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A northern B.C. couple was unsuccessful in their bid to protect their family from noxious gases they feared would be released by natural gas drilling adjacent to their home. Observers say their effort to halt operations at the sour gas well, which failed in court, highlights potentially fatal problems in provincial rules regulating gas wells.
A B.C. Supreme Court judge tossed a request for an injunction from Ewald Heler and Claudia Pamela Heler last week. The couple had sought to temporarily pause drilling and fracking activities at a planned natural gas wellsite 80 metres from their home due to health concerns.
According to court documents, the couple purchased the land in 2022, when the concrete well pad was built but not yet in operation and did not see the infrastructure before the purchase. Well pads are graded areas designed to manage rainfall runoff and support heavy drilling equipment.
They cited concerns about air, noise and light pollution and asked for work to be paused unless the gas company could keep them at least two kilometres away from the gas pad whenever drilling or maintenance was in progress. If the work couldn't be stopped, they asked that the company put them up in a hotel for the weeks it was taking place, to protect them from toxic emissions.
The well will extract so-called "sour gas," which contains hydrogen sulfide, court documents note. Hydrogen sulfide is a widely known toxic gas; it was used as a chemical weapon during the First World War. In B.C. alone, it has been found to be responsible for dozens of deaths. The gas is estimated to be in between a quarter and a third of U.S. gas wells, with the country's Environmental Protection Agency warning the "potential for routine H2S emissions [at oil and gas wells] is significant."
In his ruling, the judge concluded that the couple, who represented themselves, did not have enough evidence of harm and had sued under the wrong legal framework.
Still, for Calvin Sandborn, an environmental lawyer, the couple's failed bid shines a new light on the longstanding risk posed by sour gas and whether B.C.'s rules are strong enough to protect people.
"The bigger issue is the safety of the public around these gas wells, and the fact that, you know, they are dangerous," he said.
Over a decade ago, he co-authored a report with the University of Victoria's Environmental Law Centre that assessed the proximity of elementary schools to gas wells in the province's northern Peace region, near Fort St. John. According to the study, nine schools were located close enough to gas wells they could be at risk in the event of a sour gas leak or other emergency, putting roughly 1,900 students at risk.
The findings prompted outrage at the time, and the government eventually promised to impose a 1,000-metre buffer zone around schools where gas wells couldn't be built, he recalled. Homes and other buildings were not included in promises for larger buffers.
While the 1,000-metre rule is not written into the provincial law regulating oil and gas production, Lannea Parfitt, a spokesperson for the B.C. Energy Regulator, wrote in an email it is included in an internal guidance document the regulator uses to approve new gas wells.
When asked to provide a copy of the guidance document, she noted that "the 1,000 metre setback is an internal process and is not posted on the external [B.C. Energy Regulator] website. The documentation supporting that is currently being updated."
"A well has not been permitted within a 1,000 meters of a known school since 2016," she wrote. But with the exception of schools, the B.C. laws regulating the placement of gas wells only require a 100-metre buffer zone between a "permanent building" or "place of public concourse."
Sandborn's concerns about the health risks posed by natural gas extraction appeared to be echoed in the recent ruling. While the judge concluded the Helers’ case wasn't strong enough to warrant an injunction, he admitted the extraction of natural gas so close to their home was risky.
"If they remain on the property during the fracking and drilling operations," he wrote, "they are likely to suffer some degree of irreparable harm, in relation to their personal health and that of their children."
Comments
Canada, the land where polluting, profit pigs come before the people. A person can't fight the corporate courts and win, unless hoards of people are behind them in protest.
Old news. Like, really, really old news. Sour gas permeated the Calgary suburbs throughout the 1960s, some days making the rotten egg air chokingly thick for us kids who grew up there. The closest gas wells were right on the edge of the city, long depleted now well before anyone thought of launching lawsuits.
My farming relatives in Alberta have war stories going back decades about seismic crews having the power of some kinda god to enter and blast holes in their pastures without the permission of the owner, and if oil or gas was discovered, to set up drilling rigs, sometimes very close to farmer's homes.
First Nations experienced much of the same thing until their rights were recognized under the Constitution. Even so, downstream Indigenous communities are even today forced to receive contaminants and toxins from upstream industrial fossil fuel operations to a degree that settler communities have not.
And let's not forget the utter helplessness of farmers and suburbanites to prevent oil and gas pipelines from slicing up their neighbourhoods and disrupting the ancestral history on homesteads and homes where generations of families played out their lives.
There is no white bearded god sitting on a throne in the sky forcing society to pay for the blowing wind and the sunshine that everyone can utilize to make energy that is free of all the above. The family in this story is not and never was alone, and are not without choices, some of them indeed painful.
It's old news, but news that mainly only locals knew. Sourgas comes not only from gas wells, but also oil wells. My grandmother lived in Donalda, SSE of Edmonton. She lived in town, where the dust wasn't as bad, but one of our inlaws had dust so bad that it infused the entire house within an hour. I visited for dinner, and as was the custom when visiting family, offered help with the preparations. Unbidden, I commenced to wipe down the dirty windowsills, tables, cabinets and other horizontal surfaces. The hostess laughed, and said it had been done but two hours ago. They set the table with all the dishes turned upside down, and the cutlery under a bowl. I tried not to think about all the dirt that was for sure settling on the food as we ate. I don't think anyone realized at the time the damage likely being done to their lungs, from the dust alone! The air stunk of H2S, all the time. The water that came out of the taps stunk of H2S. The people drank it, cooked in it, bathed in it, washed their hair in it. When I visited there, I had no idea that it was toxic, as well as so unpleasant. I'm not now and wasn't then a generally squeamish or overly fussy person. The people there said, "Oh, after a while, you get used to it!" I can tell you it never smelled better in all the time I stayed there, the better part of a week, and couldn't bring myself to bathe in the water. I drank coffee, made with boiled water, but couldn't bear to drink the water, or lemonade made with it. At least two of my relatives died of conditions that might well have been caused by sourgas from the oil wells. I say "at least two" because there was a large extended family, and I don't know the causes of death of any others.
I'll bet the people who lived there had no idea of the health risks.