On August 19, 2015 a delegation of three NBASGA members traveled to Fredericton to present our case against UNGOD (UNconventional Gas and Oil Development) to the New Brunswick Commission on Hydraulic Fracturing.
Recommends consultation with Chief Medical Health Officer
The New Brunswick Anti-Shale Gas Alliance (NBASGA) welcomes the government’s announcement of a commission to evaluate the impacts of hydraulic fracturing. A year may be sufficient time to allow the review of all the current science and medical research. However, it must be noted that such research has only begun in earnest over the last couple of years. It is accelerating rapidly, it is increasingly identifying new health threats, and it is raising new issues that will require years of further study before they can be resolved.
MONCTON, NB (18 March 2015) – The supporters of the shale gas industry – the industry itself, the PC-Opposition energy and various editorialists – have lately been calling for the lifting of the moratorium. Their sole, well-worn and questionable economic argument for this demonstrates a lack of understanding of the two basic reasons for a moratorium in the first place.
The primary reason for a moratorium is concern for public health. Increasingly numerous peer-reviewed studies have now associated shale gas extraction with a host of serious health problems from cancer to congenital heart defects, which is cause enough for alarm. More importantly, each study points out how much more we need to know.
The Canadian Government’s anti-terrorism bill, C-51, and a recent intelligence report from the RCMP about the “anti-petroleum” movement in Canada come dangerously close to equating dissent with terrorism and opposition to economic policies as extremism.
Public policy must reflect care for citizens’ well-being
New Brunswickers who are looking for the facts about shale gas are not getting them from the current political debate. They are often being deliberately misled or else are confused by politicians who don’t understand the issues, themselves. And they are definitely missing out on critical information.
New Brunswick politicians need to look past the fractious debate over hydraulic fracturing and focus on alternative energy sources, according to an anti-shale gas advocate.
Atlantic Industrial Services Waste Water Dumping Proposal Raises Serious Concerns
New Brunswick Anti-Shale Gas Alliance asks: Is this another example of backroom ‘public consultation’?
Moncton, NB (11 August 2014) – Recent news reports on a proposal by Atlantic Industrial Services (AIS) to truck 30 million litres of fracking wastewater from its Debert, NS facility into Dieppe for dumping in the municipal sewage system has generated many questions by environmental groups and residents in the tri-community area. Dieppe City Council may be hearing some of them at their council meeting tonight.
The New Brunswick Anti-Shale Gas Alliance (NBASGA) applauds the City of Dieppe for its cautionary approach, but questions – once again – the lack of public consultation initiated, since the application for the EIA was dated June 6, 2014, yet it was 60 days before the proponent presented to the Dieppe City Council.
The New Brunswick EIA regulations clearly state: “Open and transparent public involvement is required for all registered projects….The opportunity for public involvement benefits citizens most when they take an active role at an early stage in the process, and clearly articulate their specific questions or concerns.”
“Does informing City Council – and only Dieppe City Council – 60 days later constitute an acceptable standard for public consultation under NB regulations?” asks Jim Emberger, spokesman for NBASGA. “What about the other tri-city councils? The Greater Moncton Sewerage Commission? What about the general public’s right to know? Wouldn’t the department of Environment and Local Government want to be up front and transparent, particularly when the issue is a new and precedent-setting industrial procedure taking place during a contentious debate on the underlying issue of shale gas?”
NBASGA, after reviewing the EIA document, asks why a company from the United States, processing waste in Nova Scotia, buys a defunct waste disposal company in New Brunswick that has no facilities other than a garage, access to the municipal sewage system, and an old certificate for waste disposal.
“This situation raises several questions,” says Emberger. “The most pressing is this: If this water is supposedly safe enough for Dieppe, then why did Nova Scotia refuse it?”
The wastewater in question has been a problem for the company for several years, the problems originating when local residents discovered that the company had dumped seven million litres of ‘untreated’, radioactive water into the Windsor sewage system without advising anyone. This led the Colchester County municipality to veto any further dumping. Now the company is looking to New Brunswick to help solve its disposal problems.
“If this EIA is approved, then the government has facilitated a ‘backdoor’ solution to a problem it has not addressed in its rules for industry or in public discussion. This situation clearly illuminates the fact that this government has no idea how to do safely dispose of waste water from fracking. And yet, Corridor is currently fracking in Penobsquis and in Elgin and we have further gas and oil wells pending in Albert County. Where is this waste being disposed of?”
MONCTON, NB (June 23, 2014) – The New Brunswick Anti-Shale Gas Alliance (NBASGA) is taking the provincial government to court to stop shale gas development in the province.“We’re taking this action to protect the health and well-being of New Brunswickers, both now and in the future,” said NBASGA chairman Roy Ries.
NBASGA is an alliance of 22 non-profit, community groups across New Brunswick. It filed a Statement of Claim against the Province of New Brunswick in Saint John Court of Queen’s Bench Monday. NBASGA’s lawsuit says the development of unconventional shale gas and oil deposits poses so great a threat to human health and the environment that it violates Section 7 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guaranteeing all persons in Canada the right to life and security of their person. That right to security of the person entails the right of Canadians to health and to clean drinking water.
NBASGA is asking the Court to impose a moratorium on the development of unconventional shale gas and oil until such time as long-term, population-based scientific studies demonstrate that it can be done safely. Regina lawyer Larry Kowalchuk is representing NBASGA, while Alliance directors Roy Ries, Jim Emberger and Carol Ring are acting as plaintiffs.
“The scientific research that has been done to date on shale gas, and the experience of communities elsewhere with the industry, is alarming,” Roy Ries said. “These show that shale gas development using current technologies needlessly jeopardizes the health of families and communities across New Brunswick.”
“For example, a recent study by scientists from the Colorado School of Public Health and Brown University found a strong correlation between a pregnant woman’s exposure to unconventional oil and gas wells and congenital heart defects,” he said.
There are many such studies documenting life-threatening health problems and contamination of air, water and land associated with shale, Ries noted. “NBASGA will place the best available, peer-reviewed scientific studies documenting that damage before the courts.”
Denise Melanson and Jim Emberger are NBASGA’s official spokespersons for its legal action.
“Court action to stop shale gas is necessary because the Province of New Brunswick has ignored the many dire warnings about such development from both independent scientists and doctors, including the recent report from The Council of Canadian Academies that said there is no scientific basis for existing shale gas regulations” Emberger said.
“We have tried every means possible to get the provincial government to take the warnings about these dangers seriously, but they have been ignored or dismissed out of hand each and every time,” he said. “The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees the right to life and security of the person and neither governments nor corporations are allowed to violate those guarantees by ignoring threats to them for any purpose. This is why we are going to the courts.”
NBASGA also intends to document for the court the fact that shale gas development elsewhere has been shown to pollute groundwater, water wells and surface water that are some distance from actual drill sites.
“Along with the contamination of provincial water sources, and the serious health problems associated with the industry, we are also confronted by the virtual certainty of air pollution resulting from development of unconventional shale oil and gas,” says Denise Melanson.
Melanson also notes that shale gas is a major contributor to climate change, and that climate change is a threat to all life on the planet.
NGASGA’s Statement of Claim (English only)
Be Part of History! Contribute to the Legal Action Fund to help New Brunswickers Stop Shale Gas & Oil Development and protect their health and home.
CBC News: Anti-Shale Gas Group Suing the Government
Harbinger: NBASGA Files Suit for Fracking Moratorium
CBC Info Morning with NBASGA’s Jim Emberger: Shale Gas Lawsuit
On News91.9 Radio today, NBASGA spokesperson, Jim Emberger, responded to NB’s Energy Minister, Craig Leonard, who has been on radio and in the print news bashing the “Voice of the People Tour“, making cranky accusations of ‘misinformation’ and ‘hyperbole’, among other similar slurs. In an earlier interview, Jim responded with, “If we were individuals rather than a group, we’d probably sue him for slander.”
Excerpts from article printed in Telegraph Journal and Fredericton Gleaner, Mar. 24, 2014
New Brunswick’s energy minister says he is not concerned about a coalition of groups that is planning a provincewide tour to oppose shale gas development in the province. Craig Leonard said the Tory government already knows what The Voice of the People Tour will tell residents and he is confident New Brunswickers will be able to see through what he calls the “misinformation.”
Later in the article, Minister Craig Leonard is quoted as saying,
“We know what they will say—it’s a lot of misinformation, it’s a lot of studies taken out of context and it’s a lot of studies that have been discredited.”
“The facts have a way of coming to the fore and no matter how much misinformation they try to put out to block those facts, NBers will see through it.”
Yes, Minister Leonard – this is the one thing we can agree on. We know the facts will emerge.
In a subsequent radio interview, Leonard said the tour organizers are fear-mongering using outdated misinformation; getting more aggressive; using information that keeps getting older and older ; and curiously enough, this one: “if things in other jurisdictions were so bad, would there not be a massive outcry?”
How could he miss the fact that the massive outcry is world-wide, including existing shale gas areas? He did urge people to read the research, but did not specify what research he wished them to read.
We are happy to comply and suggest that people start right here.