A group of Fraser Valley property owners have come together and some have been granted intervenor status for the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline hearings which are slated to start next January.
According to Brian Kingman, the acting secretary treasurer for Collaborative Group of Landowners Affected by Pipelines (CGLAP), members must be property owners who will have the pipeline on their land.
Kingman said all the members’ properties are in the Agricultural Land Reserve and represent operations valued at “several millions of dollars of agricultural business.”
“We think [the pipeline] is going to happen, but we think it should happen on our terms,” he said.
Among the issues they plan to address will be the depth of the pipeline, an update to the terms of reference, and landowner concerns about how much heat the new pipe will exude, and its effect on their crops, and more.
CGLAP is having a meeting May 6 for potential new members. People must live in the Fraser Valley and currently have the Trans Mountain pipeline right-of-way on their property, they are on title of that property, or have been given authority by the landowner to speak on their behalf.
The meeting will start at 6:30 p.m. and will take place at the Mt. Lehman Community Hall, located on the northeast corner of Taylor Road and Mt. Lehman Road.
The $5.4-billion Kinder Morgan project would twin the 60-year-old oil pipeline that runs from northern Alberta to Burnaby, nearly tripling capacity to 890,000 barrels per day, and resulting in a five-fold jump in the number of oil tankers passing through Vancouver harbour. The second 1,150-kilometre line would carry mainly diluted bitumen for export to Asia.
