Dr. Tim Takaro Shares TransMountain Pipeline Safety Concerns

The $36 billion TransMountain Pipeline expansion is designed to carry 560,000 barrels of toxic, diluted bitumen (dilbit) daily from Hinton, Alberta through highly urbanized regions, including the City of Coquitlam and under Simon Fraser University to Burrard Inlet. Dr Tim Takaro, a physician-scientist shares his actions and concerns around human health and safety, and lack of transparency regarding safety protocols for the pipeline expansion.

Nancy Furness – Local Journalism Initiative

The pipeline became fully operational in May 2024. Dr Takaro was asked by local citizens’ groups to help with their response to the pipeline proposal. He says “Ironically, I was forbidden to talk about the most profound health effects, which are due to climate change.”

He says, “The contractor for TransMountain did a human health risk assessment, but it was inadequate.” Condensate used to dilute the bitumen contains a mix of carcinogenic and highly flammable petrochemicals and creates an unacceptably high risk of fire and toxic gasses at the expanded Burnaby tank farm, placing residents and the University community in extreme danger according to Dr. Takaro.

Modelling by Burnaby Fire Chief shows that the entire mountain and community would go up in flames. Dr. Takaro says, “The biggest danger with a spill from the pipeline, or God forbid a tanker would be that the diluted bitumen would ignite with the slightest spark.” According to him, even a small spill could result in an evacuation of up to 100,000 people if the highly flammable dilbit caught fire.

After spending ten years exhausting all paths to having the results of his research considered, Dr. Takaro and others protested the building of the pipeline by ‘tree-sitting’. He feels this had more impact than his years of academic research. Dr. Takaro was arrested by the Community Industry Response Group (CIRG), a militarized branch of the RCMP. Dr. Takaro says, “At the moment there is no coordinated plan for responding to a spill in Burrard Inlet.” Port Moody-Coquitlam MP Bonitia Zarrillo and the Minister of Environment for British Columbia George Heyman have both tried unsuccessfully to obtain an up-to-date plan.

Dr Takaro’s group Protect the Planet, Stop TMX continues its work to educate the public. Update: Under the terms of a $20 million deal between the City of Burnaby and Trans Mountain, Burnaby has agreed to cease "negative public communications" about Trans Mountain pipeline. Tri Cities Community TV is a group of volunteers in the region who are looking to support community video media and independant community news stories and sources.