Dear Editor:
Re: Residents organize townhall meeting on pipeline, Burnaby NOW, Sept. 19. Kinder Morgan's engineering director Michael Davies is quoted: "We haven't seen any unusual corrosion or have had any other problems with diluted bitumen. At pipeline temperatures, it's not more acidic or corrosive than conventional crude oil." Who said it was more corrosive? The existing pipeline was built to the highest standards of the 1950s, yet despite being well maintained, still leaked once a year over the past decade. Posing no additional threat is of little comfort to Burnaby residents.
The real issue is more difficult to imagine than pipes bursting or seals suffocating. It is the gradual runaway warming of our planet, which may already be happening, as the Arctic ice mirror melts before our eyes.
Richard Kinder, of Kinder Morgan, is one of the richest men on earth. With his personal wealth, he could buy the safest pipeline ever. But even the safest bitumen operation would still be a huge mistake. If all that carbon spills into the atmosphere and not on our beaches, our goose is still cooked. Our kids will be trampled in the stampede north as B.C. burns.
Bitumen and coal, the world's dirtiest fossil fuels, must stay where nature intended them to stay - in the ground, in spite of the short-term economic bonanza for big oil.
Our long-range economic health depends on the stable climate which has nurtured civilization for the past 10,000 years.
The proverbial canary in the coal mine stopped singing. Do we notice? BROKE is holding a town hall meeting for Burnaby residents who would like to learn more about the local impact of the Kinder Morgan pipeline expansion project.
Our town hall meeting with MP Kennedy Stewart, Mayor Derek Corrigan and others, will be at Confederation Seniors Centre at 7 p.m., Wednesday, Oct. 10; www. burnabypipelinewatch.ca.
Karl Perrin, Burnaby
