The City of Estevan says it has a lot of questions about Canadian Pacific Railway's oil transloading depot and they expected to get some answers Tuesday night.
Mayor Gary St. Onge announced at Monday's council meeting that a number of City agencies were scheduled to meet with the CPR Tuesday in hopes of learning more about the transload site located on CPR's land in the centre of Estevan.
St. Onge said there are a number of concerns about the station - notably safety and increased truck traffic - and they would be addressing those worries during a closed meeting at city hall, which was also expected to include MP Ed Komarnicki.
"We'll ask a lot of questions but we are of the understanding that the CPR can almost do whatever they like on their land," St. Onge said. "We did have some indication that they were looking at this and about three of the suggestions we made at the time never took place and all of a sudden here it is in operation."
While speaking to the media after Monday's council meeting, St. Onge elaborated further on the suggestions made by the City. He noted a meeting was held Sept. 22 between CPR and the City's CPR advisory committee. At that time they asked CPR to check with the Estevan Fire Rescue Service, Estevan Police Service and issue press releases about the opening of the station. St. Onge said CPR did not have any advance meetings with either the police or fire departments and the press release came out just days before the station opened.
"I would have thought that with the concerns we sent to them they might have held off until after (Tuesday's) meeting, but they were there on the weekend loading. We have a lot of questions regarding what their plans are down the road, how permanent this is going to be and the fire chief is going to be there and he has several questions and we want to hear what their answers are.
"Once again we will also push them to have an open house in the near future and meet with the citizens. If we don't have any control, then they need to hear from the citizens what we are hearing."
Asked what it is council is hearing, St. Onge said he has received three calls from concerned citizens but added other members of council have received numerous inquiries from residents worried about the possibility of odours emanating from the station, noise and the number of tanker trucks that will be using Kensington Avenue to access the site.
"I've heard more about trucks than anything. If there are 50 trucks a day, it is busy in that area already as it is. There are some concerns and people are always worried about Kensington, how much more traffic we can take there."
St. Onge said the City also felt somewhat ambushed by the CPR announcement that they were moving ahead with the transload station and planned to address that at Tuesday's meeting.
"We thought we would hear before. They were supposed to check with the fire department and we didn't hear anything from the fire department so we just assumed they were not going ahead. The press release that was sent to (the media), that's the first we knew it was actually going to take place," said St. Onge who also noted that CPR also informed them at the September meeting that the station would only be a pilot project, something that was not mentioned in the press release announcing the station.
Council also addressed the sentiment in the community that the City allowed CPR to set up the station. St. Onge said CPR really only answers to Transport Canada and any move to take them to court would wind up costing millions of taxpayers' dollars.
"We didn't allow them. One of our people said they should have to have a permit and we went to them and they said they don't fall under those regulations. They don't follow bylaws in any community across Canada."
"We didn't just let them walk into town and do what they want," noted Councillor Lynn Chipley during Monday's meeting. "They just walked into town and did what they want. It's a little bit like David taking on Goliath. They are a tough nut to crack."
