quarterly newsletter | MarCH 2008 | issue 54
formerly Sierra Legal
While the Premier of Alberta traveled to Washington, DC in January to sell his message promoting
the province’s tar sands, Ecojustice was stealing his thunder in an Edmonton courthouse.
Tar sands battle
goes to court
In Federal Court, Ecojustice lawyer Sean Nixon was challenging
the approval of the Kearl tar sands proposal. The massive project
would swallow up an area of Alberta’s northern Boreal forest larger
than 20,000 football fields and strip-mine it for a dirty fossil fuel
called bitumen – commonly referred to as “tar.” Despite leaving
an undeniable impact visible from space, the joint panel assessing
the proposed 50-year mining operation concluded continuing
operations would cause “no significant environmental effects.”
Representing the Pembina Institute, Toxics Watch, Sierra Club
of Canada and Prairie Acid Rain Coalition, Ecojustice lawyers
told a packed courtroom how the proposed open-pit mine and
processing plant would indeed carry a heavy environmental
burden, devastating wildlife and leaving a permanent scar on the
wetlands, forests and waters of the Boreal.
The Court will render its verdict in the coming months. Ecojustice believes the
ruling will show the Kearl project’s assessment was fundamentally flawed, and
that the government must put the brakes on tar sands development until proper
safeguards are in place.
Regardless of this case’s outcome, Ecojustice and its client groups will continue
to pressure government to clean up its act and put a stop to Big Oil’s ambition
to bulldoze the Boreal, exhaust Alberta’s water supply and accelerate global
warming – all in the name of profit.
TAKING ON
BIG OIL…2
RESEARCHER
LIAT PODOLSKY…4
RIGHT TO KNOW
VICTORY IN BC…5
VOLuNTEER
jO THOmAS…7
new BrunswiCK Oil reFinery
Lawsuit ensures
east coast
refinery won’t
duck assessment
Another oil mega-project, another inadequate
environmental assessment – where but here in
Canada, and who but Ecojustice’s legal team to