The collateral costs of abandoned wells By Chinomso Iliya-Ndule & Jason Unger When a headline starts with “Taxpayers could be on hook…” people take notice (–funnily enough the headline changed during the drafting of this blog). The article tells the story of continued financial repercussions of the...
As was reported last week, a large chunk of change is being sought by the Petroleum Services Association of Canada from the federal government to bolster economic activity around reclamation of well sites in Alberta and Saskatchewan. This, as I have noted in the past, is not...
Pollution pocketbook is a short blog series regarding how our laws and policies incorporate the polluter pays principle. [caption id="" align="alignright" width="270"] Imperial Refinery, Calgary, AB, Canada. Dept. of Mines and Technical Surveys / Library and Archives Canada / PA-015634[/caption] The polluter pays principle (PPP) is...
Our lives invariably cause a level of pollution: we drive, we use chemicals to clean our clothes and our homes, we use a seemingly never ending stream of plastics in our workplaces and homes. Who pays for the pollution that results? The resource extractor, the...
The Environmental Law Centre promotes the polluter pays principle as central to effective environmental law. Inherent in the polluter pays principle is the assumption that, if you can’t afford to clean up a mess, you shouldn’t be in business to begin with. Of course nothing...
Edmonton Journal November 7, 2010 Re: "Good call on carbon-capture liability," Opinion, Nov. 3. The Journal editorial fails to consider a core principle regarding how we should treat our environment. That is: a polluter should pay for management of waste streams they...