The National Energy Board hearings on Enbridge’s Line 10 pipeline have concluded after a large protest rally and a violent clash inside the Crowne Plaza hotel when a small group attempting to attend the closed door process were blocked by about 15 police officers. The only challenge in the hearings room to the oil pipeline expansion across rural Hamilton came from the band council of Six Nations whose main focus appears to be obtaining more financial compensation from Enbridge.
The Haudenosaunee Development Institute withdrew entirely last month, continuing their contention that First Nations have not been appropriately consulted. According to a report prepared for city councillors, Copetown area landowners also withdrew as intervenors on October 3 after Enbridge agreed to a re-route that avoided their properties. The company continues to reject the city’s request to remove the replaced sections of Line 10.
Media attention focused on the peaceful October 18 rally that included several aboriginal speakers as well as representatives of Hamilton 350 Committee, the Council of Canadians, and Ontario Green Party leader Mike Schreiner. Participants were watched over by mounted police and blocked by officers from entering the King Street East hotel.
But a subsequently-released video shows a confrontation took place between about a dozen police and a group who somehow got to the hallway outside the third floor hearings room. The protesters are heard shouting “let us in” and one officer is accused of “kicking an indigenous woman in the crotch” near the end of the confrontation.
“This project is a terrible idea that will only contribute to global warming, environmental destruction, and the expansion of the Alberta tar sands,” says a statement accompanying the video. “And as usual, Enbridge has ignored the sovereignty of impacted Indigenous communities, preferring instead to pay them off when possible or ignore them when they stand in the way.”
Inside the hotel the hearings concluded the following afternoon (October 19). Enbridge suggested amendments to the draft conditions of project approval that had been issued by the NEB the previous weekend, and contended that the pipeline expansion project will reduce climate changing greenhouse gas emissions.
“Rather, the air emissions during operation of the replacement pipeline will be limited to transportation and equipment use during maintenance activities, and these are the very activities that this project is intended to significantly reduce through replacement of this segment,” stated the company lawyer in closing arguments.
He referenced the Chippewa of the Thames challenge being heard next month by the Supreme Court of Canada and urged the NEB to reiterate that “the duty to consult [with First Nations] was discharged through the Board’s comprehensive process”. He also submitted that “any claims based on Haudenosaunee sovereignty, title, or the accessing of taken-up lands in relation to this project should be identified as prima facie weak.”
Earlier in the day, Enbridge acknowledged that 14 hectares of Hamilton woodlands will be cleared during placement of the 35 kilometres of pipe between Westover and Nebo roads “for temporary workspace and permanent easement”. The project crosses multiple waterways and impacts some significant wetlands.
The company is replacing an early 1960s 12-inch pipe with a 20-inch pipe but contends this is not an expansion project. Questioning from the panel determined that it “continues as a 20-inch pipeline to approximately the Canada-U.S. border” before switching “back to 12 inch for a short portion of the pipeline into the United States, continues as a 20-inch pipeline for a short distance and then continues for 12 inch to our termination point where the ownership of taking volumes to the terminating refinery is not under Enbridge’s control.”
As the hearings wrapped up on Wednesday afternoon, the NEB chair singled out Hamilton police for thanks including “those behind the scene” where he said “it was tense, I think, what we find out after the fact, but it was handled so professionally.” He said the “the Board will reserve its decision” and inform the parties “in advance before a decision is released.”
Controversy over fossil fuels role in climate change were highlighted last week with release of September’s climate data showing the month was the sixteenth in a row that broke global temperature records. Last week also saw a growing diesel spill in BC’s Great Bear Rainforest, more Dakota Access pipeline opponents arrested including the US Green Party presidential candidate, and accusations from Canada’s Green Party leader that the environmental approval of a massive liquefied natural gas project in BC was corrupted by bias federal staff.