NO INTEGRITY, NO DIGS: Blockade at Line 9 Integrity Dig site

Blockaders take position at the integrity dig site

Stop the Tar Sands banner is laid out at the entrance to the site

12 hours of blockading - 1 hour for every pipeline anomaly

**Action Alert!**

NO INTEGRITY, NO DIGS!

Traditional Mississauga Territory (Burlington, Ontario)

Come on out and join the blockade!

This morning at 7am area residents blockaded the access road to an exposed section of Enbridge’s Line 9 pipeline. The blockaders intend to hold their ground – 1 hour for every 1,000 anomalies that are reported to exist on the line. For 12 hours, they say, they are not going anywhere.

This is a site of a so-called “integrity dig” but, as one blockader puts it, “it’s clear Enbridge has no integrity. The work on the line is just a band-aid, a flimsy patch over the most outrageous flaws in the Line 9 plan.”

The National Energy Board approved the reversal of Line 9B in March after having heard testimonies that there has been no proper consultation by First Nations communities and that the structure of the pipeline is outdated and deeply flawed.

The National Energy Board refused to require hydrostatic testing of the line.

Many of the blockaders point to the disastrous spill from Enbridge’s line 6b into the Kalamazoo River in Michigan in 2010, where millions of litres of oil spilled and have so far proven impossible to clean up. But many of them emphasize that their opposition to Line 9 goes beyond safety concerns.

This is not about pipelines versus rail; it’s about the Tar Sands, which is the dirtiest oil in the world. It’s not worth the destruction it takes to produce, it’s not worth the risk to our watersheds to transport, and we definitely can’t afford the carbon in our atmosphere when it’s burned.  At every step of the process, the Tar Sands outsources the risks onto our communities and poisons waterways like the Athabasca River and the Bronte creek while companies like Enbridge get rich.

For those nearby who would like to join the blockade, it is happening at 4335 1 Side Road Burlington, ON