Quote:
Originally Posted by GP_Matt
I spoke with someone at Alberta Environment about this and they said this was just the Federal government offloading work onto the provinces. Previously there were 400 or so water bodies that were more important than others so both the federal and provincial governments approved them. Now for the most part it is just the provincial government.
Every water body on public land is protected in Alberta including the 3" wide ephemeral draws and small muskeg areas. Any application to cross or disturb them has strict requirements from the provinces with mitigation plans that must be in place to reduce damages. We get fish biologists out to check on the crossing applications if there is even a chance that the water can flow into a fish bearing water body within a few kilometers.
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The funny thing is as much flack as the rest of the country likes to give Alberta about being "un-enviromental" the ERCB has a much better grasp and are more stringent on pipeline mitigation than either the NEB or (especially) the OGC in BC.
Also from what I read of the bill a big part of it stems on navigation of waterways, as it stood if a stream or a river changed course due to heavy rains or the like , man was not allowed to interfere, nature was to take its course.
In the case of pipelines this can actually cause a greater chance of a line break.
Most pipelines that go underneath waterways are bored and are very deep beneath the water bed, if heavy rains and flooding changes causes a stream to shift, the stream now may be going over top of the line that is only a couple feet under surface. That makes the pipe more vulnerable to become exposed in the stream which would more than likely lead to external corrision of the pipe and a break.