Editor: I reviewed the letter from a Larissa Stendie (The Times, Aug. 12). As a P. Eng. with over 45 years in the energy business, in my opinion her letter criticizing the Kinder Morgan Canada pipeline project is riddled with factual errors, some of which I identify below.
Ms. Stendie warns that B.C. has a risk of oil spills as happened in 2010 at the Kalamazoo River in Michigan.
I have read every public US state and federal government report that I can find on that diluted bitumen spill. I base my comments primarily on those reports.
Ms. Stendie has the spill volumes wrong. The spill was not 27,000 barrels into the Kalamazoo River, but about 20,000 bbls (oil barrels) total of which about 8,000 bbls reached Talmadge Creek and the Kalamazoo River.
The wetlands were not 鈥渄estroyed,鈥� but portions were damaged and were restored under a government-approved plan.
The spill was bad enough, but let鈥檚 stick to the facts.
I cannot find evidence in the government reports that the Kalamazoo spill 鈥渞equired remediation of 300 acres of wetlands鈥� at a cost of $1.21 billion.
In a settlement between Enbridge and Michigan, Enbridge agreed to offset some degradation by providing at least 300 acres of wetlands through restoration, creation, or banked wetland credits. Michigan press releases state they were pleased with the cleanup and settlement.
The $1.21 billion was for all costs, not just wetlands, and Enbridge paid it.
She claims effective cleanup of spills is impossible, with no mention of the size or type (marine, land) of spill, or definition of 鈥渆ffective.鈥�
This is wrong.
Even some marine spills (e.g. Pine River, B.C., Trans Mountain Pipeline Burrard Inlet, 2015 English Bay bunker spill) have been cleaned up 80 per cent-plus, and land spills can generally be thoroughly cleaned up.
She states the Kalamazoo River 鈥渉as recently reopened.鈥� However, Jim Rutherford, Calhoun County, Michigan鈥檚 public health director, announced the entire river except a small part at Morrow Lake was open at June 21, 2012.
Her claim that there are only 50 permanent jobs from the Trans Mountain Expansion Project is incorrect.
A quick look at TMPL鈥檚 website shows the twinned pipeline will create 90 new permanent pipeline operating positions. This is in addition to 4,500 construction jobs at peak employment, and 3,000 direct, indirect and induced jobs each year for the next 20 years. Ms. Stendie also ignores the thousands of jobs created in the rest of Canada.
I hope in the future, the Sierra Club and Ms. Stendie will spend more time verifying their facts before providing information to the public.
Everybody makes mistakes, myself included, but let us try to be as factual as possible.
John Hunter, P. Eng.
President & CEO
J. Hunter & Associates Ltd. North Vancouver
