Dennis Wiemken, Senior Vice President of Vesta Properties, stands on a piece of land where the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain Pipeline expansion is expected to run through, that he hopes to develop houses on in Surrey, B.C., on Friday May 26, 2017.DARRYL DYCK/The Globe and Mail
A West Coast property developer says it will ruin plans for a new subdivision of million-dollar homes. The owner of a family ranching business in British Columbia's Interior fears for his pure-bred cows. The operator of a luxury heli-ski lodge says construction will spoil a pristine wilderness.
These are among hundreds of fresh complaints facing Kinder Morgan Inc. as the Houston-based company plots a route for its $7.4-billion Trans Mountain pipeline expansion from Alberta to the Pacific coast.
The disputes, detailed in filings before the National Energy Board, add to a growing list of risks facing the project as the company prepares to launch a $1.75-billion share sale to help fund the massive expansion, which would nearly triple the system's capacity to the tune of 890,000 barrels a day.
They show that apart from headline issues, such as global warming, marine safety and aboriginal treaty rights, the project has stoked numerous complaints tied to highly local concerns.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau approved the contentious expansion last year, but the company is only now beginning to fine tune the pipeline route. It also faces renewed opposition in Victoria, where the anti-pipeline Green Party now holds the balance of power in a Liberal minority government.
"I don't want to come across as saying I'm against the pipeline. I'm just against it going through the middle of our property and destroying our project," said Dennis Wiemken, senior vice-president at Vesta Properties Ltd. in Langley, B.C.
A year ago, the developer paid roughly $16.5-million for a parcel of land in the Surrey, hoping to develop 41 single-family lots atop a plateau overlooking the Fraser River.
Mr. Wiemken estimates the lots' worth is somewhere in the neighbourhood of $1-million apiece before improvements. But Kinder Morgan aims to build its pipeline directly through the planned subdivision, rather than a nearby highway corridor.
The company has requested a 2.64-acre right-of-way for the pipeline, plus 7.29 acres of workspace on Vesta lands, according to the developer.
That will make it impossible to build on 34 of the proposed lots, necessitating a redesign that "is likely to produce a drastically lower lot yield than the current proposal plus drastically reduces the market value and desirability of homes near the pipeline," the company said in a complaint to the regulator.
The NEB has so far received 420 such statements of opposition, with more coming in daily. A portion of those will trigger hearings, scheduled for later this year.
Construction can only proceed on board-approved segments of the route, after either a settlement between the landowner and company or through a board decision after a hearing.
If no such agreement is reached, the regulator can ultimately issue a so-called "right-of-entry" order enabling the company to proceed.
A spokeswoman for the Trans Mountain project said the company would prefer to reach negotiated settlements with any holdouts. "But if there's one or two, or a handful of them, there are mechanisms and they'll be sorted out through the processes," Ali Hounsell said by phone.
She could not say what portion of the pipeline is covered by landowner agreements, but noted that the company would proceed with the expansion at its terminal sites and on uncontested portions of the route as early as September.
It appears to have already made concessions. Near Valemount, B.C., Trans Mountain has discussed limiting construction to summer months, in part because heavy snowfall through the winter makes building untenable.
That followed a formal complaint from luxury ski-resort operator Intrawest ULC Inc., which had argued the work would "unreasonably interfere" with visitors at its nearby lodge, where a maximum of ten guests pay up to $260,000 for seven days of heli-skiing.
Elsewhere, opposition lingers. In B.C.'s verdant Interior, the pipeline expansion is poised to cut a four-kilometre path through 300 acres of irrigated pastureland that Kym Jim's family has worked since 1919.
Mr. Jim, principal operator of Little Fort Herefords, said the route as proposed could disrupt an operation that breeds 180 cows every spring. Kinder Morgan, through its land agent, has agreed to mitigation measures, including providing alternative pasture and paying for feed.
But Mr. Jim frets about compensation and logistics. For one, he says good pastureland is difficult to find, and he worries about cattle wandering through open fences. Because it's a pure-bred operation, the bulls must be kept separate from the rest of the herd.
"For them it's no big deal if the cows get out one day. But it's a pretty big deal for us to make that work," he said. "So really their plans lack certainty on the details, and that's a big concern that we have."