Feel the Shaking ?

The April 8 meeting of BMN, hosted a talk by SFU professor John Clague, the focus of the talk was about the historic geological record of this Coast for large earthquakes. 

A few grainy pics from the cheap seats

 The most recent one of which is the most studied and frequently named as the; The M9 Cascadia Megathrust Earthquake of January 26, 1700.

A short YouTube video visualizing the event:   Cascadia Tsunami.mov

The most interesting report about the event though is this: 
    The Orphan Tsunami of 1700—Japanese Clues to a Parent Earthquake in North America.

           It can be downloaded for FREE, is a large size file, has some nice quality images, and is a wonderfully put together document.

 Here is a listing of the publications that John J. Clague has been involved with from the National Research Council,(NRC) 
And from Geoscan      Prolific to say the least.

You may also want to read some of the blogs by members of the American Geophysical Union,  The Landslide blog, by Dr. Dave Petley and the Trembling Earth by Austin Elliott, are frequently  quite interesting.

       Hope I am not here to witness the inevitable large earthquake in my lifetime

Trans Mountain Expansion Project

          Rumor has it that the Trans Mountain Expansion Project want to use the fields of the Forensic Psychiatric hospital portion of Colony Farm, to store their vast quantities of pipe, and also use the area as a general staging area.  The company is looking at possibly going through the park with their pipeline, along the Lougheed highway, and onwards to LaFarge,(Coquitlam Centre area) then to Burnaby. (Download this PDF)  Not an appropriate use for farmland, in my mind.

Tri-Cities News article:  Pipeline foes aim to protect Coquitlam park

Press Release:

        We value the feedback, questions, concerns and comments from communities through which our pipeline study corridor runs. It has, and will be, used in our planning as we continue to optimize our study corridor and then ultimately our pipeline route.

We invite you to join us to learn about and provide your input to the optimization of the proposed pipeline study corridor for the Trans Mountain Expansion Project in person or online:

IN PERSON

  Burnaby Open House
April 3, 2014
Drop in between 7:30pm and 9:30pm
Executive Plaza
405 North Road,
Coquitlam

ONLINE
Go to Trans Mountain Talk after the event to review material shared at the Open House and provide your feedback. 

Should you have any questions please don t hesitate to contact us at  info@transmountain.com  or 1.866.514.6700. More information about our proposed project is available at Trans Mountain 
Address: 2844 Bainbridge Avenue, PO Box 84028, Bainbridge, Burnaby, BC V5A 4T9
Twitter:   @TransMtn

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Trans Mountain of course in theory must answer to the National Energy Board, (NEB) the public can view the regulatory documents that the various companies submit in their applications.

Not directly related to the Trans mountain application, but related to transportation in Burrard Inlet :  1973 Oil spill in English Bay   Trans Mountain of course will  create a large increase in shipping traffic through Burrard Inlet, much more than they do at the present time.

Personally I struggle with the fact that a company can apply to build something, yet they have no idea where it will be located.  Kind of like me going to the nearest city and saying, I want to build a gazillion square foot building, but I have no idea where yet, and expect an Okay from the local council; something wrong here.

And a historical photo:  Dredging a channel to place the Trans Mountain pipeline under the Fraser River at Port Mann. - March 7, 1953.

From New Westminster Archives

Description: Gilley Brother's barge dredging a channel to place the Trans Mountain pipeline under the Fraser River at Port Mann. Photograph published in the British Columbian page 1, March 7, 1953. Likely photographed from the Coquitlam shore looking towards Surrey.  ( Personally I think that the photo was shot on the Surrey side, looking over towards Coquitlam.  Railway is on the Port Mann side )
Today, they will probably use direction drilling to place the pipe; the old way shown in this photo made a huge mess, and is still used where the public would not care as much about their environment.

Nevergreen Line

Local Tri-City News reports:   Concerns raised about Evergreen construction on creeks
I have been documenting the destruction locally for quite some time now, and the Evergreen Line, folks were always saying all will be fine, and why not? It is a large project, and a sensible person would think that environmental damage will be diminished as much as possible; since there is supposedly a large team in place to deal with any issues as they arise.  Apparently though public relations is the cheaper way out, since as I found out today and at other times, just in a very small area, attempts at mitigating pollution were very sparse to non-existent on the ground.  Have a look at these photos taken today (March 6, 2014) in a very small section of Scott Creek.

Also from the Tri-City News, Big plans for Brunette, Pinetree
   Sounds quite silly to me, to want to turn Pinetree into some sort of grand entrance, stage set.  We have lost considerable tree cover along Pinetree with all the Evergreen Line, construction going on; But we have lost considerably more along the Scott Creek corridor, and along the edges of the C.P.R. mainline, leading to Port Moody which was much more valuable to the wildlife that remains around here, but as usual out of sight, out of mind. The odds of a tree ever being anything along Pinetree are next to nil, when the elevated line is completed, since as soon as it grows up a little, out come the saws to keep it away from the elevated line.  Trees at least would have a chance along the Scott Creek, C.P.R. corridor.   Only small specimen types of trees, would  possibly do well along Pinetree, but the sad part is that small trees are easily vandalized, and the evidence of that is easy to be found in the immediate area.