Tomahawk residents lose bid to appeal sour oil well approval

A group of residents in Tomahawk, Alta., lost their bid to appeal the regulatory approval for three sour oil wells that are being drilled near their community.

In a written ruling released Friday, Court of Appeal Justice Frans Slatter dismissed the residents' request for leave to appeal the December ruling by the Alberta Energy Resources Conservation Board (ERCB).

The ruling allows Calgary-based Highpine Oil and Gas Ltd. to drill the wells near the hamlet, 100 kilometres southwest of Edmonton.

Residents have opposed the project, citing concerns that an accident at one of the wells could release toxic gas that could harm children at anearby school.

'I love my kids going there and it'll break my heart if I have to leave this area and pull them from the school because of some greedy oil companies.Tomahawk resident Anita Berger

Anita Berger was one of the residents who went to court.

If one of the wells starts producing oil, Berger said she'll either enroll her two children in a school an hour away or move from the area.

"We love this area. We love that school.The teachers are fantastic.There are small class sizes,"she said. "I love my kids going there and it'll break my heart if I have to leave this area and pull them from the school because of some greedy oil companies."

In a hearing held on Tuesday, lawyers for Berger and seven other Tomahawk residents outlined a number of grounds for appeal.

The lawyers argued the residents weren't able to find experts to respond to volumes of technical documents Highpine submitted to the ERCB a month before hearings started in September. They also said the ERCB didn't get to read all the submissions Highpine collected from the public because some of the information was blacked out due to privacy concerns.

However, Justice Slatter said the board postponed the start of the hearing by a week to give people more time to prepare rebuttals. On the issue of the blacked-out information, the judge ruled the board got a full range of opinion on the project during the public hearings that started in September.

"It is unlikely that any particular objection was not aired at the hearing, or that the panel failed to understand that the community opposed the licences, and so any error of law here would not realistically have effected the result," he wrote.

The judge rejected other arguments as either not having enough substance to grant leave to appeal or as not raising any issues of law.