The Coastal GasLink(CGL) pipeline project was on display at the Dze L‘Kant friendship centre last Monday and very few people attended to learn about the proposed plans.
The CGL project was announced June 5 and representatives met with Mayor Taylor Bachrach shortly after the announcement and were asked to come back in October to meet with council.
The open house, scheduled to coincide with a date Smithers’ council met, wasn’t very well advertised.
“I’m a little bit skeptical about the effectiveness of open-houses for public consultation,” Bachrach said.
“I’ve been to a few open-houses, none of them were well attended.”
John Ridsdale, Chief Namoks, was surprised to hear the session had happened.
“I work at the Office of the Wet’suwet’en and I had no idea,” Ridsdale said.
“I hope they don’t go back to their bosses saying there’s no opposition because nobody showed up.”
A CGL representative met with Dave de Wit, Office of the Wet’suwet’en’s natural resource manager, last Sunday.
de Wit was away conducting fieldwork at press time.
Opposition to pipelines remains 100 per cent, according to an OW press release on Oct. 26.
The potential development stretches approximately 700 kilometres from Dawson Creek to a liquid natural gas facility close to Kitimat.
Shell Canada Ltd. hired TransCanada to build the pipeline, which will run parallel to the Pacific Trails pipeline (PTP) once it nears Vanderhoof, but veering off before Mount Nimbus in the Coastal Mountain range to avoid the altitude change and proximity complications of PTP and the proposed Northern Gateway bitumen pipeline.
The shared pipeline route is being referred to as an energy corridor and construction of the Kitimat natural gas terminal has already begun construction, but CGL is not listed as being a gas provider at press time, according to the Haisla Nation website.
The B.C. Environmental Assessment process (BCEAP), not the National Energy Board (NEB), has jurisdiction over the future of the CGL project, according to Rick Gateman, president of CGL.
Gateman told the Kitimat District on Oct. 15 the NEB is not required due to the project being in B.C. alone.
“What’s here now and what’s going to be gone after they finish pumping product?”