There will be very little disturbance to the estuary – that was the message of FortisBC representatives who presented to Squamish council at the community development standing committee on Tuesday afternoon.
The presentation was in advance of FortisBC’s revised development permit to do pipeline route testing in the estuary, which goes before council next week.
An original application to do more invasive testing, including some testing in the Wildlife Management Area (WMA), was rejected by council in January.
“This development permit is really a response to the feedback and values that we have been hearing over the past few months,” FortisBC project manager James Lota said in his presentation to council. “We have really tried to minimize the activity in the WMA and to limit our soil sampling to pre-disturbed areas.”
There will be two phases to the currently proposed testing in the estuary, according to Lota.
The first phase would be geophysical testing that will involve workers with handheld, portable equipment, “basically hiking through and taking surface measurements.”
The second phase would be soil sampling that would take place on the dike road.
There are two locations where samples would be taken. “At each location we are going to be doing three testing boreholes. One would be a vertical that goes in 80 metres deep, and then there are two lateral samples that we are going to take, one at 30 metres below the bottom of the river and one at 70 metres below the bottom of the river,” said Lota.
Throughout the testing work, there will be an environmental monitor and a Squamish Nation monitor on hand, said Lota.
The work will take about three weeks at each site and public access to the area will be maintained, according to Lota.
The proposed Eagle Mountain to Woodfibre LNG Pipeline Project to feed the Woodfibre LNG export plant planned for southwest of downtown Squamish, would loosely twin an existing pipeline, installed in 1990, that travels under the Squamish River through the estuary.
Lota said the reason the proposed route under the estuary was chosen is because it makes the most environmental sense.
“The most environmentally sound way to do it is to put the new pipeline as close to the existing pipeline as possible and that is to minimize any new disturbance and to make use of the pre-disturbed areas on the right of way of the existing pipeline,” he said.
According to Lota, other routes were originally considered, one that went through Britannia Beach and one through Furry Creek.
“We found that these two corridors were not better in terms of environmental risks and safety and long-term integrity of the pipeline. The route that we proposed in the Environmental Assessment Application is better than all the other corridors that we have looked at,” he said.
The second of two open houses on the latest development permit application was held at the FortisBC and Woodfibre LNG community office in downtown Squamish on April 29 and saw about 35 people come to check out the poster boards and ask questions, according to a FortisBC spokesperson.
The revised development permit will go before council at a special meeting on Tuesday (May 12).
