Our performance

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 2006, we added groundwater monitoring networks at four facilities in Canada and monitored existing networks at 20 facilities. We identified no issues that required immediate attention. Also in 2006, Enbridge initiated an external review of our Canadian groundwater monitoring program to identify structural changes needed in the program. In addition, we assessed sites without an existing groundwater monitoring network to determine their priority for implementing a network.

In the United States, we assessed 18 new sites in 2006. 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 as a result in 2006 we investigated six locations on our Spearhead Pipeline system but identified no issues that required immediate attention.