With Alberta crude set to flow through north Toronto via Enbridge’s Line 9 as early as next week, a short video that warns of the risks of a giant tar sands oil spill “right beneath our feet” was released Thursday, May 28.
The video was made by activist Rosemary Frei and Harrison Astroff who are neigbours on a street just south of where Line 9 cuts through the Hydro corridor in North York. The somewhat campy video ends on a deadly serious message on the dangers of a potential spill by reminding viewers that Line 9 will be shipping tar sands bitumen mixed with highly-volatile chemicals and potentially explosive fracked Bakken oil and all of it at very high pressure.
Enbridge has been working to convert the 40-year-old pipeline into one that will transport diluted bitumen from the tar sands. Up to 300,000 barrels a day may soon be coursing through Toronto on its way from Sarnia to Montreal.
Enbridge expects to begin shipping the Albertan crude through the pipe any time now notwithstanding Toronto City Council passed a motion http://app.toronto.ca/tmmis/
At National Energy Board hearings into the project, environmental activists raised the spectre of a possible repeat of the eco-disaster caused by the rupture of Enbridge’s Line 6B in Kalamazoo, Michigan, in 2010.
More information at NoLine9.com.