Four months after thousands of litres of crude oil spilled into the Red Deer River downstream of Sundre, the cleanup and remediation work has largely been completed, says Plains Midstream vice-president Stephen Bart.At the same time several landowners impacted by the spill say they are not happy with the way the compensation process is moving along.On June 7 a Plains Midstream pipeline under the Red Deer River near the Sundre water treatment plant north of town ruptured, spilling between 1,000 and 3,000 barrels (between 160,000 and 475,000 litres) of light sour crude oil into the river.The resulting slick deposited oil along both shorelines of the river all the way to Gleniffer Lake. The cause of the leak remains under investigation.Speaking at an information open house at the James River Hall on Sept. 29, Bart explained as part of the cleanup, operation has been concentrated at 15 specific points along the river and lake.“We identified all the impacts at each of those locations. And then we instituted a process with all the regulatory agencies and we developed cleanup plans for each of those segments,” said Bart.“Once we had all those plans approved, we were able to strategically direct our workforce over the last three months, targeting each of the segments.”The cleanup involved skimming oil off water surfaces, cleaning rocks and removing oil-covered vegetation.Once each of the 15 sites was cleaned, “we called all the regulators back, the county, the landowners to be part of the inspection of that one segment to determine whether the end point criteria were met or if anything was missed,” he said.“In some cases, a few things were missed and we went back and cleaned them up. As of the middle of September what we were able to report is that we've got interim closure from the regulatory agencies on each of the 15 segments.”Since mid-September the company has been conducting reclamation work, including scattering grass seed and restoring trails, he said.“When we have that work done, we will shift to the next phase, and that's monitoring,” he said. “We will come back in the spring and see if things have re-established as we hoped and has anything surfaced that we missed and if it has, we'll fix it.“The cleanup is largely done and the restoration is largely done, but we've said to the community that we are going to stay here until it is done and that means coming back and continuing to assess and continuing to monitor to make sure that we can address this properly.”Mountain View County Reeve Bruce Beattie attended the James River information session.“I'm not happy that it (spill) happened but I'm happy that they've (Plains Midstream) done as much as is relatively possible to clean up the mess,” said Beattie. “I think since the spill happened, the company, the ESRD and the ERCB have done everything they can to clean it up.“It's not cleaned up yet. I've been told that they are bringing out their long-term monitoring plan and they are looking at maybe next July or August, at which time they hope that they will be able to get a sign-off on this.”Asked if Plains Midstream has been receptive to concerns brought forward by the county, he said: “Absolutely they have. We've had meetings with the president of the company on relatively short notice and I think he's been open and honest about the process.”In the wake of the Sundre spill, the provincial government needs to make changes to pipeline regulations to help reduce the risk of oil spills on all rivers, he said.“The bigger issue for me is for the government to put in regulations that makes sure these pipelines are buried at least 15 metres under the river, not the current three metres, and the pipes should be double walled,” he said.“That's a provincial responsibility, and the companies are not going to do that until they are required to because they all have to do it. You can't have one company doing it and costing them 30 per cent more to put a pipeline in than for somebody else. It has to be a standard.”The county plans to reiterate its concerns about pipeline regulations at the November AAMD&C (Alberta Association of Municipal Districts and Counties) meeting, he said.“And next time I get a chance to talk to the minister of environment or the minister of energy I will be bringing that up too,” he said.Meanwhile, Plains VP Bart said while workers have been able to remove the damaged portion of pipe from under the river, the cause of the June 7 spill remains under investigation.“It was a more difficult exercise than we anticipated getting that pipe out from underneath the river,” said Bart. “We actually had to construct a cofferdam into the river to isolate the damaged section of the pipe so we could safely retrieve that section. We got it out by the middle of August.“We wanted to make sure that the efforts we took to get that damaged piece of pipe out didn't disrupt the pipe so that the investigation didn't change the pipe in any way. And second, we didn't want any secondary releases into the river.”The damaged section of the pipe is now in the hands of Alberta Environment where an examination of the pipe is ongoing, he said.“We are supporting that investigation and we are monitoring it, but results of those studies aren't known yet,” he said. “We are interested in seeing those results. If there are any learning to be captured then we can apply them directly in this circumstance and more broadly across our company.”Asked if there is a timeline for the pipe examination to be completed, he said, “I think it is a priority for the agency to have that investigation concluded. I think it is something we ought to be able to see within the next month or so, but again that timing is subject to change.”Alberta Energy and Resource Development and the Energy Resources Conservation Board are both conducting ongoing investigations into the Sundre spill.
