Port Elgin bans fracking within village limits by Joan LeBlanc, May 8, 2013
PORT ELGIN, N.B. – The Village of Port Elgin has banned the practice of fracking within its village limits. At a recent meeting, village council passed a unanimous resolution to prohibit hydraulic fracturing in an effort to protect the future of its clean water supply. … Coun. Val MacDermid said recently that the resolution was invoked after much discussion at the recent meeting. During the meeting a presentation on fracking was made by Marilyn Lerch of the Tantramar Alliance Against Hydrofracking and Brad Walters, professor and coordinator of environmental studies at Mount Allison University. “I made that motion – which was passed unanimously – to ban fracking because we want to protect our water supply and ensure that the village has clean water for everyone in the years to come. We don’t believe fracking is the right thing to do so we passed the resolution before it becomes and issue for the village to deal with,” she said. Council also passed a resolution to allow EOS Eco-energy submit a report to the Federation of Canadian Municipalities with regards to the Village of Port Elgin and the Partnership Climate Protection Program. In a telephone interview on Monday, EOS executive director Joni Fleck Andrews explained that the Village of Port Elgin has completed the first step of the five steps identified within the Partnership Climate Protection Program originally launched by the Federation of Canadian Municipalities about 10 years ago. The PCP program is a network of Canadian municipal governments that have committed to reducing greenhouse gases and acting on climate change. For the past few years EOS has been working with the municipalities of Port Elgin, Dorchester, Sackville and Memramcook to help the communities in working to complete the first step. “The first step of the milestone program is to create a greenhouse gas emissions inventory. And that is a combination of community emissions and municipal operations. So they are categorized as corporate inventory and a community inventory,” Fleck Andrews explained. She noted that EOS has put together a list of the greenhouse gas emissions inventory with a forecast. “That is a very important part of the first milestone. The forecast sets the targets and the levels most municipalities want to strive for….we work with the FCM to figure out how those targets do need to be set. Now the reports themselves have been submitted to the FCM for approval,” she explained. [Emphasis added]
[Refer also to:
Burnaby city council first in BC to call for a moratorium on fracking
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The Alberta Association of Municipal Districts and Counties (AAMDC) frac motion commotion
Appeals court says NY towns can ban fracking
First County in U.S. Bans Fracking and all Hydrocarbon Extraction – Mora County, New Mexico