AllYourAppeals'R
UsVille
The 'Environmental' Appeals Board that is...
William Stodalka of the invaluable Alaska Highway News has the story:
The Fort Nelson First Nation has won a three-year long legal challenge to stop a natural gas company withdrawing water from a small lake for its fracking operations, but the battle may not be over...
{snip}
...“The province is carefully reviewing the Environmental Appeal Board’s decision and determining next steps, which could include an application for judicial review through the B.C. Supreme Court,” said a spokesperson with the Ministry of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations in an email...
Now.
Many of the usual suspects are making a fuss about this being nothing more than a case of baseless First Nations' obstructionism on the Twittmachine and elsewhere.
Which is why it is important to revisit Gordon Hoekstra's original VSun report about precisely why the Appeals Board decided that the Clarklandian Ministry responsible did NOT do its job properly:
...In making its decision, the appeal board said that internal ministry correspondence showed the province intended to issue the water licence regardless of promised meetings with the Fort Nelson First Nation, and had no intention to substantially address concerns that might have been raised by the First Nation.
“The panel finds that this conduct was inconsistent with the honour of the Crown and the overall objective of reconciliation,” said its decision.
The panel also found that the province’s conclusion that the water withdrawals would have no significant impacts on the environment, including fish, riparian wildlife, and their habitat, was based on incorrect, inadequate, and mistaken information and modelling results.
The limited data available after water was extracted still did not support a conclusion the environment would not be harmed, said the appeal board...
Gosh.
Maybe the way the Wizards of Clarklandia could deal with this stuff would be to breech birth its very own MoAoA (a.k.a. 'Ministry of Appeals of Appeals').
Or some such ridiculous, but never Silly Walkish-type thing.
OK?
______
And what's with this gutless spokesthingy response by Email approach anyway?...I mean, isn't it bad enough that the Minister of (not walking in) Forests himself won't speak to the matter?
.
Links 12/27/24
1 hour ago
7 comments:
Did you read Les Leyne`s gobbily goop...?
cut n pasted
"Citing those findings from earlier court cases, the EAB found that taking water from an area where band members hunt seasonally is industrial consumption, meaning the water isn’t returned to the system after it’s used.
It didn’t help that the river system ran dry in 2012. Despite a protocol to restrict water usage during low flows, the stream bed dried up during a drought year and the EAB found that excessive water withdrawals in that year likely caused or contributed to that occurring."
- See more at: http://www.timescolonist.com/opinion/columnists/les-leyne-fracking-decision-an-advance-in-consultation-1.2053297#sthash.crxVgl8o.dpuf
Ross K....The way I read this, even though Nexen only used a little bit of the water they were granted by the Oil N Gas commission, the water source ran dry!!!!
Meaning they couldn`t use the 2.1 billion litres they were granted, even using half their allotted water the water source ran dry....
What part of the ruling might the province appeal?...The non-available 1 million litres Nexen didn`t access?..Deny the water source ran dry, deny the fact that fishes can`t swim in dry mud?
And if droughts are the new normal?
Section 97 of the Environmental Management Act, under which the Environmental Appeals Board is established, says:
“The Lieutenant Governor in Council may, in the public interest, vary or rescind an order or decision of the appeal board.”
No need to ask for a judicial review; in fact the enabling legislation doesn’t appear to allow it because it specifies the sections of the Administrative Appeals Act that apply and provision for it is not among them. If Cabinet wants to overrule the Board, they’ve designed the legislation to allow them to do so. Question is whether they have the cojones to assert it would be in the public interest.
Read this...Pay special attention to the last few paragraphs of the article..
http://business.financialpost.com/news/energy/new-marcellus-pipelines-from-northeastern-u-s-squeezing-out-canadian-natural-gas?__lsa=a4a0-391a
China-FIPA means that Chinese investors (Nexen) can now sue Canada over decisions made at any level of government in Canada, which they feel affect their profits.
Grant G:
Can’t wait to hear Christy and her “Mr. Fix-It” Coleman tell us they have different numbers than the F.P.
While they’re at it, maybe they can explain these as well:
http://northerninsights.blogspot.ca/2015/07/patronage-corruption-and-cronyism.html - comment-form
Chiefs threaten courts and barricades without a signed working agreement in B.C.
by Dirk Meissner, The Canadian Press
Grand Chief Stewart Phillip, president of the Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs, said they're giving the government a one-year deadline to negotiate a reconciliation deal.
"The underlying message is if we don't make any progress within the space of the next year, I would suggest all of this will fall through and it will be back to the courts and pretty much back to the barricades," said Phillip.
UK backing bid by fossil fuel firms to kill new EU fracking controls, letters reveal
Europe’s biggest oil and gas firms try to block environmental controls on fracking, which the government calls ‘unnecessary red tape’
by Arthur Neslen, The Guardian
The UK government has added its weight to a behind-the-scenes lobbying drive by oil and gas firms including BP, Chevron, Shell and ExxonMobil to persuade EU leaders to scrap a series of environmental safety measures for fracking, according to leaked letters seen by the Guardian.
The deregulatory push against safety measures, which could include the monitoring of on-site methane leaks and capture of gases and volatile compounds that might otherwise be vented, appears to go against assurances from David Cameron that fracking would only be safe “if properly regulated”.
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