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WEDNESDAY, MARCH 7, 2012
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Pipeline route to shift near Owen Creek
Photo courtesy Charmaine DeTeves
FIRST Frosty
Three-year-old Ella McCormack stands by a snowman in Houston last week—the first one she’s helped pack together.
Apache Canada is tabling a series of adjustments that would alter the way it routes a natural gas pipeline south of Houston. If approved, Apache’s updated plan would include a stockpile site off the Chisholm logging road and a route shift that avoids a slideprone hill slope west of Owen Creek. Sofia Ebermann was one of several Buck Flats residents who attended a Wednesday open house at the Houston Seniors Activity Centre. “I came to the meeting because this pipeline will come close to our place, and we were concerned how it would affect our lives,” said E., adding that she felt good about the answers given to her by Apache staff. “The impact won’t be as extreme as Enbridge,” she said. B.C.’s environmen-
“ “The impact won’t be as extreme as Enbridge.”
- Sofia Ebermann
tal assessment office approved the Pacific Trails pipeline in 2008, when the project was still owned by Pacific Northern Gas and was designed to import natural gas to B.C. But even before a shale gas discoveries in northeast B.C. convinced Apache to buy Pacific Trails and turn it into an export project, it was clear that future engineering work would require some amendments to the original certificate. See GAS on Page 3
Inspectors looking at derailments near Houston, Vanderhoof By Andrew Hudson Houston Today
Inspectors at the Transportation Safety Board say it could take up to a year before they can finish a full report into what caused 46 cars on a CN coal train to derail on Feb. 21.
“In this case, we don’t have anything that’s standing out to us immediately,” said inspector Peter Hickli, who been working at the derailment site about 25 km west of Houston. “We’re going to have to go through all the different aspects—mechanical,
rail, operational.” But a full report into the Feb. 21 derailment may not be needed. Hickli said the TSB is already investigating two recent derailments in Vanderhoof that appear to have the same cause. If it turns out that the Houston and
Vanderhoof crashes are linked, Hickli said the board will combine them into a single report. The coal train that derailed Feb. 21 was heading west to Prince Rupert along a 125mile stretch of the CN railway known as the Telkwa sub. In the past
five years, the Telkwa sub has seen two other derailments—both of them minor incidents that involved just one rail car each. Hickli said he has already sent some rail taken from the crash scene to be analyzed at a metallurgical lab in Prince George.
Engineers in such labs can look at bits of bent rail or broken trail wheels and find out if the equipment had any defects before the derailment happened. A “black box” recorder on board the coal train will also be studied to get data on the train’s speed, direc-
tion and braking before the crash. Another factor to consider in the investigation will be two small rail bridges that span Dockrill and Emmerson creeks. The bridges stand at either end of the area where the train derailed.