Water

Our Impacts

Enbridge recognizes the potential impacts our operations can have on surface and groundwater resources. To avoid or minimize potential impacts to water quality, we have taken the following measures:

Surface water

We have established standards and procedures for managing water runoff from our facilities and during pipeline construction. We have many controls in place, including berms and containment areas to prevent offsite contamination, as well as inspection and controlled discharge procedures.

We occasionally acquire and discharge water to hydrostatically test the integrity of new or existing pipelines. Since existing pipeline sections have transported liquid petroleum or natural gas, we analyze and treat this test water, as needed, before returning it to the environment.

We also carry out an active program to monitor our potential impacts on groundwater from existing facilities in some of our business units in Canada and the United States.

Groundwater

In 2005, Liquids Pipelines conducted a comprehensive review of its groundwater quality monitoring programs in Canada and the United States. The review highlighted several differences and, as a result, we aligned the programs so that we now have one common approach in both jurisdictions.

Also in 2005, we added groundwater monitoring networks at three facilities in Canada and monitored existing pipeline networks at 17 facilities. We identified no issues that required immediate attention. The scope of our work for 2006 includes the installation of up to three new networks, as well as continued monitoring of existing networks.

In the United States, we assessed 10 new sites. This work involved a review of past history and surrounding land use, as well as groundwater monitoring and testing. As relevant, we expand this proactive monitoring effort to include new acquisitions and, in 2005, work included several locations along our Ozark Pipeline, which we acquired in 2004. We identified no issues that required immediate attention. We placed the Spearhead Pipeline system, which runs from Chicago, Illinois to Cushing, Oklahoma, in service in March 2006. Consequently, we will include Spearhead in the program to assess sites within that system.