Our network had its birth in defending Rivers – water, more than 15 years ago.
Landed in my lap: The River, a song on youtube by Coco Love Alcorn (young Canadian).
It’s great! And holy cow! There’s Coco, singing her song with one of Karla Mundy’s choirs. I sang with Karla’s Island Soul Choir a few years ago, and then, surprise! 3 years ago, there’s Karla (an exceptional musician and teacher), at a music camp I attend in the summer. Listen to the song, The River. . . . water . . . passion.
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I told you we’re working on serious local water issues. (Bowser Sewage Treatment, with liquid effluent planned to pipe out into the Salish Sea. There is anger over the idea, over who is making the decisions, and how (not by citizens).
On top of that we had cholera, and have had annual bouts of norovirus in the Sea, which became known because the organisms were carried in the water to herring eggs and oysters that we (people) then ate. As far away as Ontario, that we know of. The BC Centre for Disease Control said, yes, from sewage that enters the water. The Dept of Fisheries and Oceans said, yes, from sewage.
I went to Vancouver with others from here, to try and be heard. On Burnaby Mountain, the Kinder Morgan Pipeline. People are angry, but ever so nice, and clear-headed.
Lou is a 90-year-old neighbour of mine, an American. She drove home for herself, the significance of the uprisings:
Sandra, tell your friend from the newspaper that I did google Kalamazoo River…!! what a mess… The Gulf of Mexico is not cleaned up either…. nor Prince William Sound…. It only takes one spill…..
Lou sent this, excellent, Jun 09, 2017. A new video released by the National Wildlife …
Aug 2018: The link is VALID, it works. The information is important. I can’t get it to show without a line drawn through it.
Seven Years Later, Kalamazoo River Oil Spill Cleanup Still Ongoing
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EXCERPT
A new video released by the National Wildlife Federation highlights ongoing cleanup and monitoring efforts, as well as the long-term effects, of the 2010 rupture of Enbridge (U.S) Inc.’s Line 6B oil pipeline, which spilled between 840,000 and 1.1 million gallons of oil.
“We’re now at nearly seven years after the spill,” says Dr. Kenneth Kornheiser, acting president of the Kalamazoo River Watershed Council, “so far they have gotten about, oh, three miles (out of 35) at which they say they have approved the ‘no further action required’ report.”
“This is not something you’re going to be done with in a week or two,” says Paul Makoski, director of environmental health for Calhoun County, “You better plan on months and years and such because there’s a lot of ripples.”
“The cruel irony is we knew this pipeline had defects right in that section where it ruptured over Talmage Creek. We knew.” says former Congressman Mark Schauer, who represented the area at the time. “We also know where Line 5 runs under the Straits of Mackinac.”
The video is the second in a series of videos and infographics . . .
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More singing: “Les Miz”, a powerful call. “Do you hear the people sing?”
Scroll down to the Youtube. The music sets cords inside me vibrating. You may find the same.
That song is being sung and listened to in different languages, all over the world. I noticed one flash-mob of it. Not the professionals singing on-stage and recorded. But people on the street. Upon closer inspection, google throws up numerous flash mobs of “Do you hear the people sing?” many of them in the U.S., including in front of the White House.
That was before I happened on Coco Love Alcorn’s The River. I was groovin’ on the water – – – hmm, WHAT ELSE has this young woman written and performed?
2011-05-11 “Revolution”, song and youtube by Coco Love Alcorn (Canadian) Quite something. I wonder where I’ve been?
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Thanks to Lou – – she nailed ONE of the reasons why people here are angry about the pipeline – – events like Kalamazoo, take your pick.
Across Canada there is anger over the expansion of the pipeline, behind it lays the expansion of the tar sands. Climate change.
If I untangled that thread in my life, I might start back when the Canadian Arctic Territory of Nunavut came into being on my birthday, in 1999. I had just finished a short contract teaching accounting to Inuit adults in Chesterfield Inlet on Hudson Bay (because of an interest in community development).
While I was in the North, there came the report of the 10,000 year old artifacts that had lain buried deep within glaciers that were “the land”. The artifacts weren’t dug out of the glacier. Climate warming in the Arctic had melted the glacier down, like blowing away layers of sediment that hide something dropped 10,000 years ago. The surfacing of those 10,000 year-old artifacts started the alarm bells ringing in my head; they haven’t stopped. They were ringing in other heads, long before mine.
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I was trying to figure out: is there something that would make the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline as “in your backyard” to people who are inland, as to people on the Coast?
Thanks to Elaine – – she happened to send the 2018 Saskatchewan Provincial Auditor’s Report.
I conclude: it is not intended that the tax-payers of Saskatchewan, alone, will shoulder the potentially $4 billion cleanup costs of 30,000 abandoned oil wells in that one province.
You can get angry about that. But when I start tugging to disentangle that thread of my life, I go straight to corruption. After decades of many people trying, I do not know how we are going to stop the pillagers, except through what is happening in BC.
SO, this posting is the pinnacle when I put on my Prairie hat. If it doesn’t help get SOME of the tar sands and Kinder Morgan prairie supporters to throw in with BC citizens, I leave it to others.
Links in the above posting include:
2018-06-01 Every Canadian Unknowingly Gives $100 a Year to Big Oil, Study Reveals, Motherboard
The Pinnacle Posting has a FEW EXAMPLES of other cleanup bills for poorly regulated industries, that have been discreetly subsidized, that have paid next to no royalties, whose “officials” live exorbitantly thinking or believing they are special, whose money and lobbying have corrupted our governance structures, all the while sending their money to offshore tax havens. In the name of “shareholders”.
It is allowed. We allow it.
Here’s one not mentioned. You are paying for it, too. (I went to Yellowknife from University to find a job and see the North. I didn’t know anyone. I ended up having a grand time. I roomed with a gifted Slavey Indian woman, Gina Blondin, and her husband Duncan Pryde. Yesterday, I emailed Gina’s grand-daughter:
The two women I knew best in Yellowknife were your Grandmother Gina Blondin, and her friend Minerva Darling (later, Minerva Gossen). Both were my age. Both died from cancer at a young age. I have wondered whether their cancers were a product of the arsenic and other poisoning from the Giant Gold Mine.
As you know, your Great Grandparents moved their family to Yellowknife from their somewhat-remote home, to access education for the children. Your Great Grandfather worked for a time at the Mine, I don’t know how long. (INSERT: The Great Grandfather Blondin lives on in the memory of the NWT, a natural leader. A cousin of Gina’s, Ethyl Blondin, is also well-known. She was a “first” in the House of Commons, a Liberal MP.)
An article published this month:
This gold mine was once so dangerous that it killed a toddler who ate snow two kilometres away. Canada’s second-largest environmental liability is inside Yellowknife city limits — and intrinsically tied to the city’s history and future. The federal government has now inherited the billion-dollar cleanup effort that could span a century.
There are enough examples, without even getting to the uranium and nuclear cleanups – – guess what! – – another Ponzi scheme. Someone’s going to be left holding the bag on that one, too.
Back to main thread:
CONTEXT
The Five minute Video – Canadian banks, how much each one has in loans for tar sands & pipeline expansion falls in the context of:
2018-04-20 HSBC to stop financing most new coal plants, OIL SANDS, arctic drilling, Reuters
2018-06-05 What a joke! We bought a crappy pipeline with taxpayer’s money, Common Ground.
2018-06-04 ‘Carbon bubble’ could spark global financial crisis, study warns, The Guardian
Advances in clean energy expected to cause a sudden drop in demand for fossil fuels, leaving companies with trillions in stranded assets
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OTHER POSTINGS “FOR YOUR SELECTION”:
2018-06-15 Unapproved genetically modified wheat found in Canada (CBAN)