

In the aftermath of the Mount Polley tailings dam collapse, the spotlight has been on B.C.’s mining regulations and enforcement, drawing highly critical analyses from Auditor General Carol Bellringer, Alaskan politicians and environmental groups, First Nations, Canadian not-for-profit groups such as Mining Watch Canada and communities worried about the safety of tailings ponds in their region.

In addition to the Mount Polley disaster, that saw 25-million cubic metres of sludge and toxic waste water surge into nearby lakes and rivers, public confidence has been shaken by the toxic legacy of old mines, such as Tulsequah Chief, which has leached acid mine waste into Alaska watersheds for six decades and the Sunro Mine at Jordan River where reclamation and cleanup efforts were not enforced.

Simultaneously, there is increasing public discomfort with proof that taxpayers are likely to be on the hook for more than a billion dollars in mine clean-ups because of historical problems and B.C.’s lack of financial enforcement, including the practice of allowing the Chief Inspector of Mines to unilaterally set the amount of reclamation bonds and then not demanding the full amount be paid up-front.

Unlike neighbouring Alaska, B.C. will also accept guarantees, rather than demanding cash or bonds.

B.C. Rejects Request for Inquiry into Mining Practices https://t.co/J3MaLhT2Sw #bcpoli #cdnpoli #Alaska #bcelxn17 @LavoieJudith @MiningWatch pic.twitter.com/sry5MUqZ1J

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) April 11, 2017

Independent economist Robyn Allan, in a brief presented to an Alaska State Legislature committee, underlined the difference in bonds paid by mining giant Teck Resources Ltd. in B.C. and Alaska.

Teck has posted a bond of $558-million with Alaska to fully cover reclamation costs at the Red Dog Mine, which is expected to require water treatment in perpetuity.

In contrast, just across the B.C. border, Teck is responsible for 13 mines — six operating and seven closed — and the province has estimated reclamation liability at $1.4-billion, but has required only $510-million in bonding, Allan wrote in her brief.

Teck is the largest donor to the B.C. Liberals contributing $1,502,444 to the party since 2008.

However, Bennett, in his letter to the ELC, said that, following the release of the Auditor General’s report last May, government commissioned Ernst and Young to undertake an in-depth examination of reclamation securities practice.

“Ernst and Young found that (the Ministry of Energy and Mines) has established a carefully-considered and systematic financial security approach for mine reclamation that includes elements of a risk-based approach,” he wrote.

The review suggests ways of moving forward and an amended “reclamation securities approach” will be completed in 2018, according to Bennett, who is not running for re-election in May.

Bennett wrote in the letter that government has accepted all recommendations of the Expert Panel that looked into the Mount Polley disaster and recommendations made by the Auditor General.

Sandborn disagrees.

“As our submission demonstrated, government has clearly failed to implement the prime recommendations of both the panel and the Auditor General — to move towards elimination of water impoundments and to get the Ministry of Energy and Mines out of the enforcement business,” he said.

Sandborn also dismissed Bennett’s claims that B.C.’s mining regulations are equal to, or more stringent than Montana or Alaska.

“This is demonstrably inaccurate,” he said.

“Alaska requires mine securities of 100 per cent of reclamation costs, while B.C. allows companies to fall far short of that figure. Teck Resources alone has been allowed to fall more than $700-million short in B.C.”

Bennett’s response is similar to his denials after the Mount Polley breach that there had been significant cuts in regulatory staff, Sandborn said,

“The Auditor General’s report showed that we were right and the minister was wrong about that,” he said.

Image: Energy and Mines Minister Bill Bennett. Photo: Province of B.C. via Flickr

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