Blog Watching: Week ending February 11, 2018

The last seven days have made for a week of outages, weather advisories, road closures and even an alert over the status of the region's natural gas pipeline between Terrace and Prince Rupert

Our review of the week starts in the early hours of last Sunday, when CityWest finally restored service to the regions communication network, that after a fibre cut in the early evening period of Saturday east of Terrace, left the region without much of its modern day ability to communicate, or use the now household fixture of the Internet.

The communication outage was but the preamble to a week of issues related to weather, with weather warnings, road condition advisories and a 25 hour road closure making for much of the weeks news.

By Thrusday, residents of Prince Rupert were also hearing word of a developing situation with the natural gas pipeline between the North Coast and Terrace, with a significantly reduced pressure level requiring work crews to attend to the line through the weekend, all while Pacific Natural Gas continued to ask for customers to reduce their usage as much as possible.

In amongst a week of weather related mayhem,  two other stories managed to find some attention, the first the introduction of a new Fisheries Act, one which rolls back many of the previous Conservative governments revisions, as well as making for a focus on environmental and sustainability issues.

The quest to deliver an oil terminal to the North Coast by the First Nations led Eagle Spirit Energy group, took an interesting shift this week. As the proponents of the pipeline and terminal proposal took a look North and a possibility to bypass any Canadian tanker moratorium plans by placing a terminal in Hyder,Alaska.

The top story of the week however, explores the sudden loss of communication in the Northwest, with those who live much of their life on the Internet or on a cel phone suddenly left lost as a major communication outage hit the region.

Saturday Night Communication Shutdown -- Saturday night plans for those who rely on the Internet and in some cases cel phone communication came to a crashing halt one week ago, as a series of weather related events left the Northwest out of the modern communication era. A major fibre cut east of Terrace, left customers of  CityWest in the dark and out of touch with the wired world. (posted  February 4, 2018)

That article was followed by:

Pressure drop in PNG line brings call for minimal use of natural gas in Prince Rupert, Port Edward  -- Communications were just one area where the week provided for some problems for the region, with Pacific Northern Gas suffering a situation with their natural gas line between Prince Rupert and Terrace, leaving crews to deal with a pressure drop for the region giving the utility cause to ask residents to reduce their gas usage.  Such was the interest in the gas line situation, that our follow up item from Friday also found a large audience, as we took  note of the lack of a more official notification process for the public.       (posted  February 8, 2018)

Federal Government introduces New Fisheries Act -- Turning back the clock on the previous Conservative government made for much of the theme for Canada' New Fisheries Act, with Minister Dominic LeBlanc providing for an expansive review of some of the proposed changes.  (posted  February 7, 2018)

Highway 16 Closed between Prince Rupert and Terrace owing to Avalanche Risk  -- Weather has made for a major story in the Northwest over the last few weeks and this past week brought more snow, wind and rain to the inland areas, and with it a 26 hour road closure between the Northwest cities of Terrace and Prince Rupert.   (posted February 7, 2018)

Eagle Spirit interests consider Hyder, Alaska as back up plan for oil shipment terminal --  Eagle Spirit Energy, the First Nations led group looking to locate an Oil shipment terminal on the North Coast is keeping its options open, with a new proposal that could see oil tankers transiting Portland Canal to a terminal to be located at Hyder Alaska (posted February 6, 2018 )

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