THE IRVINGS BELIEVE THE PIPELINE WILL BE ACCEPTED VIA THEIR NEWSPAPERS!!!!

Charles 04_07_05 051, originally uploaded by Oldmaison.

But the public are not allowed to fight back in their letters to the editor!!!

Where's the final Senate report of the monopoly of the Irvings newspapers in New Brunswick???

NB Telegraph-Journal | Saint John
As published on page B1 on May 6, 2006

Pipeline president looks to bury myths swirling around proposal

Click to zoom Kernwood Country Club in Salem, Mass. chose consultation over confrontation to leverage improvements to its golf course. “They didn’t fight you on anything as long as you could prove you were losing revenue,’ club manager Tim Lynch says.
By John Chilibeck
Telegraph-Journal

Doug Bloom turns the sheets of paper until he reaches the photographs he thinks will convince people that a pipeline through Rockwood Park wouldn't be a bad idea.

The president of Maritimes & Northeast Pipeline wants everyone to see these images because there's something obviously missing in them, namely pipes. In one picture, a man strolls along the city's popular Harbour Passage, the cranberry-coloured path curving below the uptown skyline in the background. In another, a rugged trail is shown in the middle of Jasper National Park's thick wilderness. There are also images of a pipeline easement through an exclusive golf course in Massachusetts and an easement overlapping a hydro right-of-way for the existing lateral pipeline that serves Saint John businesses and homes. The only indication there might be industrial piping underground are white signs that warn people to call before they dig.

Mr. Bloom says many people who phone to complain about the company's proposal to run a 30-inch diameter pipeline through the hydro corridor in Rockwood Park don't realize it will be buried, with no exposed valves, meters or stations.

"I think people have this image that it will be like Alaska, where the pipelines are well above ground because they can't get through the permafrost and they have to allow for the caribou migration," he says. "Our pipelines are compatible with lots of other uses. You can walk, drive, bike or golf on top of them."

The Brunswick Pipeline project has been controversial from the start, in no small part because it will connect a new liquefied natural gas terminal at Mispec Point on the East Side with Maritimes & Northeast's main line in Baileyville, Me., 145 kilometres away. The LNG terminal created heated opposition when the mayor brokered a favourable tax deal for Irving Oil, saving the company more than $100 million dollars over 25 years. Shortly after, Maritimes & Northeast announced it was building a pipeline for Irving's partner, Spanish-based Repsol, to export gas to the United States. The proposed route included a 2.4-km stretch through Rockwood Park, a cherished green space in the middle of the city for more than a century.

The company will pitch to the National Energy Board two alternative paths, to the north and south of the park, but its preferred route remains Rockwood. Mr. Bloom says it's the safest passage because it avoids people and houses, and the most environmentally friendly because the pipeline easement would roughly follow NB Power's hydro towers, adding another 20 to 30 metres to the width of the right-of-way. No lakes would be affected by construction, he promises, and few park activities would be curtailed. The one-year building and restoration phase would cut off an area little used by most park visitors, and when the entire project is finished, a swath that's now choked with thick vegetation could be opened up for a walking and bike path, an improvement Mr. Bloom says his company is willing to discuss with the stewards of the park - the city and the Saint John Horticultural Association.

Common council and the citizens' group Friends of Rockwood Park have asked the company to put the pipeline across the sea floor and avoid the city centre altogether. Mr. Bloom says that's just not feasible. The proof, he says, is contained in engineering data that will be submitted to the regulator mid-May, the same time it will be made available to the city, which is considering becoming an intervener in the case and conducting an independent assessment of the Bay of Fundy route.

"I said that personally, 'let's put the thing in the water,'"‰" explains Mr. Bloom. "We've looked at it with our own internal experts and outside experts who are used to building natural gas pipelines in marine environments, and we've concluded this is not the place to try it. We'd be at the thin edge of the technological capability to put the pipeline in, we'd probably create some environmental disruption we couldn't mitigate and most importantly we have sufficient safety concerns we would not be able in good conscience to send our people out there."

The pipeline image showing Jasper National Park is not actually a Maritimes & Northeast's operation. The Trans Mountain-Terasan oil pipeline has been in place since the early '50s and was recently acquired by Kinder Morgan, the giant U.S. energy firm that sends batches of crude and refined petroleum from Edmonton, Alta., to Burnaby, B.C. The company has an application before the National Energy Board to add another 158 km of pipe through Jasper and Mount Robson Provincial Park. The $400-million project would add a 36-inch diameter line beside its existing one through a sensitive valley, increasing the six metre right-of-way to 40 metres wide.

Many environmentalists are seething about the project, but the outcry in the town of Jasper has been muted compared to the park battle in Saint John. Niki Wilson, a Jasper consultant who works with non-government environmental groups, explains that it might have something to do with the large number of pipelines that already criss-cross her province.

"Culturally, we're talking about Alberta, and oil and gas are always in mind," she says from her Jasper condo. "It's where we get our wealth from, so it's part of people's psyche."

Click to zoom Doug Bloom, the president of Maritimes & Northeast Pipeline, likes to show this photograph of Harbour Passage because of what it doesn’t have, any evidence that industrial piping runs beneath it.
She says she's not a big fan of the TMX anchor loop project, as it's called, in part because it will skirt right by her home. But she says Kinder Morgan has been treading carefully, promising to restore the land to a rugged state and pledging what it calls "net benefits."

For instance, it has agreed to fund a scientific study of the forest ecology in Robson proposed by an environmental group. Ms. Wilson is hoping Parks Canada will force the company to make sure mountain bikers don't rip up sensitive areas and curve the right-of-way so that wolves don't have perfect site-lines.

Straight trails are too easy for predators to pick off their prey, upsetting the ecosystem.

The Brunswick Pipeline project is news to Ms. Wilson. She's unaware of the controversy that erupted in recent weeks when the city agreed to form a committee with the horticultural association and the Board of Trade to talk to Maritimes & Northeast about possible benefits for Rockwood. Opponents decry the officials for selling out the park. But Ms. Wilson poses the same question the president of the horticultural association has asked.

"Why don't they try to negotiate 'net benefits' for Rockwood Park?"

The manager of the Kernwood Country Club in Salem, Mass., has a similar attitude. Tim Lynch dealt with Maritimes & Northeast a few years ago when it wanted to put a natural gas pipeline through his golf course in three different places, ripping up six holes and the parking lot.

Chuckling, he says he was in a good negotiating position.

"We essentially have 325 owners, and most of them are lawyers. It was like going through a bee's nest."

Mr. Lynch convinced many of the club members who wanted to take on Maritimes & Northeast in court that it would be a better idea to haggle instead.

He hit the company up for lost revenue and asked it to rebuild the parking lot, make a new entrance way and restore all the fairways.

Construction was completed during the winter season, when no one was golfing, and restoration took place in spring and early summer. More than 100 tractor trailers of sod were brought in to make sure the golf course was open for July. Mr. Lynch says the parking lot and entrance needed to be redone anyway, so he saved the club a lot of money.

"My attitude was, hey, let them do the work during the off-season and with a bit of disruption we get something out of it," he says. "They didn't fight you on anything as long as you could prove you were losing revenue."

Fast Facts

Pipeline application filed: Mid-May

National energy board public hearings: Fall 2006

Length of project: 145 km from Mispec Point in Saint John to Baileyville, ME.

Company's preferred corridor: Includes a 2.4 km route through

Rockwood Park, although alternate routes north and south of the
park have been suggested

Construction: Winter 2007 to November 2008

Employment: 1000 temporary construction jobs

Cost of project: $320 million

Taxes: Province would annually reap $3.3 million, of which $1.3 million would be returned to the city