A conference titled “Bitumen—Adding Value: Canada’s National Opportunity” brought together industry representatives, technical specialists, and government officials in May of 2013. This conference was held to discuss how additional tar sands projects could be brought to Ontario, and to the Eastern Seaboard from there. As the deputy chair of a bank’s board of directors outlined a vision of industrial expansion in the keynote presentation, a protest march arrived outside the venue. The conference attendees generally tried to ignore the shouting, the banging on the windows, and a siren that simulated the emergency warning system for major pollution releases from the petrochemical companies operating nearby.
This conference and protest took place beside Sarnia, Ontario (across the river from Port Huron, Michigan), and the location of this confrontation was significant. The conference emphasized “the capacity of [the city and surrounding townships] to support oil sands development.”1 The local industrial district is a focal point for the tar sands industry’s plans for growth in the form of pipelines, upgraders, refineries, and the manufacturing of megaload modules that would be used to construct facilities in Alberta. Such expansion plans are discussed and critiqued in this chapter.
The demonstration that May was dubbed Bitumen: Canada’s National Disaster. This protest was a convergence against local tar sands threats, and the broader expansion of the industry. Regional allies organized the rally with members of Aamjiwnaang, the local Anishinaabe Indigenous community. Protestors arrived from multiple cities and Native reserves in southwestern Ontario. Inside the venue for the Bitumen—Adding Value conference, a local Indigenous activist also disrupted proceedings. Vanessa Gray from Aamjiwnaang unfurled a banner that read, “You are killing my generation.” As authorities forced her to end this silent protest, she shouted, “The tar sands are environmental racism. I have a right to clean air and fresh water. If you think money is really more important then there is something really fucked up here.”2
The Aamjiwnaang community is situated in a strategic hot spot in the Midwest. Approximately 40 per cent of Canada’s chemical industry has been located in an area of Sarnia-Lambton known as “Chemical Valley.” This industrial district also hosts rubber and plastics facilities, as well as a set of refineries. These petro-chemical plants were built around the Aamjiwnaang Native reserve, which now is smothered in their pollution. Extreme energy industries have been prolonging and worsening this situation by taking advantage of established petro-chemical facilities to bring shale energy3 and tar sands into the area. Bitumen is already processed in Sarnia-Lambton, and the facilities there are a hub for tar sands infrastructure, which the industry seeks to further entrench in the region. The pipeline giant Enbridge has received federal permission to send heavy crude eastward from their Sarnia terminal. And there is more to the strategic importance of this area—as I will explain. For the tar sands industry, Sarnia-Lambton could serve as a launching pad to extend their reach eastward. In multiple respects, Sarnia and surrounding townships in Lambton County could prove to be significant as sites for further tar sands expansion, or as targets for interventions to reverse or overturn this industry. In the meantime, tar sands would add to the impacts from existing petro-chemical operations and pipeline networks in the region.
As is to be expected, there is already severe pollution around petrochemical operations in Chemical Valley. For instance, local facilities release benzene, which causes cancer, bone marrow damage, and reduced red blood cell counts. Benzene is only one of many thousands of substances drifting in and around these facilities. The local air and water are contaminated with neurotoxins, carcinogens, hormone disruptors, and respiratory irritants. Every day and night, companies are spewing out metals (such as mercury and lead), particulate matter, and petro-chemical fumes (including toluene) into the surrounding environment. Given that people live around Chemical Valley, there are severe human tolls. Of course, toxins settle into the bodies of community members.4 Dramatically elevated miscarriage rates and skewed birth ratios are among the disturbing patterns that have been found by Aamjiwnaang researchers: half as many males as females are born.5 Many Sarnia residences are located near the petro-chemical facilities—if not immediately beside these—but the Aamjiwnaang reserve receives the brunt of the industrial pollution. A tally of the companies’ self-reported emissions found that 60 per cent of these pollutants were released within five kilometres of the Aamjiwnaang reserve.6 If facilities on the Michigan side of the river are taken into account as well, there are approximately sixty industrial facilities within twenty-five kilometres of Aamjiwnaang and south Sarnia.
Industry Plans and Impacts
Although Chemical Valley is concentrated in south Sarnia, this industrial district ultimately stretches across twenty kilometres. For the tar sands industry, Sarnia-Lambton has numerous attractive features. These include: a network of petroleum pipelines; workers with technical skills and expertise; a major railway yard; cross-border shipping by land and water; a river that can be used for industrial purposes; underground caverns, which have been receptacles for petro-chemical products; a local facility that incinerates and buries toxic wastes; and an established industry lobbying and PR organization (which proclaims itself an “Environmental Association”).7 The local college has specialized in petro-chemical training for decades, and the industry has much deeper roots in the area. Sarnia-Lambton may continue to attract fossil fuel and chemical industries because the overall economic, political, and cultural situation has been very favourable to these petro-chemical companies.
Yet, there are already various links between the tar sands and Chemical Valley. Local refineries are processing blends of oil and tar sands. Bitumen is pumped there through Enbridge’s Michigan pipelines, and this company plans to use its regional pipeline network to bring tar sands from Sarnia to the East Coast. Hence, local residents and the local environment are pulled in two directions: even as the fossil fuel industry seeks to process additional bitumen there, companies are attempting to pump unprocessed bitumen through the local area to bring it farther east. At the same time, fabrication companies operating in Sarnia-Lambton have begun to secure deals to produce modules that are used to build tar sands facilities in Alberta. Municipal officials have been preparing the way for these regular shipments of petro-chemical modules via a downtown Sarnia harbour. This section of the chapter addresses the threats and impacts from these three strands of the tar sands industry—that is, pipelines, refining, and modules.
Pipelines
As with tar sands pipelines elsewhere, any flows of bitumen in and out of Sarnia-Lambton come with increased spill risks. The stakes include the likelihood that the Great Lakes would be contaminated by a spill in the area. Enbridge’s Line 5 and 6B pipelines have brought bitumen into Ontario underneath the St. Clair River, which flows into Lake Erie. To make matters worse, Enbridge’s plans for their Line 9 pipeline involve bringing heavy crude through a terminal located beside a drain that flows into the Great Lakes via the St. Clair River.
Enbridge is responsible for piping Athabasca tar sands into Chemical Valley. The company’s Line 5 and 6B pipelines bring bitumen from Alberta to Sarnia, via Michigan. When Line 6B ruptured in 2010, 3.8 million litres of diluted bitumen spilled into a river around Kalamazoo, Michigan (see chapter 18). Even so, the company is more than doubling the flow through this pipeline—from 240,000 to 500,000 barrels per day—to send more petroleum to Sarnia, Detroit, and Toledo. This Line 6B expansion is part of Enbridge’s multibillion-dollar “Eastern Access” plan. Enbridge has also begun to pump an additional fifty thousand barrels per day through its Line 5 pipeline, which runs through northern Michigan on its way to Sarnia. Moreover, in Ontario, the company is increasing the eastward flow through its Line 7 pipeline.8 Given that there are at least seven Enbridge pipelines in southern Ontario, there is considerable potential for this company to expand its capacity to pump Alberta oil and tar sands eastwards.
In Ontario and Quebec, Enbridge has been focusing on plans for the Line 9. After denying that it would pump bitumen through Line 9, the company successfully applied to send heavy crude through this pipeline. Line 9 was built in 1975 with the same materials that were used to construct Line 6B in Michigan. Enbridge plans to add bitumen to Line 9, while increasing the flow through this pipeline by sixty thousand barrels per day—to a total of three hundred thousand barrels per day. In recent years, Line 9 had brought conventional oil into Chemical Valley from the East Coast of the US, but Enbridge and Imperial Oil are reversing the flow to transport fossil fuels from Alberta eastward, with shale oil from the Bakken formation.9 However, an estimated 9.1 million people—including eighteen Indigenous communities—live within fifty kilometres of Line 9. The pipeline runs between Sarnia and Montreal, and it is evident that there are plans to use it to pump petroleum towards the East Coast.
In previous years, Enbridge was upfront about its intentions to pump bitumen from Montreal to the ports in Maine to ship petroleum to existing refineries (as outlined in their “Trailbreaker” plan). There have been indications that this plan continues to be the ultimate intention behind the Line 9 reversal—in accordance with commercial motives to send tar sands eastward. The Line 9 reversal is one of many schemes to reduce the industry’s reliance on Midwestern refineries, such as those in Chemical Valley. The industry-friendly mayor of Sarnia has offered vocal support in favour of the Line 9 reversal. Provincial governments have remained closer to the sidelines, while the ruling federal party has enthusiastically supported this project. Yet, the Line 9 project falls in the jurisdiction of Indigenous peoples, in accord with treaties along the route.
In Sarnia, the Enbridge terminal is located beside the current Aamjiwnaang reserve, on a section of the original reservation that was never ceded. Under Canadian law, this land was not surrendered by Aamjiwnaang, and two provincial courts have recognized this fact.10 But these courts simultaneously suggested that the ongoing theft of this land should be accepted, and they blamed Aamjiwnaang by suggesting that community members “accepted” the sale. These judges did not take into account how the Indian Act had prevented members of Aamjiwnaang from challenging this theft in previous decades. After a more extensive history of colonization, thousands of businesses and individuals now claim ownership over portions of the 1,028-hectare tract of land upon which the Enbridge terminal is located. In 1840, this land was seemingly transferred to private owners, but without Aamjiwnaang community consent. One of the individuals involved in this land deal was Joshua Wawanosh—who would be deposed as a chief five years later. An Ontario court has recognized how “the many complaints against Wawanosh included allegations that he abused his authority as chief, misappropriated band assets, and showed gross favouritism towards friends and allies. There were also allegations that Wawanosh sold, or at least tried to sell, Chippewa land without authority.”11
Such treaty violations are not addressed in the federal government’s pipeline review process, however. The National Energy Board’s (NEB) assessments for pipeline applications barely note the locations of official reserves, and earlier treaties are not considered. Accordingly, the NEB does not seek the free, prior, and informed consent of anyone along a pipeline route. At 2012 and 2013 Line 9 hearings, the Aamjiwnaang band council voiced concerns about the reversal and expansion, and objected to a lack of meaningful consultation. The NEB approved each of Enbridge’s Line 9 applications anyway.
Refineries
In 2013, tar sands had not yet been pumped east of Chemical Valley, but there was already bitumen in the mix of Alberta fossil fuels that had been fed into Sarnia-Lambton facilities. Suncor has invested $1 billion for upgrades to its refineries, which largely consist of “strengthen[ing] integration with oil sands operation[s]” in Alberta.12 In part, these resources were spent to increase the capacity to process tar sands at their Sarnia refinery. Bitumen is fed into Shell and Imperial Oil refineries in the area as well, and tar sands could be a feedstock for nearby petro-chemical operations. What is clear is that Enbridge was pumping bitumen there before the company had applied for federal approval to send heavy crude farther east. Public pressure could bring to light information about bitumen in Chemical Valley, and companies’ plans to expand their tar sands processing in the area.
For years, there has been some industry interest in building an upgrader in Sarnia-Lambton so that raw tar sands can be processed there. These objectives are apparent in a two-volume document entitled “Canada: Winning as a Sustainable [sic] Energy Superpower,” which was associated with the May 2013 tar sands conference in Sarnia (noted earlier). The authors of this “Superpower” document name Sarnia as a possible location for “an integrated complex of value-added investments” for tar sands processing,13 and this agenda has subsequently been promoted through other media and meetings. For the time being, bitumen is only a percentage of the petroleum feedstocks that are pumped into the refineries and petro-chemical facilities in Chemical Valley.
So far, these companies have succeeded in maintaining a low profile for any tar sands processing, even as it is worsening the impacts around their facilities. For instance, additional sulphur dioxide is emitted as more bitumen is pumped into refineries as a portion of their total feedstocks.14 We are only beginning to understand how much worse the pollution is around refineries that process tar sands.
Any further pollution from extreme energy in these facilities must be viewed as an extension of decades of petro-chemical industry impacts. At the Aamjiwnaang reserve, community members report a life expectancy of fifty-five years of age, and intense health impacts are experienced throughout these years. Forty per cent of the individuals approached for a community survey reported that they required an inhaler.15 A summary of this survey notes how “members of the reserve identified releases of chemicals and incidents such as spills as their primary concerns. In addition, these chemicals and related incidents have significant impacts on their cultural life, including hunting, fishing, medicine gathering and ceremonial activities.”16 For instance, cedar in their territory is contaminated with cadmium, a metal that is associated with cancer and learning disabilities. Cedar is sacred to people of Aamjiwnaang, for whom it is a medicine. As the petro-chemical industry has taken over the area, numerous traditional herbal medicines have been made toxic. Aamjiwnaang spirituality has been assaulted as it has become more difficult for community members to relate to such a contaminated landscape, and much of the traditional hunting and gathering practices have been lost.
Treaty violations only magnify these injustices, as the community has lost much of its former autonomy. I have noted how companies such as Enbridge have claimed the unceded section of the reserve. Neighbouring petro-chemical facilities are located on land that had only been surrendered after federal officials threatened to take Aamjiwnaang territory by force.17
The industry is a very intrusive and devastating presence on the remaining reserve land. Suncor’s facility is located directly beside Aamjiwnaang residences, as well as the community cemetery. The company intrudes on the reserve further by using an Aamjiwnaang road as if it were company property. Examples like these are important, but ultimately it is very difficult to convey the industry’s impacts on residents and workers. I can only offer selected indications here. Pollution may be the worst of these impacts, but there is far more to the local presence of the petro-chemical industry.
In addition to the everyday clouds of toxins, there are recurring surges in industry releases—and without an adequate warning system, or reliable journalism. To mention one of a seemingly endless list of examples: In May of 2011, a mile-long cloud of bluish-grey vapour was released from an Imperial Oil facility. No emergency siren was sounded, and the company initially did not take responsibility for the release. When Imperial Oil did acknowledge that a cloud of sulphur dioxide had come from its facility, it suggested that the cloud was not toxic—an absurd claim that was repeated by the press. This case demonstrates the severity of local pollution, as well as the laxness of government oversight and public health monitoring. In Sarnia-Lambton, the local warning sirens are unreliable, and information about major pollution releases is generally minimal—and often difficult to obtain. In these conditions, many residents experience anxieties about safety and health. Interviews with members of Aamjiwnaang have found that “the most common reported impact was fear. People on the reserve feared the outdoors, the warning sirens, and unreported incidences [sic].”18
Officials typically have tolerated and enabled the many impacts of Chemical Valley. In rare instances, fines19 and stern words have been issued in response to extreme releases, but the vast majority of the pollution has been sanctioned by the state. The government provides permits for toxic releases, and their pollution standards usually amount to suggested guidelines. To make matters worse, these standards are calculated as though none of the sixty industrial facilities in the area have any offsite impacts. Background pollution levels around each facility are assumed to be zero, and there is a complete failure to take into account synergistic combinations of toxic substances. Even so, there has been a pattern of granting exemptions to these weak regulations.20
Officials have also failed to provide basic information regarding health impacts. Local requests for funding to study health impacts have basically gone unanswered. There is currently no independent and officially recognized study of any of the impacts from the thousands of dangerous substances in and around the Sarnia-Lambton petro-chemical facilities. Nevertheless, certain officials have blamed these health impacts on individual lifestyle choices (such as smoking).21 In the meantime, the vast majority of local pollution monitoring is conducted by the petro-chemical industry. Ten of fourteen of the local monitoring stations are maintained by these companies, and it seems that very little is done with the measurements collected by government agencies.
Modules
If current plans unfold, Sarnia-Lambton will be manufacturing large components for tar sands operations in Alberta, where new facilities would be assembled with these modules. One company plans to produce modules for steam-assisted gravity drainage, a bitumen extraction technique. At least twelve of these modules would be built, and each of these would be twenty metres long and more than four metres wide. Sarnia-Lambton hosts a long list of machine shops and engineering firms, so there is far more potential to further integrate their operations into building up the Alberta tar sands industry. While other locations in Ontario also have manufacturing histories that could serve the tar sands industry in the same way, Chemical Valley is at the forefront of what might prove to be much more extensive expansion through southern Ontario. Again, the existing facilities that are already integrated into the petro-chemical industry would allow the tar sands industry to grow more quickly, with fewer economic costs.
Sending modules across thousands of kilometres also entails transportation corridors. Petro-chemical modules have previously been shipped out of a downtown harbour in Sarnia, and companies have sought more regular access. By 2012, municipal officials were offering considerable support for these plans. Government subsidies will evidently be among the millions of dollars invested in a module transportation corridor that will make further use of downtown Sarnia streets. Roads would be blocked as modules are sent through them with a police escort—at taxpayers’ expense. The module corridor also cuts through residential areas, where locals may be disturbed by low-frequency sound waves. A dedicated corridor for these modules ultimately would entail a list of costs and risks. However, most of the impacts would be far from Sarnia, in northern Alberta, after the modules are put into operation there. Along the way, the shipments would be transported along two Great Lakes, and through three provinces.
Although producing and shipping these modules could prove to be a very important tie between Sarnia-Lambton and the tar sands, I am focusing on industry plans for which there is much more potential to mobilize around. Pollution from refineries can be expected to be far more of a concern for locals, and—hopefully—for regional supporters. So far, petro-chemical paycheques have pre-empted most of the potential opposition towards such refining, however, and we can expect this dynamic to be much more pronounced in regards to module production.
Resistance: Only the Beginning?
In 2013, the connections between Chemical Valley and the tar sands were primarily being addressed by campaigners challenging Enbridge’s plans for their Line 9 pipeline. At times, these campaigners have looked beyond the pipeline to oppose any industry plans to bring additional tar sands into Ontario. When they have confronted Chemical Valley, activists have objected to plans to process tar sands there. Concerns about Line 9 and tar sands have been central to a set of regional marches that were called by the community group Aamjiwnaang and Sarnia Against Pipelines (ASAP). The first of these was a ten-kilometre march through a section of Chemical Valley in the winter of 2013. This march included a round dance at an intersection, a mobile drumming circle, a picnic on the road in front of a Suncor facility, a water ceremony, and a driveway die-in outside of a Shell plant. Months earlier, ASAP had organized a small protest against Line 9 at the Enbridge terminal in Sarnia. The following May, the protest at the Bitumen—Adding Value conference was more of a regional collaboration, with links to the community mobilizing in previous months. There are many other tales of resistance around Chemical Valley, and I can only mention some of these in passing.
Much of this resistance has come from Aamjiwnaang. A case in point was a six-week blockade in 2004, on a road that Suncor normally claims for their day-to-day operations. By blockading land that is part of the reserve, Aamjiwnaang community members pressured the company to locate their new ethanol plant. A series of community research and lobbying initiatives began around this time. In previous decades, members of Aamjiwnaang had challenged industry land claims in court, but without regaining traditional territory, or even monetary compensation. In recent years, two members of the community have taken a different approach by filing a lawsuit against Suncor and the Ministry of the Environment. In late 2010, Ada Lockridge, Ron Plain, and the organization EcoJustice launched this ongoing lawsuit to challenge the cumulative effects of industry pollution, and to seek government protection for their right to clean air.
Around the end of 2012, local organizing took another turn, as part of a wave of activity sparked by cross-Canada Idle No More mobilizations for Native sovereignty. Members of the community organized and joined a set of actions and rallies. Beginning in December of 2012, there was a twelve-day Aamjiwnaang blockade on a rail spur line that serves local petro-chemical facilities. Regional allies joined and supported the blockade. A local highway that leads to the US border was also blocked by regional Idle No More rallies on two separate occasions. And after there was a major pollution release from a Shell facility that January, an Idle No More protest brought together children, parents, and daycare staff, among other community members. Thirty-seven individuals have since filed papers regarding the impacts they have experienced.
There has been further opposition from Sarnia-Lambton residents who are not from Aamjiwnaang. In 1999, a network of mostly non-Native residents, health clinic workers, and labour organizers began to confront a deadly legacy of asbestos exposure in local workplaces. They sought justice by holding memorial events, and pursuing monetary compensation. A community group called Victims of Chemical Valley succeeded in establishing a memorial site in a downtown park, along a waterfront. Yet, the legacy of contamination overshadowed this memorial when asbestos was discovered in the surrounding park, which was fenced off in 2013. In recent years, such environmental pollution from Sarnia-Lambton petro-chemical companies has been highlighted and challenged by SHAME: Sarnia Hometown Activist Movement Emerging, a separate organizing network led by Zak Nicholls. The year after this network began to form in 2009, SHAME organized protests and a campaign against Enbridge and BP. SHAME has encouraged locals to contact the government to raise their concerns about major industry releases, and the individuals involved in SHAME also conducted a door-to-door survey to gain insights into the experiences of Sarnia residents. From a neighbouring city, I helped with the various efforts of this network, and our collaborations included the organizing of a 2011 protest outside a shale gas conference in Sarnia. That year, a SHAME organizer also attempted to support Sarnia-Lambton residents voicing their objections to industry fumes from a “Clean Harbors” waste facility near their homes.
In recent decades, some of the opposition towards Chemical Valley has also come from downstream residents. Resistance towards industrial pollution has come from those who live to the south along the St. Clair River—at the Walpole Island Native reserve,22 and in the town of Wallaceburg. In 2008, the resistance of Walpole water protectors factored into Shell’s decision to abandon their multibillion-dollar plans for a new tar sands upgrader in Sarnia-Lambton. A few years later, Michigan “Wipe Out Wilms” events raised concerns about tumours in children living downstream in Marine City. A network of concerned residents in the area has continued to scrutinize Chemical Valley.
In the mid-1980s, there was symbolic support for residents along the St. Clair River when a “blob” of chemical pollution in these waters was a national news story. Greenpeace even visited to carry out protest actions in Sarnia. Yet, since the 1990s, the concerns about these waters have been much more localized.
These preceding points certainly do not amount to an exhaustive list; I am only offering brief indications of previous opposition that could be extended. So far, this resistance has amounted to the beginnings of what might prove to be much more intense and sustained mobilizing around the petro-chemical facilities in Sarnia-Lambton. There has also been a series of speaking events about Aamjiwnaang and Chemical Valley, and a host of documentaries have highlighted the situation there, but active solidarity has been far from adequate. Hence, the opposition and community research have often been taken up by dedicated locals, who have had little support. Petro-chemical companies remain well entrenched in Sarnia-Lambton, and campaigners have not yet succeeded in building up the capacity to contend with their power. Further tar sands industry expansion in Ontario can only be prevented if there is much more of a base of opposition. Chemical Valley and pipeline campaigning may be limited focuses in themselves, but these struggles would be enough for many people to take up—to do their part to confront the tar sands industry.
There are many parallels with other places where petro-chemical facilities are located, and where much the same mobilizations should occur. As in Chemical Valley, we can expect comparable impacts, as well as similar prospects for constructive change. Everyone has a stake in these struggles, given how pervasive petro-chemicals are in modern societies.