RICHMOND (NEWS1130) - The airline consortium behind a jet fuel pipeline bound for
YVR has made a big change in its proposal that Richmond asked for by moving it away from residential neighbourhoods, but the city's mayor still does not want the plan to go through.
Malcolm Brodie is worried about an environmental disaster, even after a major concession by
Vancouver Airport Fuel Facilities Corporation.
"We are dead set as a council, and as a community I should say, against this proposal," he says.
Brodie envisions a steady stream of tankers carrying jet fuel docking in the Fraser River, and filling a pipeline that will run through the middle of the city and out to the airport.
It was first planned along Shell Road or No. 5 Road but that led to major backlash from the community .
"We had said as a council that we are opposed to this entire concept, but if we had to have a pipeline, it would be better to run along Highway 99," Brodie says.
That change to the proposal has been made but Brodie still hopes the public comes out, starting next week and running through early February, to stop it altogether.
"We just don't see anything positive in it," he says. "We're encouraging residents and anyone affected to come out and voice their opposition to the plan."
VAFFC's pipeline is meant to bring fuel to YVR for upwards of 100 years but Brodie says by then jet fuel may be obsolete. The corporation says the pipeline is necessary to provide additional capacity to the airport's jet fuel delivery network, which currently consists of trucks.
He points out there's already a pipeline coming into the area from Burnaby that he believes could be expanded for the airport's needs.
If the pipeline goes ahead it will run from a processing plant east of the Massey Tunnel, north along Highway 99, and then west along Bridgeport Road to Sea Island.