The Ontario Energy Board has now officially accepted Enbridge’s withdrawal of plans for a fracked gas pipeline but has refused intervenor requests to impose conditions on the company. Enbridge has downgraded the potential of reviving the pipe through the Beverly Swamp as gas demand continues to face significant headwinds.
All local conservation authorities and dozens of citizen organizations are fighting the Ford government’s legislation that slashes the powers of conservation authorities. makes life easier for developers and converts the Hamilton Conservation Authority into a sub-committee of city council.
The controversial plan to push a new fracked gas pipeline across rural Hamilton has been abandoned by Enbridge, although the company suggests it may re-launch the project next year. The company cites the pandemic as a factor in determining “there is no longer a need for the project in the time frame as originally proposed.”
Statistics Canada is reporting no growth in gasoline consumption in 2019 and that was even before the pandemic began. That is worrying news for city finances which depend heavily on transfers of both federal and provincial gas tax monies.
In an unprecedented wave of public involvement in a civic issue, Hamilton officials have received written correspondence from over 400 people supporting the defund police campaign. The outpouring continues this week with more than three dozen people set to make personal video delegations to council.
The fight against a fracked gas pipeline through Hamilton’s Beverly Swamp has won provincial and national allies. This week twenty-nine organizations linked the pipeline to the Ford government plans to sharply increase gas use in Ontario’s electricity generation.
Hamilton has just entered its fourth heat emergency of 2020 and it may be a long one, a relatively gentle reminder that parts of the planet are already hitting temperatures where humans can’t survive.
Until recently it was illegal, but Hamilton is now facing an attempt by private developers to force expansion of the urban boundary onto rural lands.
Items on the agendas this coming week include cycling lanes, transit cutbacks, sewage releases, backyard chickens, Uber fees, more homeless relief and the ongoing public health response to the pandemic.
Enbridge’s proposed fracked gas pipeline across rural Hamilton is facing unexpected challenges as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and from the huge number of letters submitted to the Ontario Energy Board by individuals and organizations opposed to the project.
With the public properly focused on trying to minimize the spread of COVID-19, attention has shifted away from the other global emergency.
The Ontario Energy Board has decided that greenhouse gas emissions linked to a new fracked gas pipeline across Hamilton are not part of its mandate.
Ontario’s energy regulator is exploring uncharted territory in the wake of strong Hamilton challenges to a proposed fracked gas pipeline.
Secrecy by public officials is strongly opposed by most media – except when it is not. Outrage about secret police in other countries is always condemned, but evidently not when it happens in Canada.
The city is intervening in the Ontario Energy Board (OEB) hearing on Enbridge’s proposed new fracked gas pipeline across rural Hamilton.
Hamilton will invest a record amount this year in bike lanes and other infrastructure to support cycling and pedestrian safety.
