Saturday, April 25, 2015

Kinder Morgan's pipelines Achilles Heel an anomaly: Castor canadensis

Anomaly
 something that deviates from what is standard, normal, or expected.

A couple of busy beavers in Burnaby were able to knock a locomotive off it's track along with railcar hoppers loaded with Coal in Burnaby two years agor.  The coal damaged the Frog habitat and the BC Environmental department stepped in.   CN Rail blamed the beavers who were only doing what they've always done, naturally ... build dams, not quite the size of Site C but given time .....  Argentina forests are under a terror alert.


Does Kinder Morgan handle beavers any better than CN Rail, and why would KM be concerned about beavers?  Its not as if their pipeline is going to fall off a track, nor are the beavers digging down to gain access to the steel pipe to gnaw on the wrapping either.  The beavers are doing to Kinder Morgan as to what they did to the railroad barons.  Dam them.

 
Kinder Morgan keeps track of their pipes by using their 'animal', a PIG to discover if Beavers or corrosion are problems.   The perfectly programmed PIG knows the distance traveled, elevation changes, left and right turns, right side up and upside down and in some cases, whether the pipeline has risen from the marsh's depths to float upon dammed waters.

Every pipeline going through a marsh area should be treated like its a National Park because of this:

Concrete set-on weights were placed on the pipe......
KM prefers to go the route of CN Rail, using a full time crew looking for Beaver dams, instead of using concrete set-on weights. eg.
Anomaly detected during tool run.  Anomaly dig on Private Land within Trans Mountain right-of-way.

There are two existing beaver dams in the area that are restricting water flow into the North Thompson River. A wildlife permit has been obtained to dismantle these two beaver dams, and a local trapper has confirmed the absence of active beavers. Removal of the two beaver dams will reinstate the natural flow of water towards the North Thompson River, thereby lowering the water level within the work area.

 Trans Mountain Kilometre Post 631.941 (Latitude 51.758313; Longitude -119.329721)
 You got it, Trans Mountain does have an Achilles's heel.  Water, it just doesn't mix with oil.  Neither do Beavers.


October 17, 2014


Kinder Morgan's Achilles Heel


https://www.neb-one.gc.ca/sftnvrnmnt/cmplnc/brdrdr/trnsmntn/2013/so-t260-005-08-eng.html

Right top: Marsh adjacent to the North Thompson River

How many Anomalies does it take to be normality, regularity, standard, usual, usualness



 




Anomalies or normality, regularity


HOPE, B.C. — Kinder Morgan has shut down its Trans Mountain pipeline in British Columbia for the second time in as many weeks, due to an oil leak.

The second incident occurred 40 kilometres east of Hope, and it comes the same day the company plans an open house in Metro Vancouver to discuss its proposal to expand the line that runs from Alberta to the port of Vancouver.    Snip    Financial Post - National Post 2013

Vancouver Observer:

“There's been more oil spilled than [Kinder Morgan] is saying,” pipeline critic David Ellis said last November. A March 2014 document reveals there was, in fact, quadruple the amount that the company initially reported to have spilled at Coquihalla Canyon. 

20 - 25 Barrels   - CBC

Putting Kinder Morgan's 'leaks' into perspective, English Bay spill was 2,700 litres    aka  17 Barrels

Enbridge's Kalamazoo River spill: 834,000 barrels

Kinder Morgan Aframax:  750,000 barrels

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Google Earth Search Criteria:  Kinder Morgan Canada Inc. Anomaly Investigations


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One item is missing



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 DAS Cable  or Existing Pipeline

Butterfly Lost



The monarch butterfly is the only member of it's subfamily, the Dainainae or “milkweed butterflies” to occur in Canada. Two other species in the group are found in the southern United States and one more in central America. The family is mainly old world in origin. Some other species exhibit regional migratory tendencies but the monarch migration in Eastern North America is by far the longest among the Lepidoptera, and most well studied of any seasonally driven insect migration. The majority of British Columbia butterfly records occur below the latitude of the confluence of the Fraser and Thompson rivers, with a conspicuous concentration in the Okanagan valley.













Monarch





Butterfly Lost

Thursday, April 23, 2015

British Columbia was called New Hanover but the map makers called it Hanover New?


Weekend Reading for Sailors:


Page 19

Published in 1914
First Circumnavigation
   Index first page of two:

 British Columbia?  All depends on who got here first and whether or not they got the memo.
New Hanover or Hanover New





Wednesday, April 22, 2015

BC Hydro Site C: Energy Minister Bill Bennett's claim of 'shovels in the ground' - 2015

Vaughn Palmer's column in the Vancouver Sun last two paragraphs on the need to get going on Site C before the big freeze:

.....  Energy Minister Bill Bennett — namely, in light of all the action in the courts, is he still confident that construction will get underway later this year?

“I am confident that we’ll have shovels in the ground sometime this summer,” he replied, speaking mostly for himself and not for anyone observing this imbroglio from the sidelines.

For a can-do-Core-reviewer on value for money, BC Liberal Minister Bill Bennett has selected a very low road threshold to success for BC Hydro $9 Billion project in 2015.

Shovels?

A Show of Shovels?

Direct, or Indirect make-work jobs of manufacturing Canadian Shovels?

So, so many shovels that the GCPE staff will have Site C looking like a military cemetery.






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The BC Energy Plan (2010)  also known as   The Ralph Zucker Plan

2016  energy self sufficiency

Standing offer for green power UP 10 MW

Page 5

page 6
What's the Buzz

Sunday, April 19, 2015

Jordan Bateman's removal of Lions Gate Bridge in 15 years is correct. Third Crossing plans Green lighted

Mayor Walton of the District of North Vancouver sees the Lions Gate Bridge demise as being premature.  The limitation to Buses and cyclists (pedestrians too) was conditional upon there being a Third Crossing, which, in his opinion will never happen.

We disagree.

One option for the replacement costs for the Lions Gate Bridge should be borne entirely by the very fine people who built it in the first place, and then sold it to W.A.C. Bennett:    British Properties

British Properties are furthering their real estate development needs and at the same time raising havoc on the rest of the North Shore, BC Ferries and Whistler and those that already here are paying the price so the real estate company gets to rub their hands together, eh.

However, we have a much better idea for a Third crossing, one that will not add one motor vehicle to the soon to be tolled road from the Second Narrows $140 Million improvement project to the Port Mann Bridge.   The money losing Golden Ears Bridge will finally be a major player in collecting their tolls.  (Update 2023:  2017 BC NDP Government removed ALL tolls)

One other minor detail goes to the fellow, a land developer, late last year, that bought a large tract of land north west of Port Moody.

 A new player in Metro Vancouver real estate development — Brilliant Circle Group Investments Ltd — has bought 230 acres of Imperial Oil land in Port Moody and Anmore to develop a master-planned new village.

The deal, which closed last week, includes about half of the Ioco townsite as well as the surrounding area, which is forested land in both Port Moody and Anmore. The purchase price was not disclosed. The property includes some heritage buildings and is close to an environmentally sensitive salmon hatchery.

The purchaser behind Brilliant Circle Group Investments Ltd. is an unknown player in Vancouver, but already owns properties in Vancouver, including the old Buschlen Mowat building at 1445 West Georgia, according to James Cheng, who represents the purchaser and is lead architect on the Ioco land development. 

Snip
 “We’ve never planned for that area,” Clay said. When the land first went up for sale a couple of years ago, “a number of local development companies found it was too challenging. We figured it would be a 10- to 20-year time frame before anybody would develop on that land.”

“We really didn’t expect very much to happen there. The access is very poor. There’s one main road to get out of there and it’s a two-lane road. A windy road. There are creeks out there. I’m not even sure that this owner has any interest in developing this land. The selling price was quite low. It may be the land up in Anmore they were really after.”

The buzz is that the 230 acres sold for under $40 million, Clay said. “An acre in Anmore generally sells for around $1 million,” Clay said.

“What would we allow there right now? Basically nothing,” Clay said. “What would it take to put something there? It’s about getting traffic in and out.”- Vancouver Sun







British Properties: Forest-Green-to-Pink-Roads-and-Monster-Houses

West Map GIS

Friday, April 17, 2015

Full disclosure on 'surplus lands' sold by BC Liberals should include Contributions to their Party from the buyers, and Predator (Nestle too) water use paid in pennies

Finance Minister Mike de Jong has promised to have his ministry staff cobble together a full list of 'surplus' land sales to prove that taxpayers weren't hosed on the deals made by the BC Liberals.

A $43,000,000 shortfall being balanced off against an accumulation of totals of smaller winners doesn't  bode well for any forthcoming British Columbia Budgets. 

Mike de Jong says that we should feel good about the fact that 'We broke even'.

In the construction of the spreadsheet by staff may we make a suggestion, add another column, one free from rose coloured glasses:     crystal clear clarity?

With companies owning so many other companies its difficult to know where to draw the line on exactly where contributions originated from and then shifted into the coffers of the governing Party.  

For example:   Wesbild contributions to the BC Liberals

Financial Reports and Political Contributions System

Wesbild Holdings Inc.             

Burke Mountain LLP                

Deep End Holdings                  

Hassan Khosrowshahi            
Predator Ridge Golf Club         

Sweet Apple Holdings             

Westwood Pateau Partnership   


Norman Farrell at Northern Insights/Perceptivity  compilation of 'Hassan Khosrowshahi'  $716,376


If full disclosure is Finance Minister Mike de Jong and his staff's game, then other contributing factors have to be included as well.  A subsidiary of Khosowshahi business empire is possibly in the same league as Nestle Waters Canada and Teck Highland Valley Copper.

From an earlier Post here, Predator Ridge Golf Club water consumption green fees appears as a reflection of other pooled resources eg. Burke Mountain low cost to the buyer, equally low returns for Surplus land to the Province's treasury.
Water, Water almost everywhere in British Columbia, but there is that overwhelming sense of entitlement

Golf Course Greens are in the Black. But is there any Groundwater left for Fracking in the Peace Area?    Is there a business sense of entitlement for Golf Courses?


218  Golf Course owners, combined, of course:

Cubic Metres per Day generates Annual Rent:

87,358 cubic metres per day for $23,183 per year


Monday, April 13, 2015

A show of FORCE: 36 years ago three Destroyers were dispatched to Howe Sound and Malaspina Strait: 4 rail car tankers loaded with Chlorine were missing.

In today's Vancouver Sun (A7) the headline suggests that the oil barons are considering breaking the door down on the moratorium against drilling rigs in local waters for new sources of their petroleum.

The bonus for the environment?  Mary Polak's Press release:  "No ground water will be used."

Oil may lurk below surface of English Bay; testing is planned
Gordon Hoekstra and Tiffany Crawford


With all the kerfuffle over 2,700 litres (17 barrels) of bunker oil contaminating English Bay/Burrard Inlet it was worth a look back over our shoulders for something more tangible than blobs of goo, especially while the Canadian Coast Guard flexed their mighty muscles by bringing in their dive team(s) in zodiacs.

From our distorted memory banks of 40 years ago there was an incident regarding a missing Chlorine tanker that had rolled off the stern of a rail barge between Vancouver and Nanaimo.  In fact it was 36 years and there were two incidents a year apart, both involving the loss of rail tankers loaded with Chlorine destined for pulp mills.  A barge with four rail cars left Squamish for Powell River via the Howe Sound and Malaspina Strait (that's east of Texada Island), they never arrived.  The barge did, but upside Down!

In response to the seriousness of the situation Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau sent the 'Canadian' Navy in three destroyers: MacKenzie, Saskatchewan and the QuAppelle.  Job: do a sweep to find the tankers.   That's a tad more of a show of force than the CCG bringing in dive team(s).

Ellensburg Daily Record 
 February 21, 1975
Search for missing chlorine continuing
The second incident happened on January 31, 1974 just off of Galiano Island where the tanker split apart and drained its chlorine contents into the waters.

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Find off B.C. may be tanks of chlorine - Globe and Mail - 2004 - Updated 2009

After nearly 30 years of mystery, government scientists believe they have found four rail-car tankers that vanished into coastal waters near Vancouver carrying a lethal load of chlorine.

''We found two blobs that are fairly substantial. They could well be the long-lost rail cars,'' said Robie Macdonald, a research scientist at the Department of Fisheries and Oceans' Institute of Ocean Sciences in Sidney, B.C., who has been on the case of the missing chlorine tanks since they vanished in 1975.

Last month, as part of a long-term program to map the earthquake-prone ocean floor off the B.C. coast, the Canadian Hydrographic Service found something it is calling a "target of interest" deep in the mud of the Malaspina Strait. The finding came after a spate of searches using less-sophisticated equipment failed to find the massive metal tank cars in the late 1970s.  SNIP



Sunday, April 12, 2015

English Bay Spill measured in Litres why not Barrels? 2,700 vs 17 Kinder Morgan's Aframax capacity 750,000 barrels

The Canadian Coast Guard has pegged the English Bay spill at 2,700 litres and took three days and counting to remove what you see, not what you'll eat from the forthcoming fishing industry statistics produced by Ottawa after the next Federal election.

Report on the damage to the Environment by Minister Mary Polak, don't hold your breath.

Kinder Morgan's Aframax and sister crude oil carriers don't count their loads in litres ....... the number would be far too large .... (89,430,353.4 Litres).  Lloyd's call the shots on that and it helps public relation companies paid to promote Kinder Morgan's endeavors bottom line.  750,000 barrels carrying capacity is norm.

As to WHY a senior, second in command, Officer of the Canadian Coast Guard would use litres to explain a spill defies the logic of persons walking in the street or treading in the waters off English Bay.

By way of an explanation, in 1982  Justin Trudeau's father, Pierre, being faced with the price of gas going over a dollar at the pump, and the gas companies pump's rolling numbers only went up to 99 Cents, decided that it was easier, and better able to collect more taxes at that their pump, was to simply convert 99 cents per gallon to 24.42 cents per litre in Metro Vancouver, 28 cent per litre Sicamous.

The gas stations cost to convert?  Applied a Post-It-Note atop of 'GAL'.  Within two years a new electronic version pump was in place right down to eight numbers past the decimal point.

When Minister James Moore was standing at the podium, beating his chest, cheating the local politicians on grandstanding on how efficient the CCG was in handling the spill, he wasn't looking at the metric version of the numbers .....   2,700 litres spotted from aircraft  ....  he chose to look at it as a piddly 17 barrels.


How many litres in a barrel:   158.987295

How many barrels of Bunker Oil was spilled in English Bay:  17

We'll see, hopefully never:

How many barrels of Crude Oil does an Aframax carry:  750,000
(89,430,353.4 Litres)

How many barrels of Crude Oil did the Torrey Canyon carry: 120,000
SS Torrey Canyon
On 28 March 1967, the Fleet Air Arm sent Blackburn Buccaneer planes from RNAS Lossiemouth to drop forty-two 1,000-lb bombs on the ship. Then, the Royal Air Force sent Hawker Hunter jets from RAF Chivenor to drop cans of aviation fuel to make the oil blaze. However, exceptionally high tides put the fire out and it took further bombing runs by Sea Vixens from the RNAS Yeovilton and Buccaneers from the Royal Navy Air Station Brawdy, as well as more RAF Hunters with liquified petroleum jelly to ignite the oil. Attempts to use foam booms to contain the oil slick were ineffectual because of the high sea state. Bombing continued into the next day before Torrey Canyon finally sank.


Some of the oil from the ship was dumped in a quarry on the Chouet headland on Guernsey in the Channel Islands, where it remains to this day. Efforts to rid the island of the oil have continue with limited success.

Designated dumping area for the South coast: Texada Island

Designated dumping area for Douglas Channel: on a 'missing' island in 1,000 square kilometres

However, in this day and age of pristine islands being contaminated, and the technology and zeal to make things right, there is, by way of one recent example the raising, not razing, the Costa Concordia for a mere 750 million Euros.

Living Ocean Report 133 pages
As an Emergency Response training session to a Marine Disaster their capabilities should be started now to recover the Queen of the North.  Oh wait, isn't that mission underway by an American salvage company  to clear the channels for the Aframax entering Douglas Channel via the Inside Passage?


Saturday, April 11, 2015

When Canadian MinisterJames Moore says 80% of bunker Oil is cleaned up, don't take his word for it: US Oil Spill expert says "OK"

What is with our Canadian Government Ministers making announcements, not yet confirmed by our military generals, via twitter?   Jason 'Jack-Ass' Kenny comes to mind.  Now we have our very own MP going begging for a Made in the USA stamp of approval as to whether or not our Coast Guard has done a good job.

Looking around our shores, the answer is a resounding NO!

Why not let the Americans clean up Oil spills in our waters because Minister James Moore asked, and received, a USA certificated expert's permission which allowed Press Release tweets stating that 80% was considered to be a job well done by the Canadian Coast Guard, 'quick and effective'.

Twitter, Inc. (US) Twitter Accounting of CCG day starts off on the North East Coast breaking ICE and then abruptly turns on its heel and goes to West Coast of Canada, Vancouver, English Bay, Kitsilano, West Vancouver, North Vancouver.

UPDATE:   Can the CCG Assistant Commissioner Giroud point to where the six litres are located, and then clean it up OR does 6 litres cover six square kilometres?

Girouard. “ ... we don’t want to get to a conclusion before all the facts are in.”

He said as of Friday night, when a Transport Canada plane surveyed the area, an estimated six litres of oil remained in English Bay, but that much of it likely evaporated overnight. Officials confirmed Thursday the Marathassa was the source of the spill, which fouled the waters around English Bay on Wednesday afternoon with an estimated 2,700 litres of bunker fuel.  -Vancouver Sun


DFO Pacific @DFO_Pacific  ·  4h 4 hours ago

.@CCG_GCC US Oil Spill expert confirms CCG response was quick and effective #Marathassaspill












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2,700 litres spilled in English Bay is a far cry from The Battle of the Atlantic's oil tankers set afire by U Boats.  Merchant navy sailors (men and women) swimming through the black ooze, never fully recovering afterwards, ...... drownings.

Girouard would have us believe that The Oceans sing out   "but We've survived" Fukushima radiation; Oil tankers ablaze, spewing their black gold around the world; SS Torrey Canyon, lead entombed in rusting U-Boats lying on bottom to then be resurrected to re-emerge to harm mankind again ... chipping away at the bottom of the food chain;  the still missing chlorine rail car tanker between English Bay and Nanaimo (THANKS CPR)

We weep, not just for the 2,700 lost litres in English Bay, We weep for our Fallen, our Grand Parents, our Uncles and Aunts, our Brothers and Sisters and Earth.

Take note Canadian Coast Guard Assistant Commissioner Girouard

WW1 - Modeller
Source
 U-Boats 'lost'