MILLARVILLE, Alta. – An Alberta ranch family has won an appeal court decision upholding $70,000 in damages from an Imperial Oil sour gas pipeline leak in 2002.
The dispute between Agnes Ball and Imperial Oil Resources stems from an incident in which some of her cattle out on pasture were exposed to hydrocarbon contamination from a leaking sour gas pipeline.
Ball ranches with her son-in-law and daughter, Craig and Susan Graham. They attributed the loss of 49 of their 200 head during a one year period to water and soil contamination caused by the leak and subsequent company excavations to repair the leak.
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Ball won the original case in Court of Queen’s Bench in 2008. The appeal to the Alberta Court of Appeal upheld the ruling April 13.
She said she hopes the conflict is over.
“They took away our ability to make a good living and we still haven’t caught up.”
Imperial Oil spokesperson Pius Rolheiser said the company is reviewing the appeal decision. It has argued its employees behaved appropriately and that it tried to reach a settlement with the family.
“We are not unsympathetic to the Ball family and the difficulties they had in their 2003 calving season,” Rolheiser said.
Court documents from the original trial show the company admitted the leak, but it said the contaminants escaping into the water and soil were not sufficient to have damaged the herd.
Activity at the site has been suspended and the company received a non-compliance order from the Alberta Energy and Utilities Board, the industry regulating body.
“Imperial Oil had a duty to give adequate prior notice of its intended repair work and to adequately protect the plaintiff’s livestock from exposure to hydrocarbons and hydrocarbon contaminated soil and water, and breached that duty by pouring contaminated water on the ground and leaving the area unfenced,” the trial judge ruled in 2008.
Ball kept records of activities on the leased pasture and Susan Graham had extensive herd and calving records. They believe the records won them the case.
“Every cow and calf that we had, we could do a history,” Graham said in an interview.
“We could compare how many of these calves we lost in comparison to the rest of our herd and how many we had to treat in comparison to the rest of our herd.”
Ball and Graham said they advise others in similar disputes to document everything with diaries, pictures and video.
“My pictures and my diary spoke volumes,” Ball said.
The situation began in the summer of 2002 on 640 acres of crown lease land when a leak in a two-metre-deep sour gas pipeline was being repaired.
Imperial Oil workers noticed a brown spot with dead vegetation in a field in the fall of 2001 during an aerial survey of the pipeline. It did not start repairs until the following spring.
Imperial Oil tried to contact Ball, but she was away on vacation.
Family members told the trial court that they were not told the situation was urgent and no one asked for permission to enter the area.
The company contracted a firm to repair the site.
By the time Ball saw the site, a large pit along the length of pipeline was excavated and filled with water. The water was pumped on the ground and the soil was placed on a tarp. A snow fence was erected but part of it came down and cattle got into the area.
Laboratory tests during the summer failed to show that contamination levels in the water or soil exceeded Alberta Environment guidelines.
But the family noticed a calf behaving erratically during its herd roundup the subsequent September. It was euthanized in November.
The company and Ball conducted separate veterinary tests. Ball’s vet report showed hydrocarbons in the calf’s kidney, liver and fat.
More problems appeared the following spring when the family calved out 194 head. Cattle were sorted by age so Ball and the Grahams had a good comparison between those that had been in the contaminated area and those that were not.
Calves born to cows grazing the land where the pipeline work took place were premature and had higher death rates. The family said 49 of about 200 head died over the course of one year because of the leak and company excavations to repair the leak.
“We never really saw a cow that looked ill but you would go out one day and there would be a cow lying dead,” Susan Graham said.
