A group of local residents are not giving up the fight against FortisBC.
About 50 Valleycliffe neighbours gathered at The Ledge Café Thursday night to brainstorm ways of convincing FortisBC to change plans for a compressor station outside their neighbourhood.
Though anti-LNG group My Sea to Sky founder Tracey Saxby, a Valleycliffe resident, was on hand and spoke at the meeting, the event was arranged and run by a separate group of Valleycliffe neighbours, according to Saxby.
“Everybody knows the big discussion in Squamish about LNG, Woodfibre, the pros and cons of both sides – we don’t want to get into that discussion. It is not about LNG, it doesn’t matter if you are for it or against it,” said Falk Bretschneider, one of the organizers of the event.
“What we want to talk about today is the compressor station and what it means for Valleycliffe and Squamish.”
Mayor Patricia Heintzman, councillors Karen Elliott and Susan Chapelle were on hand to listen as was Area D Director Tony Rainbow of the Squamish-Lillooet Regional District.
Based on the sometimes intense discussion Thursday night, residents want the compressor station, currently proposed for 1.8 kilometres outside Valleycliffe, relocated to a new site, or at bare minimum the station to be run on electricity rather than natural gas.
FortisBC is proposing the compressor station as part of its Eagle Mountain to Woodfibre Gas Pipeline Project, which is needed because of the additional load on the system required for the planned Woodfibre LNG export facility on Howe Sound, according to the company.
Safety concerns often raised by My Sea to Sky members dominated the meeting: risk of explosions, fire, air and noise pollution, and risk to Squamish’s water supply. Concern over a reduction in property values because of the compressor station was also mentioned.
In the event of an accident, having the corridor’s only hospital in the same neighbourhood as the compressor station arose as an additional worry.
“We may have to evacuate the hospital,” said Bretschneider.
When Bretschneider was a child in Germany during the 1970s he lived about 10 kilometres from a gas-powered compressor station that exploded.
“It took out every window and everything about a kilometre and around, killed a couple of people who were working there on site,” Bretschneider recalled.
Bretschneider acknowledged Fortis hasn’t had any accidents occur at its 11 compressor stations, but said that doesn’t guarantee an accident won’t occur in the future.
“They haven’t had any incidents simply because they don’t have a heck of a lot of facilities,” he said.
Bretschneider said the reason FortisBC ultimately chose Mount Mulligan is because it is “cheaper,” something FortisBC representative Trevor Boudreau said was not true.
“Absolutely not,” he told The Squamish Chief after the meeting. “There’s been a tremendous amount of work that has gone into this change actually. Just in terms of the engineering alone there’s been a lot of investment on our part to try to find the right balance.”
Boudreau stressed the reason Mount Mulligan was chosen is because of negative feedback from the public and the Squamish Nation on the other original option in the Squamish business park. That option was seen to be too close to residents, though it was zoned industrial and would have been electric powered.
Regarding the perceived risk of the gas powered nature of the Valleycliffe station, Boudreau said some people have been misinformed.
“There’s a lot of things that we do with all of our compressor stations and all of our facilities… that minimizes methane leakage and that kind of stuff,” Boudreau said. “We don’t vent gas into the air, it is burnt and as you know, natural gas is the cleanest burning fuel source we have. It is not the issue certain people make it out to be.”
In terms of switching to electric, Boudreau said getting Mount Mulligan hooked up to BC Hydro would be prohibitive.
It would involve building five kilometres of transmission line from the substation on Discovery Way to the station outside Valleycliffe, he said.
“That would involve a huge right-of-way and would impact a lot of landowners and there’s been a lot of push back from the community about building new transmission lines.”
At the Thursday night meeting the Valleycliffe residents brainstormed ways of amplifying their opposition. Ideas included everything from letter writing campaigns to local governments, and FortisBC to legal action. Some in the audience said stronger action was needed.
Resident Tyler Jordan addressed the politicians in the room.
“Nobody knows about this issue, but you guys do, you can help us educate, you can take a stand now, you can make it clear when you are dealing with Fortis now that this is going to become a big issue,” Jordan said to a round of applause.
Heintzman agreed with Jordan, but explained that legislatively as a member of the Squamish-Lillooet Regional District she can’t publically say she is for or against a proposal or she risks not being able to vote on it.
“It cannot be proven that we have a closed mind to something when we go to a public hearing,” she explained. “It would actually make me not be able to be in the room when the vote happens.”
The station falls within SLRD boundaries so the board will be presented with zoning and permitting applications from FortisBC at some point.
In the end the group decided to set up a separate web page specifically for opposition to the Mount Mulligan compressor station and write letters to all levels of government.
After the meeting co-organizer Mark Robichaud said what he took away from the evening was that the issue has to be taken to the broader community.
“Absolutely a writing campaign… but I think there is more a galvanization of letting the rest of Squamish know about this issue and really trying to separate it from the noise of Woodfibre,” he said.
“The first step will be to organize the emailing list we received last night, create a web page and see what we have for a volunteer base and then roll out from there.”
FortisBC is currently awaiting a decision on its application for an environmental assessment certificate from the Environmental Assessment Office. The Squamish Nation Council voted to approve the pipeline on Saturday.
**Please note this story has been updated since it was first posted to reflect the Squamish Nation vote.
