Rural Alberta landowners push back over proposed route for Atco gas pipeline
Protecting pristine wilderness the focus of a petition signed by hundreds
For 25 years, Steven Bell's family has owned a 49-hectare piece of land about 95 kilometres west of Edmonton, near the community of Lake Isle.
The area is undeveloped, remote, and home to thousands of species of wildlife that live in the surrounding forest and wetlands.
"We have seen and photographed any kind of wildlife you can imagine," Bell said in an interview with CBC.
"Wolves, cougars, moose, elk, bears, sandhill cranes … and all sorts of wildflowers. It's amazing how much wildlife is here. It's like every example of Alberta wildlife lives here."
It is this quiet, pristine area that Bell is trying to protect. He and his family are pushing back against a high-pressure, high-volume natural gas pipeline being proposed by Atco Energy Systems.
"It is just heartbreaking," said Violet Bell, Bell's daughter. "We've been coming here since I was little … we grew up here."
The family's concern is over one of the proposed routes of Atco's Yellowhead Mainline pipeline.
The $2.8-billion project would see a 200-kilometre pipeline 36 inches in diameter running from the hamlet of Peers, Alta., to Fort Saskatchewan.
The company said the pipeline is needed to service the fast-growing northern part of the province and Alberta's Industrial Heartland,northeast of Edmonton.
"This pipeline has the capacity to roughly carry the same amount of energy that is delivered on a peak day of our entire Alberta electricity grid," said Lance Radke, Atco's senior vice-president of gas and pipelines.
The company has proposed two different routes for the westerly portion of the project. Both options start in Peers with one travelling south, following the same route as the Trans Mountain Pipeline along the Yellowhead Highway.
Steven Bell believes the second option would threaten the environment and cuts through a 16-hectare parcel of his family's land. The route travels north of Peers through mostly undeveloped land.
In an effort to gather feedback on the routes, Atco has held several public open houses.
"If you were a pipeline engineer looking at the routes, you could guess early on that maybe people would be generally in favour of one route or the other," Radke said.
"The important part for us as a pipeline operator is that we don't guess and we instead ask people what they think."
WATCH | Landowners fight for proposed pipeline to be rerouted:
Bell and his family started a petition with the hope of protecting the natural areas along the entirety of the proposed northern route. The petition has garnered hundreds of signatures.
"If you've ever been to Jasper, then you can see the devastation that these pipelines cause," Bell said.
"We want [Atco] to seriously consider the impact of where this pipeline would go. Not just the economic benefits, which are easy to measure. The story goes, you don't know the value of a river until it's gone. It's the same thing here…it's not all about money."
Atco said it started environmental assessments in the summer of 2024 and has yet to choose a preferred route.
It said the assessments will continue into this summer, but that the company will have enough information to make a decision before the final environmental reports are completed.
"That's not to say we will be ignoring the environmental impacts," Radke told CBC.
"They will absolutely be weighed, but we think we will have enough information here in the next one to two months to ultimately decide on a preferred route and then continue our work and continue our consultation with folks along those routes."
Radke said Atco needs to consider more factors than just the environmental impact, and will continue engaging all its stakeholders before making a final decision.
The company said after making its decision it will need to continue its consultation before preparing an application to present to the Alberta Utilities Commission.
Atco said it hopes to have its application submitted by September. If the commission approves the project, Atco's plan is to have construction complete by 2027.
For Steven Bell and his family, Atco's assurance that it will take the environmental impacts into consideration isn't enough.
Although he and his family say they understand the need for pipelines, they are hoping Atco will consider the route that has already seen destruction.
"Oil and gas is what runs this place, we know we are not going to stop a pipeline," he said.
"But we don't have a lot of this untouched wilderness left … we just want this pipeline to be where other pipelines already are."