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On Tuesday, August 19, the Council of Canadians released a report, Energy East: Where Oil Meets Water, on the spill risks TransCanada’s proposed Energy East pipeline poses to waterways along the pipeline path.
According to the report, more than 1 million litres of crude oil, including diluted bitumen from the tar sands, could be lost in 10 minutes during a spill. By comparison, Michigan's 2010 Kalamazoo spill, the largest inland oil spill in the history of the U.S., spilled 3.8 million litres of diluted bitumen over 17 hours.
The Energy East pipeline would cross the drinking water sources of millions of Canadians. At points, the pipeline crosses waterways less than 20 km away from communities that rely on them as their drinking water source. In Quebec, the pipeline crosses over 600 watercourses, including Rivière des Outaouais, Rivière des Mille Îles, Rivière Saint-Maurice, St. Lawrence River, and Rivière des Prairies.
The sheer volume of oil – one million barrels a day – that will go through Energy East is enormous. This means that a pipeline spill could seriously endanger our water sources.
Chairperson of the Council of Canadians Maude Barlow wrote in March 2014: “We are living on a planet running out of clean, accessible water. There is an urgent need to adopt a new ‘water ethic’ that puts protecting water and restoring watersheds at the centre of our lives if we, and the planet, are to survive.” In her 2013 book Blue Future, she predicts that by 2030 the global demand for water will outstrip supply by 40 per cent.
Sign the Say no to tar sands position to protect our waterways from TransCanda's proposed Energy East pipeline. (In French only.)
For more information
- Read the report: Energy East: Where Oil Meets Water
- View the waterways map
