26 June 2013 Twenty people were arrested this morning Hamilton cops tried to arrest everyone on the site except a few who were able to leave.
SwampLine9 is still holding strong. Four people are on lock down while most of the camp is still on site despite the injunction deadline expiring at 10am this morning. Enbridge was unable to even get the address right of the reversal site on the injunction and is now scrambling to correct its mistake.
You can see more photos of the action here: http://on.fb.me/17AZ4bQ
Solidarity actions took place across Canada including one of Toronto’s busiest streets shut down for nearly an hour as over 50 SwampLine supporters orchestrated a mock oil spill and flyered vehicles.
Photos from Cross-Canada Day of Action: http://on.fb.me/121U7AT
Swamp Line 9 Statement 25th June 3:30pm
7 Hours ago we were served an injunction that gave us 2 hours to leave the property. We kept our shit together, and are working together to keep this thing going. While some people packed up the camp and shuttled stuff to the top of the driveway, others built an elaborate barricade at the back and put themselves in an encasement. 3 people are inside of the encasement and are locked to the fence which leads into the construction site. 1 other person is sitting on top of the barricade and holding tight. About 20 of us are camped out in the middle of the driveway where it meets Concession 6, and are going to keep negotiations up to hold this space as best as we can.
Despite earlier reports, police are not blocking access to this site. We are asking for as many people as possible to come and join our action as it continues to shift and respond to this situation. If a situation arrises where we can no longer safely hold down this driveway, we will move our action to the other side of the street and continue to show support with the people locked down.
Our camping days may be over, but for now this struggle lives on. Those 4 bad-asses at the back of the site have built an impressive and solid barricade, and we don’t expect the police or Enbridge will be able to remove them from the site anytime soon.
Now that things have settled down a little bit we will be posting regular updates, so stay tuned to our tumblr site and follow us on twitter @Swampline9.
Swamp on,
-SL9
Line 9: The Tar Sands Come to Ontario from Rachel Deutsch on Vimeo.
Line 9 was built in 1975 to transport imported oil from Montreal to refineries in Sarnia. Enbridge has now applied to Canada's National Energy Board to reverse its direction of flow so that it can transport oil from Sarnia to Montreal.
Enbridge admits that among the possible uses of Line 9 is transporting "heavy oil" a category that includes bitumen, the hazardous raw material extracted from tar sands.
The pipeline passes through cities, watersheds, rivers, and farmland. 9.1 million people live within 50 km of line 9, including 18 first nations communities and 115 communities in total. (Sarnia, Hamilton, North York, Kingston, etc.)
Enbridge has a very poor record of environmental impact. Between 1999 and 2008, Enbridge lists 610 spills that released approximately 21 million litres of hydrocarbons into the surrounding area. But Enbridge is most well-known for their 3.8 million litre spill in Kalamazoo Michigan in 2010, amounting to the largest inland oil spill in US history. Because the spill involved the very hard to clean tar sands bitumen rather than conventional crude oil, the clean-up is still on-going. Meanwhile to this day, residents are still sick from the aftermath of the spill, and tragically many have died since. Most troubling for Ontario residents is that the pipeline that ruptured in Kalamazoo is almost identical to Line 9: it is part of the same pipeline network, uses the same interior lining, and is almost the same age.
With so much at risk, we need to work together to stop Enbridge Line 9. The big picture is spills, contamination, and expanding the tar sands. The even bigger picture is climate change. If it is not halted, climate change will and is resulting in increased frequency and severity of storms, floods, drought, and water shortage, as well as the spread of disease, increased hunger, displacement and mass migrations of people and ensuing social conflict and war.