New book ‘102 Things to Do with a Hole in the Ground‘ spotlights global reclamation projects
Stories of reinvented coal mining regions, regenerated communities and rebuilt ecosystems are told in a new book published this month.
Canadian firm Baytex Energy Corp. (TSX, NYSE: BTE) has resolved a lawsuit brought by a Peace River extended family by buying the four farms they claimed they had to flee because of emissions from its heavy oil works.
They’ve been put in a position where they can start afresh,” the lawyer for the four families, Keith Wilson, told Canadian Press. “That chapter’s now closed.”
Years of complaints from residents about odours and emissions from northwestern Alberta operations led to the province’s Energy Regulator hosting its first public hearings on the issue last winter.
In April, the AER panel issued a report that said the emissions were likely causing health problems and should as much as possible be eliminated. Baytex and four other companies extract oil from bitumen in the area by heating above-ground tanks, a process linked with greater risk of odour-causing emissions.
A month later the authority asked companies in certain areas near Peace River to take steps to eliminate gas venting, reduce flaring and conserve all produced gas by Aug. 15.
The body says that despite the positive results it continues to monitor emissions in the area and that those companies that have been found not complying with Directive 060 have until Oct. 31 to do so.
3 Comments
Guest
“emissions were likely causing health problems and should as much as possible be eliminated”
How about the government runs some goddamn tests to determine if its harmful. You can’t say it’s likely causing problems and then just ignore it like a prom night dumpster baby.
nobody24
“likely”… could it be any less definitive?
“he likely committed the crime (but we do not know!!!!).
Lets not build the pipeline because it “might” leak.
Don’t get on that aeroplane it “might” crash.
Larry Southwick
What is the upside?
Granted it took a year from the public hearings to sort this out, but it DID get resolved without a great deal of entangling and expensive lawyering.
To me, that is a “win – win” ending. And it does appear to be an ending – “That chapter’s now closed” said the landowners’ lawyer. Would that other disputes in mining regions demonstrate as much reason and communication as this episode did.
Instead, too often the land owners refuse to recognize that they are in the middle of a rich and vital natural resource area and want to shut all of society out of its benefits. Benefits everyone enjoys, and even demand, including the land owners.
Much ink is spilled over the issue of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), but for CSR to work also requires a society willing to take the responsibility of seeing that its demands for the good things, and even the extra good things, in life CAN be supplied. CSR includes the company willing to deal with issues concerning the local society, but they also have a charter and responsibility to supply products from those natural resources TO society.
This example demonstrates that the meeting of these two responsibilities, corporate and society, can result after all in a settlement that is satisfactory to both parties. Would that there were more of these.
Larry M. Southwick
Consulting Engineer
Cincinnati, OH