April 2007 Archives
9 entries filed this month:
There is nothing intrinsically “conservative” about raping the planet and damaging irreplaceable ecosystems and food sources, and polls among those who identify themselves as “conservative” bear this out:
Last year, Ipsos Reid asked Conservatives in B.C. their top priority for finding new energy; 53 per cent supported wind and solar, 30 per cent said pursue more efficiency and only 11 per cent chose going after new oil sources, like the tar sands. The same poll found 71.7 per cent of Conservative voters wanted a ban on oil tankers close to shore. David Beers, ‘Tankers on the B.C. coast are getting too close for comfort’ – The Globe and Mail April 28 2007
So why isn’t Stephen Harper listening? Does father really know better?
Or is it because he has outstanding IOUs and is beholden to key oil and gas patch supporters of various Conservative MP’s, cabinet ministers, and Harper himself, including former EnCana president and CEO Gwyn Morgan.
Oil Tankers in B.C. coastal waters?
IOU or not, EnCana is directly woven into this story. Under Morgan’s leadership, the company initiated a move which would see the coastal B.C. town of Kitimat have its port turned into an import terminal for certain oil liquids that are used in the Alberta tar sands extraction process – liquids which are in extremely short supply due to the phenomenal growth of that particular environmental disaster.
To get the stuff to its destination, a pipeline would need to be built across British Columbia to northern Alberta, and that project alone is one for concern as any pipeline built to Alberta will have a twin returning back to B.C. carrying import liquids to the tar sands and tar sands extracts for export to the U.S. west coast or Asia.
Enbridge is planning to build two pipelines in a single corridor â one to transport over 400,000 barrels of petroleum per day from Alberta to the B.C. coast, and the other to carry over 150,000 barrels of condensate (a by-product of gas production, which is used to thin oil for easier transport by pipeline) per day from the coast to Alberta. From the new tanker terminal in Kitimat, oil would then be shipped to refineries in California, China and other Asia Pacific markets.
The Gateway Pipeline would be the largest petroleum pipeline development in North America in more than 50 years, and one of the largest private infrastructure investments in B.C.âs history. All told, the pipeline would increase Canadaâs trade opportunities and enhance B.C.âs reputation as an international gateway. Anna Grimes, Vancouver Board of Trade June 27 2006
In short, Kitimat will become something akin to the Valdez Alaska Oil Terminal which is operated by the Alyeska Pipeline Service Company.
SNC-Lavalin, a Canadian engineering firm active in oil and gas pipeline and infrastructure projects, has done millions of dollars of work for Alyeska (a pipeline and port operator) and has been involved in billions of dollars of pipeline construction in North American and around the world. Gwyn Morgan is on the board of directors of SNC-Lavalin.
LNG import terminals: ticking time bombs
Kitimat may not only have to contend with oil condensates and bitumen or synthetic crude traveling in and out of its port—there are companies (Galveston LNG, Kitimat LNG) right now trying to get approval to build a time-bomb of a facility, a liquefied natural gas (LNG) re-gassification import terminal, at Kitimat, for the sole purpose of shipping natural gas imported from overseas to the United States. And of course, another petro-fuel terminal, means more pipelines.
Calgary-based Galveston LNG is hopeful of receiving regulatory approval by late May for the “loop” pipeline that would supply substantial volumes of regasified gas to consumers in Alberta, according to a senior company official. “The pipeline will have an initial potential to supply 500 million cubic feet per day,” said Thom Dawson, senior vice-president of Galveston. “Depending on the gas sales and purchase agreements, it can go up to 1.7 billion cubic feet per day.” Estimated to cost $1 billion, the project will entail the construction of a roughly 300— kilometre, 36-inch-diameter pipeline from Kitimat in B.C. to Station Four, north of Sumas, a compressor station and isolation valves. The facility will be built on a 50:50 partnership between Kitimat LNG, wholly-owned by Galveston, and Vancouver-based Pacific Northern Gas Ltd. Both firms have formed Pacific Trail Pipelines Ltd. Partnership to develop a natural gas transmission line. Week in Review, April 3–9, www.albertaoilmagazine.com
If the gas is destined for the U.S., why build the plant in Canada you ask?
There are a number of reasons ranging from location to world wide shipping lines, to the EnCana/Enbridge desire to establish an oil and condensate export/import terminal, but frequently overlooked as a significant factor to the current attractiveness of Canada for such projects is that political activism here isn’t as effective, and there are governments in B.C., Alberta, and Ottawa who are so pro oil and gas development they breath butane instead of oxygen. Harper made his intentions clear last fall at a dinner meeting of the Economic Club of New York when he labelled Canada as an emerging energy “superpower”.
The Kitimat LNG project last year received one of several approvals needed befpre it can proceed. Its interesting that any project destined to increase Canada’s share of world wide greenhouse gas emissions (natural gas is a euphemistic alternative name for methane which molecule for molecule has ten times the climate change impact of carbon dioxide – CO2 – and, when used as a fuel, produces significant amounts of CO2 emissions) could receive a positive environmental assessment. Did that assessment consider the GHG component? While John Baird and his predecessor Rona Ambrose try to look green, out the back door their ministry has been approving projects like Emerson’s gateway-linked expansion of Delta Port despite community opposition which submitted environmental assessments of their own that countered the official government story.
What can be done?
Whether we choose to be aware or admit it or not, the fact is that dependence on fossil fuels has much to do with the state of the planet in ecological, political, and military terms. We are all willing or unwilling or uninformed accomplices. Particularly in North America, which has the lions share of world wealth, consumes more than 1/4 of the annual energy production of the entire planet, yet has barely more than 4 percent of the globe’s population, we have a lot to answer for. But our current political leadership only wants to to more of the same, and in fact wants to ramp it up.
What can be done? Take personal responsibility first for your own role, but don’t stop there.
Activism works. Common sense and public outcry resulted in California refusing to authorize exactly such a plant that international mining giant BHP Billiton wanted to build, although a number of other companies continue to lobby various west coast states for permission to proceed. A map showing proposed projects in BC south to California is available here .(PDF)
California activists have had some success but their terminator governor continues to say he supports LNG terminal projects despite his own government pulling the plug on two projects. See: http://www.coastaladvocates.com/ and http://www.lngwatch.com/
Lack of public awareness and action has resulted in a natural salmon fishery that is on its way to being as dead as the east coast cod waters. We can’t allow the prevailing culture of business at any cost to the environment and people continue to drive us into a future that looks more and more like a Mad Max rerun.
M 4.3, Queen Charlotte Islands, Canada region (via USGS Earthquake Center)
Is your child’s school seismically safe?
Pop quiz: how many schools in Vancouver need seismic upgrades. Answer? Sadly, almost all of them. More than 90 of Vancouver’s 109 schools need seismic safety upgrades, many urgently so, and a significant number of those schools should in fact be demolished and rebuilt. See Families for School Seismic Safety for more information.
From this morning’s BC print edition of The Globe and Mail is an article by journalist Mark Hume – Province must act on quake threat to schools (subscription required). From the article:
We seem overdue, and the province has been getting ready for the next big one by undertaking seismic upgrades on bridges, tunnels, dams, prisons and liquor stores. The legislature will soon be earthquake-proofed.
What the government has failed to do, however, is seismically upgrade 311 schools identified in studies several years ago as being at high risk of “extensive damage” in an earthquake.
The government is not blind to this problem. In 2004, it promised to spend $1.5-billion to upgrade 700 substandard schools (those moderate to high risk) by 2019.
It just hasn’t followed through.
Instead of pushing seismic upgrade and replacement projects through, the government and school boards have been playing a game of “point the fingers”. One can’t help but have the sense that Gordon Campbell and his revolving chair of Education Ministers are engaging in a high-stakes gamble that there won’t be a big earthquake before the Olympic-induced construction boom runs its course. The government is gambling with both tax dollars and the lives of our children and their educators.
Parents, once fully briefed on the scope of the problem and inaction on the part of the government and school boards, are likely to take a dim view of such games of chance. We’ll elect a new board of trustees for Vancouver schools in 2008, and a new BC government in 2009.
While the government dithers, thousands of students are being put at daily risk.
We can’t predict the future, but British Columbia’s past is etched on seismographic paper and pressed into the geologic record. Sooner or later, another big earthquake is going to hit the West Coast. If it’s a magnitude-12 event, we may all suffer. But if it is more in line with the seven to nine magnitude earthquakes we’ve experienced since 1700, only the most poorly built structures will be damaged. Unfortunately, unless things change, 311 schools fall into that category.
Our prisons will be safe. Our liquor stores will be left standing. But our kids may be dead.
The government should rush ahead on the upgrading program, not wait and risk regrets that none of us could live with.
Its been my experience that many, if not most, parents in Vancouver (and likely in surrounding jurisdictions) are completely unaware of the serious building safety issues – a clear and present danger, if you will – facing the vast majority of Vancouver’s schools. Despite all the efforts of parent lobby groups such as Families for School Seismic Safety there remains a very large body of parents who are unaware that their kids walk into unsafe buildings every morning.
Its quite simple, really. Of Vancouver’s 109 elementary and secondary schools, almost 100 do not meet earthquake building codes. In fact, the largest percentage of these schools are deemed at high risk of significant structural failure in the event of a moderate or strong earthquake.
Put plainly – if we get the “big one” that scientists say is all but certain, some, or perhaps many, of Vancouver’s brick school buildings will fully or partially collapse. If that happens during school hours, many – perhaps hundreds or even thousands – will die. The risk is real.
Make no mistake about it, a big seismic event will hit Vancouver – its only a question of time. BC politicians at all levels are playing roulette with the lives of our children.
Scope of the Problem
Most Vancouver school buildings were built before building codes took into account seismic forces; as you drive around the city you’ll note that most schools have at least one or more building that was constructed out of unreinforced masonry – brick – which is quite literally the most dangerous construction one might imagine to find in the modern world in region which will one day be hit by a massive earthquake.
- A provincial assessment done in 2004 found that 311 schools in BC are âat high risk of sustaining severe damage to structural elements in the event of a moderate to strong earthquake.â
- Vancouver has 56,000 students in its regular daytime programs; there is another 20 – 30,000 (conservative estimate) other facility users including parents, volunteers, night class students and other building users (sports programs, rentals, etc.).
- Vancouver has a large collection of buildings at risk of structural failure and collapse. Many were built in the early 1900’s – these buildings are typically the ones at most risk, however even buildings constructed in the 1960’s (such as Eric Hamber) are also considered “high risk”.
Putting this into perspective, each morning in Vancouver alone there are over 30,000 elementary and secondary school students walking in the doors of buildings that are considered “high” or “moderate/high” risk of significant failure in the event of a moderate/strong earthquake.
If that wasn’t a serious enough problem, emergency planners and seismologists are planning for and anticipating our region will experience a strong to severe or even catastrophic earthquake – quakes in the range of Richter scale 7, 8 or even 9. Historically the region is predisposed to such monster earthquakes – in January of 1700 the region was hit with a monster quake off the coast of Vancouver Island at the top end of that scale. The resulting tsunami from that quake crossed the entire Pacific Ocean and destroyed warehouses in Japan.
When will such a thing occur here? Could be in two minutes. Could be in two years. Could be in another two decades. All we know is that these events happen in cycles of approximately 400 – 500 years. Given that many of Vancouver’s school buildings are over 100 years old, its past time to put them out to pasture and high time we started protecting our children.
The risk is real. The timing is unknown.
What’s being done about it?
Mostly talk, and not nearly enough action. In 2004 at the Union of BC Municipalities meeting, in advance of the 2005 election, Gordon Campbell made a commitment to spend $1.5 billion and fix or rebuild all the schools at risk.
Some progress has been made, but very little. While a number of projects have been started over the past decade, very few projects have been initiated under Campbell’s 2004/2005 15 year plan. Initially 80 schools were placed on the “fast-track” for upgrades or complete replacements. Only 4 projects have started construction.
The Ministry of Education then added more schools to the fast track list – now 95 projects are slated for accelerated action, yet there’s been no acceleration and in fact, whether its school boards or the provincial government or both, the actual pace of project approvals and starts is slowing down, even as other government infrastructure gets upgraded.
In the throne speech of 2007, the government indicated its commitment to urgently upgrading the provincial legislature. Over the past 2 decades this province has proactively upgraded bridges, tunnels, dams, prisons and the liquor branch. Citizens did not have to ask for this risk mitigation work to be carried out, nor have they had to ask that the legislature be upgraded. Mitigating these risks and having carried out the schools assessment indicates an acknowledgment of the importance of this work.
Apparently Campbell’s idea of priority setting is to protect the asses of politicians in Victoria, and the supply of booze in the province, but not our children.
Why, What, Who are the Roadblocks?
The provincial government and the VSB continue to point fingers at one another. The VSB says its complying with the Ministry edicts; the Ministry and Campbell say that the VSB is being obstructionist and not rationalizing its school space (read chopping schools). But as the sponsor of the 15 year plan and funder of such projects, clearly the onus is on the provincial government to make things work, and things are not working.
In the back end of Campbell’s mandate, its not hard to imagine that intrusive ideological politics are not being played out with our public school system by the provincial government, with apparently willing accomplices to be found in a number of the current Vancouver School Board of Trustees.
At a recent meeting of the Facilities and Planning Committee, Families for School Seismic Safety presented a recap of the issue and sought to seek a renewed commitment from the Board to accelerating the pace of seismic safety projects. Chair person Shirley Wong didn’t even do us the courtesy of looking at the presentation – for most of the meeting she sat with her back turned to the screen and ate her dinner.
In an in camera session of that same committee, Shirley Wong is reported to have made a cover her ass move, by asking Director of Facilities Les King if the children in Vancouver schools were safe. He said yes, what else could he say?
Would they be safe in the event of a major earthquake? For reasons of liability we can be quite positive that Les King would not answer in the affirmative.
Vancouver School Board trustees take note: The 2008 election is not far away, and seismic safety will be an election issue, you can be guaranteed of that.
Why do parents have to keep asking for school seismic safety? In the aftermath of tragedies elsewhere in the world parents grieve that the school should have been the safest building in town â unfortunately schools are frequently the most highly damaged structures in earthquakes around the world, sometimes catastrophically. Isnât this precisely the kind of work we elect public officials to demonstrate accountability in carrying out?
By contrast, our neighbours in Seattle will have completed upgrading and improving their school buildings by 2010 and have spent $1 billion USD to achieve this. Citizens voted on 3 consecutive ballot initiatives to see their money spent in this manner.
Families for School Seismic Safety have done an excellent job at unearthing facts and presenting arguments as to why this issue is so important and time critical. Its likely that the Premier’s commitment to address school seismic safety in a 15 year time span was made in a large part due to the efforts of FSSS.
Yet Campbell’s promise rings increasingly hollow. British Columbians don’t need election promises without action and I’m convinced that as more parents become aware that their children’s schools aren’t safe today – in many cases weren’t safe the day they were built – that politicians will be forced to act. If not now, by the 2009 provincial election.
What can I do?
This week I worked on a number of pro-bono projects.
Today I revamped the Douglas Elementary and Annex Parent Advisory Council web site. I’m using it and other pro-bono sites to refine a suite of CSS templates that will be used in some other application work I am doing.
Earlier in the week, working with Families for School Seismic Safety, I customized a bulk email routine to send out a package of nicely formatted emails to parents and politicians.
Along the way I found and resolved a bug in how I’d been handling multipart/mixed multipart/alternative email messages (html/text mail with file attachments). I ended up rewriting my old mimetools based code using the newer email package which made the task very straightforward.
Our household tunes into CBC Radio One every morning and evening. Some years ago we hooked up a digital media player, the Squeezebox, to our audio system only to find that RFI from the WiFi in the Squeezebox jammed up AM 690!
After a little sleuthing I managed to get SlimServer to connect (via `mplayer`) to CBC‘s Internet audio streams and all was well and good in the world.
Until a couple of days ago.
To control costs CBC has pushed their streaming audio out through Akamai content delivery services and all the URL‘s changed. Mplayer (at least on my FreeBSD Unix setup) doesn’t much like the ASX file format that Windows Media uses, so I dug through the various levels and indirection and came up with the direct link to the Akamai content.
I’m told by someone in the know at CBC that the Akamai links are permanent (static, not dynamic) which is good news indeed.
If you listen to Radio One in Vancouver, here’s the mms link.
For a list of CBC.ca URLs for radio streams, visit: http://www.cbc.ca/listen/streams.html
Inspired (or moved to action) by the hard-to-read formatting of the new-look Planet Python I split out Python-related feeds into a new rawdog produced stream which you can get at http://mikewatkins.ca/rawtech.html.
Update
Planet Python's readability has been improved since the aforementioned gripe was made, but I still use my own aggregation. Rawtech includes some non-Python technical feeds but is primarily composed of every Python related "planet" out there.
Still working on the CSS but I think the readability is improved already, in no small measure because the page width is elastic rather than fixed-width. That had been a long time grumble of mine with the planet.python.org html, which didn't go away with the new look. Of course the "unofficial Planet Python":http://www.planetpython.org/ has had this right all along.
If you use a screen at 1600x1200 with vertical two browser windows in a non-tiling window manager as I do the planet.python.org feed tended to scroll off to the right which was a major annoyance.
IE users < version 7 won't benefit from max and min-width settings in the CSS. While there are some half-decent hacks to get around this, I'm not bothering too for this page. Too bad, so sad, upgrade to Firefox or Opera.
The feed contains the official and unofficial Planets for Python, python.org news RDF, Unalog and de.li.cio.us links tagged "python", Daily Python URL (yay, its back!), etc, and dupes are filtered out.
