It’s widely agreed that Canadian foot-dragging on the Kyoto protocol has been driven by those recalcitrant Neanderthals, the energy producers of Alberta.

Without wading into the pros and cons of Kyoto, it may be time to stick up for the energy industry.

Shouldn’t the sector get credit for undergoing an astonishing collective exercise in consciousness-raising over the past few years?

Larry MacDougal, Business Edge
Garry Chan and Kathy Preston of Jacques Whitford Environment Ltd. praise industry for action.

For confirmation, talk to someone from the latest Alberta growth industry – environmental consultation.

Environmental consultants are proliferating like bunnies on fertility drugs, as corporations race to get up to speed re: ever-tightening restrictions on emissions, leaks, spills and toxic waste.

Granted, industry motives may not be based on an altruistic wish to preserve Our Living Planet.

“Public awareness has increased a lot in the past few years. (The public is) demanding a lot more from operators,” said Kathy Preston, division manager for air quality at Jacques Whitford Environment Limited.

Translation: When sales are threatened by a negative public perception, even dinosaurs start scrambling to get with the program.

Nevertheless, Preston assigns good marks to the industry for the strength of its response to public concerns about sour-gas emissions, to cite one example.

“The corporate response has been huge over the past five years, and has accelerated during the past two,” said Preston, a rising star at a company which has doubled its Calgary-based consulting staff in the past 18 months to a total of about 90.

“And most of my clients had already reached a fairly high consciousness level on environmental issues by the time I started working with them,” she said.

Some of those clients are in limbo, waiting for the Energy and Utilities Board to finalize rewritten guidelines for sour-gas operators, with emphasis on health and safety, risk assessment and emergency response plans.

The EUB is acting in response to December, 2000, recommendations from the provincial advisory committee on public safety and sour gas.

In its turn, the advisory committee was created in response to public worries that sour gas may pose a threat to children and other living things.

Ergo, business is brisk for sharp young environmentalists such as Preston, a chemical engineer from Queens whose PhD thesis explored the effects of nitrogen dioxide on ozone.

Headquartered in Dartmouth, N.S, Jacques Whitford is a 30-year-old company that started as a group of geotechnical engineering consultants targeting the offshore oil and gas industry.

A decade ago, the company expanded into Calgary, employees concentrate primarily on air-quality management, environmental management systems and site assessment. Not all southern Alberta’s pollution is airborne.

Once in a while a Calgary residential district – remember Lynnwood Ridge? – discovers to its horror that it was built on land once occupied by an abandoned oil refinery or wellsite.

Or a firm learns that the foundation of its light industrial/office complex has been placed atop tonnes of garbage, which accumulated over long years in a forgotten landfill.

Concerned community associations, fearful of plunging property values, approach environmental consultants to arrange testing and subsequent clean-up. The idea is to alert municipal authorities and Alberta Environment and then get the job done as quickly and quietly as possible. No reporters, please.

“We’re not hiding anything,” stressed Garry Chan, Jacques Whitford’s business development manager.

“But the city has been developed over time. Some communities discover areas which have been filled in with waste material,” Chan continued.

“That was acceptable in the past. It’s not acceptable now. What we have to do is deal with it, find a solution that’s amenable to all.”

Always quick on the uptake, the developers figured out that it’s preferable to test for contamination BEFORE getting ready to build.

Sometimes, that’s a painful experience. A developer might pay a $10,000 consultation fee to be told the property requires a $100,000 cleanup.

It’s fascinating to contemplate how the money markets have learned – from harsh experience – to serve as their own environmental watchdog.

Before financing a land development project, banks now demand to see an environmental review of the real estate.

That’s because some got badly burned in the past.

“In the old days, a few lenders did foreclosures, then found the site to be contaminated,” Chan explained. “It actually cost them more to clean it up than the property was worth. Now they do their due diligence.”

So say a prayer of gratitude for your friendly neighbourhood bankers – guarding Our Living Planet, while they protect their own backsides.