Land defenders seek city help to rehabilitate area damaged by Trans Mountain Pipeline

Aerial photos show a stark contrast between the before and after; in the before photo, dark green trees cover a significant area that extends to the road. In the after photo, a large corner has been cleared and it looks like a grey patch in a predominantly green and lush area.

The area is on the corner of Gaglardi Way and Lougheed Highway and is close to where the pipeline is installed. On the ground, once covered in mature trees, this corner is now covered in metre-high dry and dead grass, which has remained uncut for months. 

The Trans Mountain Pipeline Extension Project (TMX) celebrated the end of its construction operations on July 3. In expanding the pipeline, Trans Mountain cleared a large area of trees on the corner of Gaglardi and Lougheed in November 2021. 

According to volunteers concerned about the tree cover in Burnaby, Trans Mountain promised to rehabilitate the area once it had completed its expansion project; however, nothing has been done so far. Volunteers in the community decided to take it upon themselves to plant the trees and rehabilitate the area. 

“The idea is to increase tree cover, help with suburban heat islands, plant more trees to be a carbon sink, and bring more people together. It’s an activity that children and anyone can participate in and have that connection to the land,” said Rapichan Phurisamban, one of the volunteers with the Mountain Protectors, an Indigenous-led collective of “land defenders” which has been monitoring the construction of the expansion project. 

Since the end of March 2024, Phurisamban told the Beacon that the volunteers have planted more than 100 small trees to replace those removed by Trans Mountain. The trees are located 10 metres away from the pipeline, in keeping with Trans Mountain’s instructions to avoid roots interfering with the pipeline. Phurisamban said they planted 60 cottonwoods, 60 aspens, and several willow trees. The willow trees did not survive. 

Phurisamban and other volunteers visit the area twice a week to water the saplings. They fill plastic bottles and buckets and carry them or pull them in small carts to water the trees. On any given afternoon, they can make dozens of trips back and forth to a nearby church’s community garden to fill their bottles and bring them back to water the small trees.

The volunteers walk long distances and work in the hot summer sun for several hours every week. When any of the volunteers cannot make it to the watering, the group feels their absence acutely. Phurisamban does not think this can continue in the long term. The volunteers recently sought help from the City of Burnaby with watering and tending to the trees. 

“The trees are now doing OK because they have dedicated, ongoing volunteer efforts, but it’s not a sustainable solution,” Phurisamban told the Beacon. “So far, it’s unclear what the city is going to do; they did mention maybe they could provide this older water tank. Right now, we’re relying on the church and the community garden for water and on volunteer labour. It would be great if we could collaborate with the city on something like this.”  

Phurisamban took her concerns to the city’s Environment Committee on June 19 and presented the situation. 

“TMX has begun its commercial operations, and we know that despite fulfilling the project conditions set by the CER, public safeguards are poor and insufficient in practice,” Phurisamban said in her presentation to the committee. “On April 22, which is Earth Day, this environmental committee was informed of our work and was asked to adopt the responsibility of caretaking these trees because you have the resources to do so.” 

During the committee meeting, Heather Edwards, senior manager of parks planning with the city, responded to Phurisamban’s concerns. 

“Staff did go out and did an evaluation of the planting and where it was situated, and you’re quite right, the challenges of the location itself make it hard, whether it’s staff or volunteers, to actually get water to the trees,” Edwards said. “It’s an impractical solution for volunteers as well as staff who certainly can’t be dragging hoses in and out on a regular basis. So we are in a bit of a dilemma here.” 

“We do appreciate the value of trees and we do want to do tree planting. We’ve been blessed by nature with the cool weather and the rain, and I expect some will survive, but we certainly can’t guarantee the survival of the entire lot,” Edwards added. 

The city also cited financial concerns related to rehabilitating the area. 

“The ability to work together going forward is certainly what we’re open to,” Edwards said, adding that in this case “We hadn’t budgeted for a long-term resource allocation to planting in this area; it was unbeknownst to us, and it’s not in our plan at this point to be able to put the resources in, but we’re definitely willing to work together to plant in other areas, which are not in the buffer flail zone of TMX, which these are unfortunately.” 

At the time of writing, Phurisamban had not yet heard back from the city regarding the Mountain Protectors’ request. She believes that if the different orders of government are serious about reconciliation, it must involve more than land acknowledgements and words. 

“We want to keep the door open, we want to work with the city, we want true reconciliation, and we want actual efforts,” Phurisamban said. “Reconciliation can’t happen if it’s done on the terms of the city or the federal government, you know, settler-colonial organizations.” 

This piece was made possible by the Local Journalism Initiative.

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