A fantastic article in this morning’s Los Angeles Times by Matt Pearce and Neela Banerjee– and not just because we make a brief appearance in it. Check out the great lead paragraph:
A major rival to the controversial Keystone XL oil pipeline project is vastly boosting its U.S. pipeline system, but it’s avoiding the same scrutiny that federal regulators, environmentalists and landowners are giving Keystone owner TransCanada Corp.
Wow… reading this article confirms a long held suspicion I’ve had regarding Enbridge’s unwaivering insistence on requiring additional easement space in order to “complete this 6B replacement job safely”.
When I questioned why the additional space couldn’t be classified as Temporary Work Space (TWS), which could serve the same purpose as a safety margin for the 6B replacement, I was told several different lies…
One lie was that crews couldn’t work safely when so close to the existing “hot” 6B line. I pointed out that the new line was depicted as being installed within the old existing easement and was therefore fairly close to the existing “hot” 6B while the new easement showed no pipeline installed in it. I was then told that the prints on the ROW agent’s tablet computer that I was looking at were subject to change and were probably not accurate regarding the positioning of the 6B replacement within the easement. What’s the purpose of the surveys, stakes, drawings and prints depicting both the existing and new pipelines if they’re not to be construed as accurate?
Another time I was told that “Enbridge always seeks to obtain additional easement space when doing projects like this” (as if that was supposed to satisfy me).
And yet another time I was told that increasing the easement size will provide a safer environment for us living with the new pipe since no trees can’t be planted in the easement and therefore, with the new easement space, any future tree growth will be further from the 6B replacement. Maintaining a wider clear space would provide for more accurate and revealing aerial inspection of the pipeline since it will be a long time before larger trees growing adjacent to the expanded easement would begin to occlude the inspector’s view of the pipeline. I guess this was supposed to make me feel better knowing that the once a week aerial inspections will readily detect a leak that began up to six days ago.
Now, I’m beginning to see the real reason for extra easement. If Enbridge already has the easement space they can cleverly add additional capacity within that easement, escaping all scrutiny of federal agency review by merely claiming they are “repairing” their existing line.
I, and my affected neighbors all included language in our agreements requiring additional iterations of damage payments for subsequent pipelines beyond the 6B replacement, on a per-pipeline basis, should additional pipelines be installed in the future. However, as clever as we thought we were stipulating this we’ll probably be duped by Enbridge when they rip up our yards again to install 6C, 6D and 6E and call all of them “repairs” of 6B, rather than additional pipelines.
Now that we know how Enbridge plays the system perhaps others that have not yet signed can do a better job than we did with the language stipulating additional damage payments ANY time your land is opened up.