Prince Albert mayor weighs in on Husky spill report

Husky Energy released a report last week about the oil spill that rolled through Prince Albert at the end of July.

Now staff from the City of Prince Albert are giving their input on the results.

“We look forward to working in partnership to make sure [our river ways] are protected for future generations,” Mayor Greg Dionne said.

In a press conference hosted at city hall Monday, Dionne said the city is waiting for its own independent results.

“We just didn’t count on the province, or Husky. We had engaged our own independent consultant’s review and to work with our technical people,” Dionne said.

One piece their assessment required, however, was Husky’s report on the spill.

Dionne said the city’s internal report will be coming soon. It will look at when the spill happened, and how it was able to float 380 kilometres between the leak site and the city of Prince Albert.

The mayor said he isn’t educated in the sciences of ground movement and now he has questions about the safety of pipelines that cross rivers. 

“Where don’t we have a problem with sloping in the river?” Dionne asked.

“I have a concern if we have more pipelines going across [the river]… Wherever there is an oil line going along the river bank, has that been compromised or weakened?”

Dionne called for “tight” monitoring and regulations of pipelines from his provincial partners.

“We’re not just worried about what happened in the past, we want to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

Dionne said in the beginning, the city was left on its own by Husky. This led to challenges getting information from the unit command, which the mayor said he will be inquiring about.

Dionne said the city will be issuing more bills to Husky.

“We have some more billings to do,” Dionne said.

“We’ll have some future bills because of some of the repairs we can do to, like to Little Red.”

Dionne said a few river banks needed some repairs after a temporary pipeline was run from the regional park to the city of Prince Albert. The repairs cannot be done over the winter, so the bills haven’t yet been issued to Husky.

“So far, they’ve been very co-operative in paying the bills. The president did give my city manager and myself the assurance that they will make us whole,” Dionne said.

The mayor called the spill a learning experience and added it likely bolstered improvements to the water treatment plant.

“At no time was our water compromised,” Dionne said.

“I believe our plant is even better, because we’ve added three more barriers of filters to better protect our water.”

In an emailed statement, Husky told paNOW the company takes full responsibility for the incident, and added it will continue to work with communities to make the situation right.