Oct 18, 2018 - City of Burnaby Demands Trans Mountain Stop Construction

17 October 2018, Coast Salish territory (Burnaby, BC) Trans Mountain Corporation must stop construction at the Burnaby Mountain tank farm, says the City of Burnaby in a submission to the National Energy Board.

The Trans Mountain tank farm construction site should have been shut down with the rest of the construction activity on the pipeline and tanker project on August 30, says Burnaby, after the Federal Court of Appeal quashed the National Energy Board approval of the project.

Burnaby filed the motion with the National Energy Board October 2, asking the National Energy Board to withdraw permits for tank farm construction, as they were specifically issued after the overall project was approved. Now that the Certificate has been quashed by the courts, permits that rely on that Certificate must also be quashed.

However, the Crown Corporation is continuing construction to triple the size of the tank farm for the pipeline and tanker project.

Now that the Federal Court of Appeal has quashed the approval to build the pipeline and tanker project the fence must come down, argues Burnaby counsel Gregory McDade in a recent filing. [Full text below]

“Now that construction authorization has been withdrawn by the court, we ask that you immediately notify Trans Mountain that the fence must be removed as an obstacle to public access.”

In a related motion last month, the City is also petitioning the Vancouver Fraser Port Authority to withdraw Trans Mountain’s permit to operate the “Marine Construction Safety Boom” around the perimeter of the (former Kinder Morgan and now) government of Canada-owned tanker berth construction site. The permit to triple the number of berths at the terminal was dependent on the overall approval of the project, Burnaby argues, and now that the general approval has been quashed, so too should be the fence permit.

Citizen watchdogs at the tank farm report have documented increased construction activity at the Burnaby tank farm in recent weeks. Burnaby’s challenge to the Port and the NEB is the first real test of the new Trans Mountain Crown Corporation’s intentions of obeying the stop work order set down August 30 by the Federal Court of Appeal, in a ruling the federal government decided this month not to appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada.