Offshore Environmental Authority Recommendation 

In this brief, we call for creation of a regulatory authority body that would operate independently of the Canada-Newfoundland and Labrador Offshore Petroleum Board to protect the environment during offshore oil and gas activities.  Our position is that safety and the protection of the environment cannot be considered separately. The recommendation to create an independent safety authority, recently endorsed by the NL government due to the crash of the Sikorsky S-902A helicopter in 2009, should be matched by a separate environmental body. The United States government has recently done this: in response to the Deepwater Horizon blowout, the U.S. restructured the regulatory oversight of offshore oil and gas to create independent safety and environmental regulators.

Dissatisfaction with tap water has gradually grown over time and in many places in Canada bottled water and various tap water filtering systems have become increasingly popular. In Newfoundland, road side springs are another popular alternative drinking water supply, yet the Provincial Government does not test or treat this water. This study examines 18 communities in Western Newfoundland to determine why people don’t drink tap water, the frequency of use of road side springs, and the bacteriological safety of a sampling of road side springs. The results indicate that the main reason for not drinking tap water was that it was perceived to be unsafe. But springs were used by 23% of those surveyed and these springs were found to be above acceptable limits in E-Coli or coliforms 24 % of the time!