Sierra Club & Wilderness Committee with EcoJustice lawyers are taking BC Govt/BC Oil & Gas Commission to court over natural gas Fracking driller companies astounding volumes of surface + ground/well water consumptions in Supreme Court BC. quote: Sierra Club B.C. and Western Canada Wilderness Committee — in documents filed with the Supreme Court of B.C. — argue the Oil and Gas Commission has been engaged in a “systemic” practice of issuing back-to-back “short-term” water approvals and call for permits issued to Encana to be quashed. “Under the Water Act, if you want long-term access to water, you need a water licence,” says Caitlyn Vernon, campaigns director with Sierra Club B.C. “What the Oil and Gas Commission is doing is granting consecutive short-term approvals to oil and gas companies.” The case centres around water approvals under Section 8 of B.C.’s Water Act, which governs short-term use and diversion of water for up to 24 months. By requesting and analyzing Section 8 water approvals going back seven years, Sierra Club B.C. and the Wilderness Committee — represented by lawyers from Ecojustice — determined the approvals were being given to the same companies for consecutive terms. “Multiple approvals are routinely granted over multiple years to the same company, for the same purposes, at the same locations and thereby violate s. 8 of the Water Act,” reads the groups’ petition to the court. The groups argue this is illegal — that if a company requires water for more than one term or more than 24 months, they should have to obtain a water licence, not a short-term approval. This is an important distinction, says Karen Campbell, the Ecojustice lawyer arguing the case. When a company applies for a water licence, its application has to be posted publicly and there’s opportunity for a public hearing. With a Section 8 approval, the public is not notified and there’s no chance for public input, she says. unquote Note the above flagrant abuse of existing very weak laws for freshwater licensees will only get much more critical up in NE of BC vis a vis other users groups including wildlife with the accelerated pace of Fracking to meet proposed natural gas feedstock for all those LNG plants/exports terminals. desmog.ca/print/7906
Posted on: Tue, 11 Mar 2014 03:33:06 +0000
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