The city of North Bay, Ontario is gearing up for a fight against TransCanada’s Energy East pipeline, with Mayor Al McDonald, the North Bay-Mattawa Conservation Authority, and local residents all expressing deep concern about the plan to ship tar sands/oil sands oil from Alberta to a port in New Brunswick. At 1.1 million barrels per day, the $12-billion, 4,600-kilometre pipeline would carry more product per day than the Keystone XL, and would foul Lake Nipissing and Trout Lake if it ruptured in the vicinity of North Bay. “Any spill would make its way into the lake quickly,” McDonald told the Star. “What happens to 55,000 people and their drinking water? We would never be able to recover from that stigma. The economic impact would be astronomical.” Some local residents also say TransCanada has rarely given them straight answers to their questions about the project. “I use petroleum products, I know how this works,” said local web developer Graham Robinson. “But we are talking about crude running through where I live, hundreds of others live. TransCanada has tried to bury our questions in jargon, and I find that deceitful. How am I supposed to trust them?”
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