 Environment - January 23, 2008 |
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Group helped promote dialogue with industry
STAMP disbands after four years |
By Kevin Ma
Staff Writer
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A local group that brought five years of peace between oil companies and city residents has dissolved.
The St. Albert and Area Multi-Stakeholder Project, or STAMP group, agreed to disband at a Jan. 9 meeting. Established in 2003, the group has been credited with promoting peaceful relations between local residents and oil and gas companies.
It was a matter of cost and mission, former chair and current Sturgeon County Coun. Mark Oberg said of the decision. "As time went on, there was less and less for us to talk about at the meetings," he said. "We were actually taking care of the issues."
When the consultant running the group decided to raise its fees this year, the members decided the group wasn’t worth their time and effort. "We all decided to part ways as friends."
Stormy start
STAMP formed five years ago after a series of clashes between city residents and Dynamic Oil, an oil company that has since changed ownership.
In December 2002, Dynamic Oil officials had a gas blowout while drilling a new well near St. Albert. The incident upset city residents and lead to a public inquiry. The Energy and Utilities Board later found the company in violation of provincial regulations.
The key clash happened in 2003, says environmentalist Elke Blodgett, a founding member of STAMP. On Jan. 1 of that year, a local resident spotted a large pool of yellow fluid spread over the Sturgeon River near the Sandpiper golf course. "The photos looked pretty gruesome," she recalled. The briny liquid covered some 750 meters of frozen water, and Environment Canada determined that it was "acutely lethal" to fish. Residents fingered a nearby Dynamic oil well as the source of the fluid, but this was never proven.
Dynamic proposed a joint committee to promote better communications between industry, government and environmentalists. "If you smelled something funny, you let someone know," Blodgett said, explaining the group’s operation. It held its first meeting on Nov. 10, 2003.
STAMP of success
The group spent its early meetings hammering out procedures without discussing oil and gas issues, a fact Oberg described as key to its success. "It simplified things and took a lot of the emotion out of it." The group also agreed to act by consensus, promoting co-operation and good relations.
Oberg himself was another important element, Blodgett said, once he became chair in 2005. "He kept us all on perfectly good terms."
The group held a number of open houses on issues such as blowouts, orphan wells and water use over the years, Blodgett said, as well as a mass tree planting near Wild Rose Elementary School.
STAMP left its mark on industry-environmental relations, Blodgett said. Locals can now freely inspect well sites and voice concerns to company officials, and there has not been a single major conflict between the two groups since 2003. "When the main oil and gas people left [the group], the environmentalists got a big hug!" she said.
The group has also donated the rest of its budget, $200, to the Big Lake Environment Support Society, Oberg said. "They are an active group in the area where we had most of our involvement, and we felt it was appropriate." He added that the suggestion came from one of the group’s industry members.
Oberg said the group’s biggest success was how it got normally confrontational groups to work together. "It can be done. We did it." He described his time with the group as one of the highlights of his political career.
Anyone with concerns about local oil or gas wells should call the Energy Resources Conservation Board at (780) 460-3800, Oberg said. STAMP is also ready to return if it is needed, he added. |
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