Upgrader Alley alarm sounded; Residents join Greenpeace in urging government to slow pace of development

Robin Collum, June 20, 2008, The Edmonton Journal -- Residents of the area known as Upgrader Alley spoke out Thursday against more energy industrial development planned near their homes and farms.

"We are asking Premier Stelmach's government for responsible development that is ecologically and socially sustainable," said Barb Collier, a third-generation farmer from the area and member of Citizens for Responsible Development.

Collier's group held a news conference Thursday with Greenpeace Canada and the Sierra Club to express concerns about the pace of industrial growth in the Industrial Heartland northeast of Edmonton. They say development is out of control and will pollute the air and water, endanger residents, and destroy valuable agricultural land.

Right now, only one upgrader is in production, but there could be as many as nine working plants in the area by 2020, with a combined output of four million barrels of synthetic crude per day.

Echoing the recommendations of a Pembina Institute report released on Monday, the activists called on the provincial government to pause oil-industry development in the area. They don't want any more projects approved until a full analysis can be done on the environmental and social effects of development.

"These upgraders are in the premier's backyard. He has a constituency office in Fort Saskatchewan, yet applications and approval are going through unabated," Collier said. "We need to slow down approval of upgraders in the Heartland until comprehensive cumulative effects of air emissions, water use, and land use are calculated."

Wayne Groot's family has been farming in Alberta since the 1930s, and at the same location in the area for 30 years. The land bordering his farm has now been almost entirely bought by energy companies. He said he's most concerned that building upgraders in the area is a waste of prime farmland.

"Edmonton was built on an island of good agricultural land, and we're quickly running out of this soil. We have to start realizing that this land can no longer be taken away, that it has to be preserved," he said.

Sturgeon County resident Anne Brown had air quality on her mind Thursday.

"The air in Alberta's Industrial Heartland, just 30 kilometres northeast of Edmonton, is polluted," she said, citing ambient air quality monitoring results.

Brown said there have been incidents already where the air quality had dipped below Alberta objectives, and she's worried that adding eight more upgraders in the vicinity will make the situation worse.

Leila Darwish, associate director of the Sierra Club's prairie branch, tried to put the residents' concerns in a larger context for all Albertans.

"This isn't just a local issue--this is a provincial issue," she said. "We're turning the Heartland into a wasteland."

In Darwish's opinion, continued development along Upgrader Alley would discredit the government's recent efforts to improve the international reputation of Alberta's energy resources.

"Albertans need to come together and stand in solidarity and send the message to our premier that spending $25 million to paint the tarsands green doesn't work when you can't even keep your own backyard clean."

There will be a public hearing on June 23 in Fort Saskatchewan to review Petro-Canada's application to build an upgrader that would process 340,000 barrels of bitumen a day.