Environmental GRI Performance Indicators
EN8 – Total water withdrawal by source,
EN9 – Water sources significantly affected by withdrawal of water, and,
EN10 – Percentage and total volume of water recycled and reused.
Our Impacts
Enbridge’s operations use only a small amount of water, as we do not use it to transport liquid hydrocarbons or natural gas.
During new pipeline construction, we try to avoid crossing waterways and wetlands, and use a variety of measures to reduce our impact on them if we must cross them. Any disturbances we do cause are temporary, as we fully restore these areas to their previous states.
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, and implement others as required by the project or relevant regulatory body. The controls we use now include berms and containment areas to prevent offsite contamination at facilities, 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 U.S.
Groundwater
In 2007, Liquids Pipelines completed an external review of our Canadian groundwater monitoring program. The recommendations from the review were instituted in the summer of that year. Field activities included upgrading three networks and monitoring the groundwater at 25 facilities. Contamination exceeding provincial criteria was detected at one of our facilities and the necessary regulatory reporting was completed. No other issues were found that required immediate action.
In the U.S., we continued our assessment and monitoring of existing stations in 2007. This work involved a review of past history and surrounding land use, as well as groundwater monitoring and testing. We expand this proactive monitoring effort to include new acquisitions. We are in the process of investigating locations on our Spearhead, Ozark, and North Dakota Pipeline systems. To date, no issues have been identified that require immediate attention.