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# Hairy Idea for Cleaning Up A Northern Gateway Spill

By Barbara Yaffe 15 Mar 2011 COMMENTS(0) Power Play
Filed under: greenpeace, enbridge northern gateway project, hair booms, my hair cares, kitimat tanker port, oil spill cleanup

Enbridge on Tuesday announced a new scheme to reassure British Columbians about potential oil spills resulting from construction of its proposed Northern Gateway Project. The project, as most people know by now, envisions an overland pipeline through B.C., connecting Alberta's oil sands with the northern coastal port of Kitimat, in B.C.. Tankers would then transport the petroleum to mostly Asian markets.

This pipeline/tanker project is opposed by aboriginal groups, environmental organizations and federal Opposition parties. As part of a PR effort to win people over Enbridge is pulling out all stops, including offering aboriginal groups an equity share in the development. And now -- the MyHairCares idea: "a program to turn hair clippings solicited from over 1,000 hair salons across North America into super absorbent oil clean-up booms."

Noting the program will "employ dozens of local residents," a company news release explains the hair booms, deployed during the Gulf of Mexico oil spill disaster, will "serve to contain pipeline leaks before they reach watersheds, and in-ocean spills before they reach the coast."

The company says, research shows a pound of hair absorbs up to five pounds of oil. Enbridge aims to collect 450,000 pounds of hair from more than a thousand hair salons, capable of absorbing up to 2.2 million pounds of oil.

"The formidible Enbridge hair reserve, fashioned into 30,000 four-meter booms, will be stored in numerous warehouses" along the 1,170-km pipeline route, along both sides of the 90-km Douglas Channel plied by the tankers and along much of the B.C. coast."

Unfortunately for Enbridge, this good-news announcement, as much as offering reassurance, reminds B.C. residents that oil spills are inevitable and will doubtless result from the Northern Gateway Project. The news release acknowledges: "oil spills are a tragic, inevitable cost of our business."

Moreover, BP announced last year, as they struggled to contain the Gulf oil spill, that they would not use the hair booms, asserting commercial booms absorb more oil and less water.

Greenpeace co-founder Rex Wyler reacted dubiously to the Enbridge news release, telling the Regina Leader-Post: I cannot believe they are saying this. It seems absurd. It seems like a joke.”

Many will dismiss this latest press release from Enbridge as a hair-brained idea.

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