Residents living along Gleniffer Lake and the nearby Red Deer River should check their mailboxes and their email inboxes as part of a community outreach project by Plains Midstream Canada.
Stakeholders are receiving the most current information about the Plains Midstream Rangeland pipeline incident that occurred on June 7, 2012.
In addition to the information update, Plains Midstream Canada is asking stakeholders living in the area to complete a survey gauging the company's communication and response efforts.
“We are reaching out to our stakeholders and ensuring that they have the opportunity to tell us how they think we've responded to the incident and allow them to provide feedback. We're committed to addressing any concerns and being a good neighbour,” said Greg Filipchuk, director of stakeholder relations at Plains.
In March 2014, Plains met with Mountain View County to share its learnings and update the community on the response efforts to date.
“We're absolutely dedicated to safe, reliable, and environmentally responsible operations,” he said. “We've learned from this incident and have applied our learnings to continually improve.
“We're developing and incorporating initiatives to improve all of our operations including our pipeline integrity program, pipeline repair procedures, aerial monitoring, leak detection and prevention, and emergency management systems.
“Plains has invested significantly on these improvements including $4 million for a new SCADA upgrade -- the system used to remotely control the flow in our pipelines. We've also added staff to our 24/7 control centre operation.”
In the information update, Plains outlines the steps taken to remediate the site, which were completed last fall.
The company says all recoverable oil has been removed from the footprint of the release and contaminated soil was treated on site or removed for disposal.
By early fall 2012, the Alberta Energy Regulator and other provincial and federal agencies had inspected the river and reservoir shorelines and granted Plains “interim closure”, indicating that Plains had achieved the prescribed level of remediation.
The Gleniffer Lake reservoir reopened to the public in late June 2012.
The outreach program was launched last month and Plains will continue to monitor and evaluate the survey results.
“We're reviewing every single response,” he said. “The feedback and comments will tell us if stakeholders think we are doing a good job and if there is something we can do better, we will do it.”
- source: Plains Midstream Canada
