Note: CBC press coverage and photos here.
-The GJEP Team
May 20, 2014. Source: Swamp Line 9
No Integrity, No Digs!
Traditional Mississauga Territory (Burlington, Ontario)
This morning at 7am area residents blockaded the access road to an
exposed section of Enbridge’s Line 9 pipeline. The blockaders intend to
hold their ground — 1 hour for every 1,000 anomalies that are reported
to exist on the line. For 12 hours, they say, they are not going anywhere.
This is a site of a so-called “integrity dig” but, as one blockader puts
it, “it’s clear Enbridge has no integrity. The work on the line is just
a band-aid, a flimsy patch over the most outrageous flaws in the Line 9
plan.”
The National Energy Board approved the reversal of Line 9B in March
after having heard testimonies that there has been no proper
consultation by First Nations communities and that the structure of the
pipeline is outdated and deeply flawed.
The National Energy Board refused to require hydrostatic testing of the
line.
Many of the blockaders point to the disastrous spill from Enbridge’s
line 6b into the Kalamazoo River in Michigan in 2010, where millions of
litres of oil spilled and have so far proven impossible to clean up. But
many of them emphasize that their opposition to Line 9 goes beyond
safety concerns.
