[All] Congratulations LULU!!! RE: Line 9: Amazing developments

Tue May 29 04:04:12 EDT 2012

In a nutshell, the firm that pays for the EIS relies on the firm doing the EIS to ensure it is correct. This correctness is usually determined via external review, by different interested parties and usually government staff. If the interested parties and/or government types are not fully qualified, deficient EIS will get approved. 

The GRCA and MNR rely on pre-development data (taken from subwatershed studies etc.) as their current data and in provincial planning, there is very little review of fiscal risk simply because the MNR and MOE do not have the mandate to explore that concern. It's not their jurisdiction which is why you see this entire topic on the worth of water ignored in the State of the Aggregate Resource in Ontario Report (SAROS). In the case of oil pipes, the exception is the National Energy Board because in this forum, fiscal concerns do count.

It is reasonable to state, that these same issues impact development activities, aggregate extraction, fracking etc. It's a system wide weakness that exists primarily because we have yet to define reasonable testing criteria to mitigate risks and we have yet to include the value of water resources into our planning processes. 

Lulu

________________________________
 From: Susan Koswan <susankoswan at execulink.com>
To: all at gren.ca 
Sent: Monday, May 28, 2012 1:49:29 PM
Subject: Re: [All] Congratulations LULU!!! RE: Line 9: Amazing developments

Well said Peter,
Susan K 

From:all-bounces at gren.ca [mailto:all-bounces at gren.ca] On Behalf Of Peter Kofler
Sent: May-28-12 1:14 PM
To: randybmclean at rogers.com; Daphne Nicholls; all at gren.ca
Subject: Re: [All] Congratulations LULU!!! RE: Line 9: Amazing developments

Actually engineers/engineering firms are held accountable, individually, jointly & severally. You could have amply verified this with about a half hour's worth of internet/library search. They're subject to the criminal and civil justice codes, just like other individuals and legal entities, probably to a much greater extent because they deal directly with risk-prone ventures as part of their raisons d'etre. Most, if not all, engineering codes of ethics have a fundamental clause about being ultimately accountable to the public. These ethics codes are incorporated into the section of the federal/provincial legislation that deals with regulation of professional engineers. That's why they're required by law to carry such high levels of liability insurance. Unfortunately, like all sectors of the economy, money tends to buy power in the judicial system, as elsewhere - the wealthier firms can afford the better lawyers and thus are more likely to obtain
 favourable legal outcomes.

Re. the Region vs. corporations like Enbridge - if I'm not mistaken, the Region is not a for-profit corporation while Enbridge is - that makes a bit of a difference in their objectives on the positive side of the balance sheet, I would think.

"In good faith they build their pipes thinking that the work is done right. Enbridge assumes the liability risk of that data they purchased to justify their pipeline." Corporations like Enbridge aren't naiive - they carry a staff of engineers/technologists/lawyers/accountants themselves. They have access to very well-paid P.R. firms, which they use to manipulate public opinion, especially in crafting public opinion on what is considered "safe" and "good for the economy". If by "in good faith" you mean that Enbridge maintains a relatively neutral stance in their transactions with engineering firms/contractors, I think you're mistaken. Their ultimate goal, like most for-profit corporations, is maximizing profit. They exert a huge amount of "gravity" on the system (including government/regulators) which tends to draw all players in their spoken/implied direction.

As we're beginning to find out, some systems, such as biodiversity, the stock market, climate change, natural resource depletion, social systems etc., can be subject to asymmetric risks. These are risks which are non-linear, difficult to calculate with a great amount of certainty, do not obey the rules of normal Gaussian probability distributions, but can have huge negative implications on the system in question. Nassim Taleb calls such events "Black Swans". Black Swans can be both positive (writing a best-seller) or negative (stock market/ecological disasters, etc.). If a firm is using a Gaussian (i.e. "bell curve") model to calculate an asymmetric risk, the result will probably indicate that an extreme negative event ( for example, 10 standard deviations from the norm) is astronomically improbable or, probable on a time scale on the order of billions of years. The truth, as Black Swans go, will sometimes prove otherwise. Stock market failures and near
 failures in the eighties, late nineties (LTCM fiasco), 2008, etc. proved this in spades. The upshot: even risk-benefit analysis is evolving, albeit hesitantly, owing to organizations/individuals who are reluctant to change from established ways of doing things, fearing it might unnecessarily impact their bottom lines/livelihoods. That, too, is a matter of human behaviour/cognition/perception.

To assume that energy-related corporations like Enbridge will always choose the highest possible level of safety is to misunderstand risk-benefit analysis. There's an implied optimization in the risk-benefit analysis which will probably discard the highest possible level of safety, if it is deemed to cover a highly unlikely event. Add to this the fact that corporations like Enbridge have an enormous, often perverse incentive to maximize shareholder equity/profit, sometimes to the detriment of the public/environment, and you have a recipe for disasters typical of Exxon Valdez, Bhopal, Gulf of Mexico deepwater oil spill, Chernobyl, Fukushima etc. 

I agree with Randy's statement:  "When your salary depends on economics then that will be the direction one takes.  That is instinctive."  That, unfortunately, applies to many diverse links in this increasingly unstable economic chain, including employees/officers of Enbridge, engineering and contracting firms they hire and, unfortunately, to an increasing extent these days, as the natural resources liquidation sale reaches ever crazier proportions globally, captured/neutered regulators and politicians who play along with policies of dubious long-term benefit, "because it's good for the economy". The very reductive, siloed structure of this system belies the complex systemic, interconnected nature of it and has the unfortunate (and perhaps intentional) side effect of diluting overall accountability, or rather, causing outcomes to flow down to the accountability reservoirs of last resort - the public and the environment.

________________________________

From: randybmclean at rogers.com
To: gordanddaph at sympatico.ca; all at gren.ca
Date: Fri, 25 May 2012 11:11:33 -0400
Subject: Re: [All] Congratulations LULU!!! RE: Line 9: Amazing developments
Engineers are not held accountable in this country, the US or many others.

Clients signoff off acceptance within 6 months after completion and that is the end of the Engineering responsibility.  

Failure, upset, etc can be blamed on poor maintenance or poor operations by the client.  This pipeline will eventually leak as all manmade things fail eventually.  Case in point oil rigs and nuclear reactors.  Unfortunately there is no preventative interaction or viable economical means to take these manmade things out of operation.  We have not evolved to that point.

This pipe line has an expiry date as do all things.  These are the questions which may be put to the client (Enbridge), the consultant and the materials supplier.  20 years is the norm but economically motivated inspectors are pushing expiry dates to the limit.  When your salary depends on economics then that will be the direction one takes.  That is instinctive.

2 cents.

From:all-bounces at gren.ca [mailto:all-bounces at gren.ca] On Behalf Of Daphne NICHOLLS
Sent: May-25-12 10:32 AM
To: GREN
Subject: [All] Congratulations LULU!!! RE: Line 9: Amazing developments

Hi Lulu, 
What an amazing week you've had! From losing your presentation and phone on Tuesday to yesterday's conflict resolution success ... what a rollercoaster ride!  Sounds like you've opened doors to environmental progress in the long run!
Thank you!! and well done!
Daphne

________________________________

Date: Thu, 24 May 2012 17:44:53 -0700
From: butterflybluelu at rogers.com
To: all at gren.ca
Subject: [All] Line 9: Amazing developments
Hi folks

Today's hearing makes me more and more convinced, that miracles are possible. 

I arrived in London and saw the headline in the London Free Press that reads: THE BIG LEAK. Half a million southwestern Ontario residents are without water due to the Region's largest water pipe breaking. Stantec used the data they did for THIS pipeline and simply doubled it to get their price estimates for our Region's Lake Erie pipe proposal.

As I sat at the NEB hearing, I had a Eureka moment. When a water main brakes, you don't hear people complaining that it was the Region's fault and yet when an oil pipeline breaks, they plaster the name of Enbridge all over the place. The fact of the matter is, the spills Enbridge has been experiencing are not based on corrosion issues, they are based on the same reason as this water main break: Underestimated risks in the Environmental Impact Studies. 

Root cause Stantec? Not necessarily. The guidelines for what is considered a reasonable test have not been designed. Folks will usually do the minimum of whatever it takes to get the job, to get something approved, done rather than to do the job right. So how do we secure the best strategy for risk prevention? Easy. Hold environmental engineering firms liable. 

I told the NEB chairs, oil distribution agencies like Enbridge pay other firms to do their environmental impact studies. In good faith they build their pipes thinking that the work is done right. Enbridge assumes the liability risk of that data they purchased to justify their pipeline. When pipes break and the reason is linked to poor quality data of the EIS report, the blame should be on the firm who conducted the study, not Enbridge. Oil distribution firms should keep a check worth the entire value of the services these Engineering firms provide. If the pipes break due to the negligence of a poor EIS report: Cash it. That money incentive will assure the job gets done right. It will also serve to prevent destruction for profit scenarios. 

When it came down to the final argument, the Enbridge rep clairified, the existing line has not been in use for over a year but the industry wants to open it up to move light crude to refineries in Montreal but they also stated, "If we can't move this oil safely, were not going to move it."  Enbridge is open to further discussion on the matter with the public. 

At that point, the NEB chairs stated, they will now take their first Undertaking: Enbridge must figure out how to involve parties in this process and how to inform citizens of emergency plan development and include them in the process. 

After that the hearing was adjourned.  I had a whole bunch of folks come up to offer handshakes and thanks from the staff of Enbridge, all the oil company reps as well as the staff of Ecojustice, Equiterre and Environmental Defence. People really liked the idea. NEB liasion officer said that the policy was a direct result of my presentation and said that in 12 weeks we'll hear from Enbridge on how they are willing to proceed with the undertaking. 

As I left I thought about Forest Ethics and how they created ground breaking protection for Carolinian Forests by creating sustainable harvesting programs directly with the forestry sector. Things get done much faster with industry partnerships to create better standards than they do via political processes. Enbridge is willing to work with us to figure out how to avert risks. This could be groundbreaking stuff. They need to figure out what to do with the existing pipe that's already on top of our moraine. It was installed in 1976. Should it stay or should it be removed? Is there any way they could modify things to make it safer? What are reasonable test times and methods should they use to build pipes safer?  What sort of monitoring should they do? Their job is distribution. They move product from point A to B.  They want to know how to keep things safer because the last thing their company wants is another leaky pipeline. If we can help them
 design things safer or to explain why they should opt out of dealing with Line 9 all together, now is the time to structure those arguments. The Line 9 project report info is all online here: http://www.neb-one.gc.ca/clf-nsi/rthnb/pplctnsbfrthnb/nbrdgln9phs1/nbrdgln9phs1-eng.html

This is a most unusual opportunity to foster greater public debate during an NEB hearing. I didn't know that could be done but sure enough, it's happening. I would really like GREN to be a part of this. Any contribution we can make to give recommendations to prevent spills or prevent risks could become a new industry standard. What say GREN?

Lulu 

_______________________________________________ All mailing list All at gren.ca http://gren.ca/mailman/listinfo/all_gren.ca

_______________________________________________ All mailing list All at gren.ca http://gren.ca/mailman/listinfo/all_gren.ca
_______________________________________________
All mailing list
All at gren.ca
http://gren.ca/mailman/listinfo/all_gren.ca
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://gren.ca/pipermail/all_gren.ca/attachments/20120529/2a6d5c8f/attachment.html>