Our Remaining Important Questions: A Response to the New Brunswick Government’s White Paper on Recommendations to Govern the Development of Shale Gas from the Taymouth Community Association

(Posted on behalf of the Taymouth Community Association)

A Response to the New Brunswick Government’s White Paper on Recommendations

To Govern the Development of Shale Gas From The Taymouth Community Association

 

(Page 11 of 11)

Our Remaining Important Questions

 

The government’s position has been that it is okay to continue exploration, because if we find shale gas development to be unsafe for either the people or the environment, we can simply stop it at that point. SWN had a three-year license to explore during which it pledged to spend $47 million dollars. The government recently passed a new regulation to grant them extensions of that license.
"If a large portion of the medical profession in
the province… says it is not safe to continue…
can they be overridden by a political decision?"
It is hard for us to conceive that after allowing the company to explore for 5 years and spend $47 million dollars that the government would say, ‘Sorry SWN, we don’t think it’s safe, you’ll have to go.’ Even if the government did say that, we suspect the action would be followed by costly lawsuits and extreme damage to the province’s reputation.
The only sane approach is for a moratorium or ban to be started immediately before industry invests millions more. However, if the government wants to persist in what many consider a reckless policy, we want to know several things:

 

- First, what will be the legal instrument used to deny leases to companies who have lawfully fulfilled their license agreements?

- Secondly, who will decide on what is safe, what will be the decision-making process and who will provide the criteria to decide the standard of ‘safeness’?

- Will the entire decision making process by open to public comment?

- If a large portion of the medical profession in the province, backed by other medical societies around the world and supported by studies, says it is not safe to continue, given their commitment to the ethic of “first do no harm”, can they be overridden by a political decision?

- What percentage of leaking gas wells or water well contaminations will our ‘safety standards’ allow as ‘acceptable’? How will that be decided?

- If local communities have different conceptions of what is safe, what can they do?

We need answers to these basic questions before we can give any serious consideration to the government’s current position.

 

 

 

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