Slow Catastrophes, Cumulative Impacts, Multiple Scales
and
Resilience in the Oil-Tar Sands:
A Case for Collaborative Communication and Communicative
Planning?
Nancy C. Doubleday
Presented at:
The Virginia Tech Symposium on Enhancing Resilience to Catastrophic Events through
Communicative Planning:
November 16-18, 2008.
Corresponding author: Nancy C. Doubleday
Associate Professor
Geography & Environmental Studies
Carleton University
1125 Colonel By Drive
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
K1S 5B6
Nancy_Doubleday@carleton.ca
ncdday@gmail.com
Note: Please contact corresponding author for permission prior to any use of this draft. Please do
not cite in any form without permission.
1
Introduction
If we wish for the capacity to develop alternative scenarios for the future that support
social-ecological resilience, and to reduce our prospects of confronting “unthinkable”1 whenever
possible by anticipating it and adjusting course proactively then, arguably, we are at a point
where we need to advance our conceptual, technological and communicative approaches to
collaboration across scales. In terms of planning and preparing for the unthinkable, regardless of
scale, first we must envision it. Vision requires in turn integration of knowledge from diverse
sources, in novel configurations. At times, it seems that collectively we possess more than
enough knowledge but lack the capacity to put it together in a conceptually and ultimately
politically compelling way.
In terms of bring about conceptual change, collective efforts clearly matter, and hence the
importance of collaborative meetings such as this. Earlier collaborative achievements in
conceptual development related to resilience underscore this point and bring us to the
significance of the present symposium. For example, we have recognized the linkages that exist,
particularly in terms of scale and system dynamics (Gunderson et al., 1995); and we have
established incontestably the integrated character of social-cultural-ecological systems and the
need to address them as such (e.g. Berkes and Folke, 1998). We have envisioned systems of
systems as “panarchies” of systems and adaptive cycles, offering alternative metaphors for
organisation and change (Gunderson and Holling, 2002). We have pressed forward in social
learning by learning from experience at boundaries and across divides (Berkes et al., 2005). We
1
http://www.ipg.vt.edu/resilience/
2
have learned about how we re-construct our world in the process of re-constructing ourselves and
our behaviours (Westley et al., 2007, Doubleday, 2007), and we have learned that when we
engage in a new synthesis of co-management and adaptive management that “the results of the
convergence open up some additional opportunities” distinct from each precursor (Armitage et
al., 2007). These are all fruitful hybrids. All point to the next steps and new syntheses emerging
in the current symposium: the big questions about how collaboration occurs, how
communication can be effective in co-creating collaboration (with thanks and apologies to
McLuhan), and the ever present challenge of re-conceptualizing the human project under the
triad of equity, economy and ecology in order to acknowledge and accommodate new insights
into social-cultural-ecological systems.
Now we have the opportunity collectively to engage with a substantial body of theory and
practice whose intrinsic processes purpose is to engage with and to create futures: the field of
communicative planning. Contributions by the epistemic community formed round this
symposium address many aspects of communicative planning, and this collaboration (like earlier
collaborative works, some of which have been mentioned) will undoubtedly be much more than
the sum of its parts. Following the lead of Holling, Gunderson and Ludwig, in 2002, who state:
“Interestingly, local problems of the moment can have part of their cause located half a
planet away and have causes whose source is from slow changes accumulated over
centuries.” (Holling, Gunderson and Ludwig, in Gunderson and Holling, 2002: 21);
the present paper takes on a small but hopefully useful task, in attempting to clarify cross-scale
changes in social-ecological relations occurring in different locations and linked by connections
3
with a mega project (the oil-tar sands); with a view to identifying opportunities for planning for
resilience in the face of slow catastrophe.
The idea that we can look across time and space and see causal relations between
important issues of the day and events and conditions in other places and other times, leads
directly to questions about our capacity to anticipate and to address “slow changes” in our own
time, across scales that are both spatial and temporal. Such “slow changes” include, for example,
loss of biological and cultural diversity, violation of human rights, climate change, deforestation,
child poverty, toxic pollution, privatization of public goods and economic exploitation of the
vulnerable, all leading to loss of collective confidence and to cumulative social-culturalecological-economic disorder. At some point, these “slow changes” may move beyond disorder
and increasing entropy to produce chaotic conditions that can legitimately be thought of as
“catastrophe”. By problematizing slow change across scales, taking the oil-tar-sands as an
example, this paper aims to contribute to our understanding of how early warnings of slow
catastrophe might appear in terms of social-ecological change. It also looks for elements of
collaborative processes that might assist in anticipating slow catastrophe, and perhaps, in the best
of worlds, avert it, at least in some cases.
By looking to these emergent strategies for analysis and intervention, such as resilience
thinking about systems of systems (“panarchies”), communicative planning, adaptive comanagement, open source social innovation, and collaborative interventions we seek alternatives
to diversify existing patterns of crisis-to-catastrophe followed by conventional command-andcontrol and reactive political response. Taking the adaptive cycle (Gunderson and Holling, 2002)
4
as a metaphor for system change, and the oil-tar-sands development in northern Alberta as a case
study of a panarchy engaged in slow change, we hope to understand some aspects of large
questions: 1) “when is slow change in fact slow catastrophe?”; 2) “how can existing tools be
applied through collaboration to address slow catastrophes?”; 3) “what can we learn about
conceptualizing possible collaborative models from the example of the oil-tar sands?” and 4)
“how can we scale up from understandings of slow catastrophe to planning for the
‘unthinkable’”?
Panarchy and the Adaptive Cycle: Heuristics for Making Change
In 2002, Holling et al., identified two important paradoxes that contribute ultimately to
stasis in systems and resistance to integration: pathology in development and management at
regional scales, and the paradox of the expert. Drawing from earlier work by Gunderson et al.,
(1995), in 2002 these authors proposed “panarchy” (as the antithesis of “hierarchy”) as a
paradigm to better address integration. These authors then targeted cross-scale dynamics of
system change and across discipline approaches to complex systems where interlinked processes
determine outcomes (in Gunderson and Holling, 2002). Pursuing these steps toward a theory of
adaptive change in the context of communicative planning and adaptive co-management that
might emerge as “adaptive communicative co-planning” or “resilience planning”, itself generates
opportunities to innovate. Taking as a starting point three emergent understandings: first, the
interlinked nature of our worlds (Barabási, 2003, Csermely 2006); second, acknowledgment that
we construct these worlds from divergent perspectives (Holling et al., 2002); and third, that there
is a pressing need to move the triple bottom line of the economy-equity-environment triad to the
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top of agendas wherever we find ourselves, creates the potential for novelty to arise. The larger
implication of taking a panarchical approach is that by stepping away from the standard
orthodoxy imbedded in hierarchical ordering of relationships and knowledge and power, we have
the capacity to integrate our silos of knowledge and experience and to effectively collaborate in
planning for the future, to recognize gaps and blockages, and to better anticipate incipient crisis
and catastrophe.
To illustrate, a complex, cross-scale, interlinked example is helpful and the oil-tar-sands
project of northern Alberta provides a rich and challenging case. Whether it is a bonanza or a
slow catastrophe is a matter of keen debate, cutting across silos of knowledge and expertise. The
contested and contentious presentations made by the various viewpoints engaged in the oil-tarsands draw into sharp focus the partiality of our collective understanding. The complexity of the
case itself is almost overwhelming when factoring in social-ecological cross-scale effects
ranging from human and ecosystem health to energy and climate policy.
Past failures in analogous situations demonstrate the immaturity of our collective
capacity to respond. All of these factors make this project an inviting prospect for exploration of
resilience thinking, applied learning, adaptive co-management and communicative planning.
Building on the adaptive cycle metaphor is a useful strategy because we are concerned with
future states and gradual failures when we speak of “slow catastrophes”. The adaptive cycle
metaphor allows for thinking about system change through time and across scales and presumes
system change is a constant. Thinking at multiple scales and at a range of time periods is
necessary in order to characterise the scope and magnitude of the large scale development.
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Although the oil-tar-sands is nominally situated in northern Alberta, in fact it ultimately has the
potential for cross-scale effects throughout Canada, as well as between nations and globally.
These potentials can be seen regardless of whether the lens used is social, economic or
ecological.
Communicative planning can be seen to have evolved in part from participatory
approaches of the 1970s and 1980s into a hybrid model based on collaboration as well as
interest-based behaviours, and characterised by networks of influence and knowledge, and
formation of epistemic groups around issues (Hillier 2002). This “cultural turn” in planning
enriches earlier spatial and rational traditions by diversifying the range of actors and factors
considered, as well as extending the field of participation to be more inclusive of those
considered to be “at the margins” (Hillier 2002). While an exhaustive review is well beyond the
scope of the present paper, it must be noted that planning practitioners have also formulated
critiques (e.g. McGuirk, 2001), based on the realities of the inability of consensus alone to
constrain power where interests are vested. Elsewhere, asymmetries of power have been seen as
defeating co-management initiatives (e.g. Nadasdy, 2007). Alternatively, from the standpoint of
applying the metaphor of the adaptive cycle, asymmetries of power have also been understood as
potential drivers of self-organisation and system change that can be harnessed in adaptive comanagement (Doubleday, 2007). Resilience thinking offers a systems approach to complexity
that has allows for spatial and temporal change and adaptation (Gunderson, Holling and
Peterson, 2002; Westley, 2002) and surprise (Janssen, 2002). Here resilience thinking is invoked
on two fronts: in order to better understand the processes of social-ecological change, and also as
a means of extending the reach of communicative planning to include a proactive vision of the
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ecological and the cultural. In moving from perceptions of theoretical limitations toward creation
of a planning horizon capable of both operating under the banner of economy-ecology-equity
(the “triple E”) as well as supporting processes of social-ecological development as they move
toward it, models of distributed power are needed, as are self-organizing systems. By
establishing a socially innovative discourse modelled on “open source” technology that is
relevant to communicative planning and using the “adaptive cycle metaphor” of Holling and
Gunderson (2002 p. 41), it becomes possible to conceptualize collaborative planning and
decisions for system change. This strategy differs from previous attempts to problematize social
processes of decision making in the context of system change, notably that of precaution (e.g.
O’Brien 2000 and others), which transforms debates about science into questions of
environmental justice, and environmental assessment (Dietz and Stern, 2008 and others), which
casts public participation as more appropriate category for advancing democratic action than
citizenship-based rights or collaboration through adaptive co-management. What is different here
is the starting point: a focus on adaptive, collaborative practices and strategies applied to
planning and systems design within a paradigm that assumes system integration and change and
aims for resilience.
From a communicative planning perspective, critiques have pointed out that the
heterogeneity of distribution of power and access to resources (including information), and the
role of planners and other experts may impede consensus and have suggested that alternatives to
consensus-based models are needed. Here we might take lessons from open source innovations
and adaptive co-management in order to develop communicative planning strategies for
engaging constructively with difference and power. One useful example from open source is the
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constellation model, proposed by Surman and Surman (2007), and developed by the Canadian
Partnership for Children’s Health and the Environment. Here rather than assuming homogeneity
of interests where goals are shared, diversity was a starting point and active steps were taken to
recognize and work with it and with sharing power and control. This maybe a way of managing
the “consensus problem” raised by McGuirk: each interest group was free to advance its
approach and position according to its relative ability, subject to shared goals of improving
children’s health and the environment. Adaptive co-management offers a practical vision of
hybrid, flexible, negotiated governance, primarily viewed as place and/or issue bound and
relevant at local or regional scales. Can we think now about scaling this up transnationally?
Pools of Impact: A Brief Overview of the Oil-Tar-Sands Industry and its Ripple Effects
The oil industry has traditionally viewed itself as being concerned solely with production,
transport and marketing. As our ecological understanding and our justice systems have
developed, environmental assessments and benefit sharing agreements have become part of the
business of oil. The dominant viewpoint within the industry remains as it was - primarily
economic. However oil is much more than just an industry: current social constructions of oil
range from oil as a geopolitical force capable of starting wars, to oil as an agent of climate
change, threatening life as we know it. In this introduction to the oil-tar-sands industry, diverse
perspectives and information sources are included as examples of trajectories, and analogies
from past and current situations are invoked. Since catastrophes can be forecasted but can only
be analysed after the fact, proxy events are needed. This is necessary to describe the scope and
magnitude of this complex system effectively, and to sketch out the vulnerability to crisis and
9
slow catastrophe that is inherent in the hierarchical conception of the social-economic-ecological
context within which the oil-tar-sands industry operates. It is necessary to do this in order to have
the deep understanding needed to re-order these hierarchical elements within a panarchical
collaborative paradigm capable of resilience under changing conditions.
a) Production
In the field of fossil fuel energy development, the complex of oil-tar sands (bitumen
deposits) in Northern Alberta, Canada has achieved a degree of controversy in Canada and
internationally not seen since the proposal to build the Mackenzie Valley Pipeline in the early
1970s which led to the Berger Inquiry and its report (Berger, 1977). For 50 years, the major oil
companies and the provincial government of Alberta have invested in the exploratory mapping,
and experimental extraction and processing of these bitumen-rich sands. Values and attitudes of
these stakeholders may have become entrenched in this process. In adaptive cycle terms, the oiltar-sands may appear as a recent and rapid transformation, as it is on the ground, but it is
important to realise that the skeletal traces have been laid down like coral reef pioneers for half a
century. Meanwhile outside the oil-tar-sands, the broader context is shifting: climate concerns
have made it to powerful political tables, social justice concerns have achieved global
recognition, and the economy and the environment are on the minds and in the bodies of citizens
in new ways, as the legacies of fifty years of industrial practices become visible and audible in
ecosystem and human health.
Within the oil-tar-sands, new players are entering the field, both as developers and
producers, and as investors. Recently Norwegian Statoil made a significant investment in Alberta
oil-tar sands. Norway is an interesting model, having banked its North Sea oil wealth to support
Norwegian social programs, and developed technologies for sequestering CO2 in its depleted
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wells, accumulating tradable greenhouse gas offset credits (GGCs) in the process. The
Norwegian capital fuels oil-tar-sands development, while the possibility of accessing GGCs
could mitigate the “dirty oil” emissions profile of oil-tar-sands production.
Centred on Fort McMurray, with major fields at Cold Lake and Peace River, the region
affected by production covers the northern third of Alberta and reserves have also been found in
Saskatchewan (Map 1 Box 1). The known oil-tar-sands resource reserves are vast, with estimates
of 175 billion barrels, making Canada number two in global oil reserves (Stringham 2005) and
the potential for future finds is still being determined. Production in 2005 was 1 million barrels
per day with an increase to 2.7 million barrels per day predicted by 2015 (Stringham, 2005).
In northern Alberta, the production of 1 barrel of oil from Alberta Oil-Tar Sands requires
from 4 to 100 barrels of fresh water (depending on the extraction process), which is
contaminated when it is used for production, and 400 to 600 cubic metres of natural gas. The
greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from the processes of production are also of concern,
exceeding those that will be produced by combustion of the heavy oil when it reaches market.
In winter, the industry’s demand for fresh water from the Athabasca River exceeds the
lowest flow levels. This means that not only is there little or no water for the First Nations and
other peoples living there who depend on the river for their water for drinking, cooking and
transportation, no water is available for aquatic organisms that over-winter in a resting stage
requiring protection from freezing by the presence of running water above. The affected species
include important food fisheries. Implications for other organisms are less well known.
Production involves the transformation of a region of northern Alberta from productive
boreal taiga and wetland teeming with wildlife and migratory birds, to a scarred landscape that
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has been logged, bulldozed and then mined. Toxic waters lie on the surface and waterfowl have
been among the reported causalities at the local scale. Health and safety issues are a worksite
priority, with intense onsite supervision aimed at avoiding accidents and especially fatalities.
The industry is aware of the need to improve performance and has initiated reclamation
and restoration experiments, including retention and management of contaminated water,
reduction of water demand, reintroduction of vegetation through agri-forestry and groundcover
vegetation replanting. They have also entered into industry-community partnerships to direct
research toward mutually agreed priorities, notably through the Cumulative Environmental
Management Association (CEMA), with some success but also periods of challenge.
b) Transportation
Other industries are also caught up in the speculative push of oil-tar-sands development:
pipelines, tanker shipping, refineries and ancillary industries like the fluidizing, anti-bacterial,
and anti-corrosive, chemical treatments for pipelines, and for the oil-tar-sands bitumen itself, are
all experiencing massive growth (in a range of forms) to enable transport. For example, in 2005
China and Taiwan featured prominently as markets in tanker shipping scenarios (Stringham,
2005). This market perception apparently drove politically expedited tanker access into the
British Columbia’s “inside” waterway at Kitimat in June 2006, in violation of a shipping
moratorium that has existed since 19722.
The Kitimat tanker event exemplifies the point made by McGuirk (2001) who
characterised theories of communicative planning based on consensus as being in denial of the
realities of “power and difference”. It is also possible to see it as evidence of a “democracy gap”
2
See: http://livingoceans.org/_pvwC21CD930/files/PDF/news_release/MoratoriumTankers.pdf
12
in decision-making processes that has the consequence of favouring powerful interests at the
expense of citizens’ capacity to be self-governing. This is a recurrent theme in the development
of natural resources globally. It is also a major challenge to communicative planning and
adaptive co-management, and has been since the Lancaster Sound Hearings on a shipping route
through the Northwest Passage .
Pipeline construction and modification (including reversal of pipeline flow direction)
have been underway for decades. There are many plans for shipping oil-tar-sands crude, some
using a mix of U.S. and Canadian routes, and there are ever-increasing numbers of refineries at
potential destinations in the U.S. (e.g. Texas, Illinois, Oklahoma, Missouri) and in Canada (e.g.
Montreal, Sarnia). There are collateral consequences of all of these steps, across scales (for an
example, please see the report of a 2002 event by Cam Stevens3. Sabotage by various interests
across scales is an ongoing concern in the pipeline industry, even in Canada (e.g. the EnCana gas
pipeline explosions of recent weeks4).
Scaling Up the Oil-Tar-Sands: A Role for Resilience?
The region involved in production of oil-tar-sands and its transformed surface are visible from
space, using satellite imagery available on Google EarthTM, and it is growing horizontally and
vertically and temporally in magnitude and sphere of influence.
a) Oil Industries: Refining, Slow Changes and Proxies for the Long-Term
3
http://www.ualberta.ca/ERSC/enews/ERSCV4N1.pdf, pp.4-5
see http://news.google.ca/news?hl=en&q=gas+pipeline+explosions+2008&um=1&ie=UTF8&sa=X&oi=news_result&resnum=1&ct=title
4
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Heavy oils (a.k.a. bitumen, oil-tar-sands) require specialised refineries. Building of new
facilities and upgrading of existing plants has been occurring for a number of years across North
America, with locations being determined by proximity to markets, particularly in the U.S.A.
This growth is expected to continue. There will be consequences, certainly, but what might they
look like? Plans for “continental energy security” have accelerated some of these visions and
construction is in progress. Other new facilities are planned. An example is chosen here to
ground the associated issues by providing a particular geographic reference point. In 2006 Shell
proposed building a new facility in St. Clair Township, adjacent to the St. Clair River opposite
communities in Michigan. Relying on a transcontinental network of pipelines, Shell wanted to
transport warmed, modified bitumen eastward to Sarnia, Canada, for refining. However many
collateral issues would be similar regardless of the example used.
Closest to the oil-tar-sands, north of Fort McMurray, are the First Nation communities
that rely on their reserves and adjacent Crown Lands for their traditional food supply (Wesche,
pers.com.), [CITATION NEEDED]. These peoples report being affected now in a variety of
ways, including loss of access to reliable water supplies and renewable resources such as the
food fisheries that are supported by surface waters. As well, emissions hazardous to human
health including noise, light, dust and fumes from processes at the open pit sites are constant
sources of concern during the 24/7 mining operations5.
Farther away, in Southwestern Ontario, First Nations, farmers and rural residents also
find their livelihoods and way of life affected by the boom north of Fort McMurray, Alberta
(pers. obs.). Complexity exists spatially at local and regional scales here: Southwestern Ontario
lies within the fertile Great Lakes Basin (Map 1, Box 2) and is blessed with one of the longest
growing seasons in Ontario. Farming here is mixed, with mainly small herds of beef, a few
5
http://oilsandstruth.org/downstream-tarsands-fort-smith-worries-over-water
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piggeries, some larger poultry barns, and corn, soybeans and a range of grains. Important stands
of Carolinian forest, the smallest Canadian eco-region, home of many of the rarest species in
Canada, are also found here.
This region lies south of Sarnia, located at the outflow of Lake Huron into the St. Clair
River (Map 1: Box 2). Once the largest petro-chemical producing area in the world, Sarnia’s
Chemical Valley is undergoing transitions: some old timers like Dow Chemical have left, others
have had corporate restructurings and new players have arrived. This aging industrial mega
development is used here as a proxy for the slow changes that the oil-tar sands may bring in the
future through the refining process as well as collateral enterprises.
One of the long-timers in Chemical Valley is Shell Canada, another is Suncor, which has
a refinery on the St. Clair River. Forming part of the international border between Michigan in
the USA and Ontario in Canada, the St. Clair River flows from Lake Huron at Sarnia/Port Huron
to Lake St. Clair above Windsor/Detroit. This river has been designated an “Area Of Concern”
(AOC) under Annex 2 of the 1987 Protocol to the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement of the
International Joint Commission (IJC). It is a priority for international cooperation for
remediation and is the subject of a Remedial Action Plan (RAP) and overseen by the Bi-National
Public Advisory Committee because failure to meet water quality objectives “has caused or is
likely to cause impairment of beneficial use of the area's ability to support aquatic life”6.
In the case of the St. Clair River (see Map 2), a “serious zone of contamination” currently
extends 6 kilometres southward from the Sarnia industrial complex. However this is an
improving situation, and represents 25% of the contamination originally identified in 1978.
According to the Environmental Commissioner of Ontario (2008), sources of contamination have
included:
6
http://www.ijc.org/rel/boards/annex2/rap_info.htm
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“Discharges of chlorinated organic compounds, heavy metals, oils and greases, phenols,
and suspended solids from petroleum and chemical industries, combined sewer
overflows, sewage treatment plants, spills, as well as historically contaminated sediments,
are the significant environmental concerns”.
Air quality in this area is also related to industry:
“(W)hat is particularly striking about the air pollution in the Sarnia area is the amount of
toxic pollutants released. In 2005, the NPRI facilities7 in the Sarnia area emitted 5.7
million kilograms of “Toxic Air Pollutants,” including numerous chemicals associated
with reproductive and developmental disorders and cancer among humans.” (MacDonald
and Rang, 2007).
To illustrate the contribution of refineries, (based on NPRI data summarized by MacDonald and
Rang) the two refineries already located in the Sarnia area together contributed fifteen percent of
the 6 million kilograms of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) that were emitted to the air in
2005. VOCs are included in “critical air contaminants” (CACs), together with sulphur dioxide,
carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, total particular matter (PM10 and PM2.5) 8.
One of the slow changes of current concern is related to potential health effects of emissions of
toxic pollutants. Here these emissions translate into real consequences for human health:
“There is evidence of the health impacts from air pollution in the City of Sarnia. A recent
study found that hospital admission rates are significantly higher in Sarnia than in the
cities of Windsor and London, Ontario (Fung et al., 2007), particularly with respect to
respiratory and cardiovascular illnesses. Similarly, The Ontario Medical Association
(OMA) estimated that as a result of air pollution, Sarnia-Lambton incurred 100 deaths per
“NPRI facilities” are “medium and large sized Canadian companies” that are “required to report emissions of
carcinogens” to the National Pollution Release Inventory.” (Chenomas and Donner, 2004: 13)
8
http://www.ecojustice.ca/publications/reports/report-exposing-canadas-chemical-valley/attachment 2007:18, 17.
7
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year, 270 hospital admissions, 920 emergency visits and 471,700 minor illness days at a
cost of over $14 million dollars (OMA, 2005). Sarnia-Lambton was one of the
communities found to be most heavily impacted by air pollution among the communities
assessed by the OMA.” (MacDonald and Rang, 2007: 9)
The prevailing winds here come from the north, and the river runs north-south. Emissions from
petro-chemical industries are known to include chemicals which can affect vertebrate endocrine
hormonal systems and have been linked to abnormalities in organisms, in chromosomes
controlling sexual development in offspring, and to various cancers. Petroleum itself is a
complex mix of hydrocarbons, as are its combustion products. Containing straight chain
hydrocarbons as well as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), naturally occurring raw
fossil fuels and their products and wastes are substances of concern across scales, affecting
individual and ecosystem health. Soot for example has been a known carcinogen since the 18th
century (Davis, 2007).
The issue of occurrence of mesothelioma, a fatal wasting cancer, serves as contemporary
analogy from industrial health and safety that is relevant to refineries and allows us to better
understand institutional and regulatory relationships between the oil industry and concerns about
cross-scale health effects. Although the issue is still debated by the industry and international
action is resisted by federal authorities in Canada, widely known collateral impacts of the
petrochemical industrial complex at Sarnia include mesothelioma from the chrysotile asbestos
used to insulate pipes and prevent fires. The time that it takes for this disease to appear following
exposure may be up to 30 to 40 years for adults. Children are more vulnerable. It is not necessary
to work in the industry to be at risk: having a neighbour who does means that those living nearby
are exposed (Davis, 2007). Wives and children of exposed workers have contracted the disease
17
following exposure to the worker’s dirty laundry and deaths are a matter of record (Davis, 2007).
Asbestos pipe wrapping has all but been abandoned now but new cases of mesothelioma
continue to be diagnosed, decades after exposure.
Other cancers, respiratory complaints, and a strongly skewed gender ratio in births in
recent years at Aamjiwnaang First Nation south of Chemical Valley, Sarnia also reflect
emissions from the industrial past (Mackenzie et al., 2005). The industrial present is detectable in
the measureable amounts of reportable emissions: 131,000 tonnes in 2005.
Scaling up again, in terms of gross contributions to provincial emissions, MacDonald and
Rang (2007) report that: 14% of Ontario’s total toxic emissions in 2005 came from industries in
the Sarnia area, more than the amounts emitted exceeded those of the provinces of New
Brunswick, Saskatchewan and Manitoba. This amount also exceeded emissions from any other
Ontario city, and was attributed directly to the cumulative effects of having a large concentration
of emitters of toxic contaminants within a 25 kilometre radius of the city centre.
This then is a brief summary of the environmental toxic conditions resulting from 50
years of oil industry refining and related industrial activity. It serves as a proxy for the future of
any region that becomes a destination for conventional oil or for oil-tar-sands. Shell’s proposal
to build the St Clair Township refinery south of Sarnia would result in additional emissions from
the refining of 250,000 barrels of heavy oil per day.
It is the ever-proliferating international network of pipelines and pipeline operators that
makes it possible for Shell and other heavy oil producers to contemplate shipping the warmed
bitumen from northern Alberta, across the prairies and around Lake Superior, to Ontario, as well
as south and east to US depots for refining or west for trans-shipment to Asia. Conoco and
EnCana for example signed a deal in 2007 to boost production in the oil-tar-sands and increase
18
U.S. refinery capacity for heavy oil while swapping 50% interests in each other’s businesses and
mutually insuring against market volatility, just after China pulled out of the West Coast
“Gateway” trans-shipping project (McCarthy 2007). But these pipelines go virtually everywhere
in the industrialized regions of North America: if the oil-tar sands do not flow to Sarnia, they will
flow to a region elsewhere and the Chemical Valley of Sarnia today will then become one of the
scenarios relevant to that region’s future. Clearly this is slow change in action, but is it slow
catastrophe?
b) Policy and Institutional Frameworks: Adaptive or Maladaptive?
The final recommendations of the MacDonald and Rang report conclude:
“The facilities in the Sarnia area are emitting large amounts of toxic pollutants, the
largest amounts of any community in Ontario. The health and environmental evidence is
sufficient to warrant immediate action to reduce air pollution in the Sarnia area. The
precautionary principle must be followed. The absence of scientific certainty regarding
the causes of the observed health problems and the full effects of the air pollution in the
Sarnia area should not be used as a reason to postpone action. Regulations requiring
immediate reductions in industrial pollution emissions should be implemented without
delay.” p.26
Yet the Province of Ontario has created “fast-track” environmental assessment procedures that
virtually ensure that mega-projects like the Shell St. Clair Refinery proposal will be approved.
Like the industry, government is evidently also rigid in it viewpoint and commitment to one
vision of the future, while marginalizing those who hold others.
19
The significant differences in numbers of males and females being born and reported by
the Aamjiwnaang First Nation adds a multigenerational dimension to concerns about cumulative
effects and gives a poignant new meaning to the term “intergenerational equity”, (a condition of
sustainable development identified in the Brundtland Report on “Our Common Future”, World
Commission on Environment and Development, 1986).
In 2007, Canada signed the International Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples
which recognises the right of Indigenous Peoples to their lands and resources and to their food
and livelihoods. Previously Canada was a signatory to the International Covenant on Civil and
Political Rights and the Covenant on Social, Cultural and Economic Rights both of which
recognise the rights of peoples not to be deprived of their livelihoods. The United States is also a
signatory to these documents. These instruments are a potential tool for equity and justice, but
because they are not integrated into the economic-industrial system their potential for change is
not exploited successfully very often.
Between 1970 and 1998, incidences of cancer in Canada grew by 27 percent (in women)
to 35 percent (in men), after controlling for effects of aging; and in 1993 the cost of cancer in
Canada was 16.2 billion dollars and in 2000 in the United States it was 180 billion dollars
according to the National Institutes of Health (Chernomas and Donner, 2004). In SarniaLambton in 2005, The Ontario Medical Association (OMA) estimated that Sarnia-Lambton
incurred 100 deaths per year, 270 hospital admissions, 920 emergency visits and 471,700 minor
illness days at a cost of over $14 million dollars as a result of air pollution (OMA, 2005).
Research has established that refineries and related industries are significant contributors
(MacDonald and Rang, 2007).
20
Bearing in mind that these slow changes in health and in the environment of the Sarnia
area are the cumulative result of more than 50 years of oil refining, related petrochemical
industrial development and social-economic-political collusion, it is not unreasonable to expect
that refining 250,000 barrels of oil-tar sands per day in any community may produce its own
lasting consequences. If the situation itself is not agreed to constitute a slow catastrophe, surely
the failure to act collectively on what we know, should be?
e) Tools for Collaboration: Adaptive Co-Planning for Meaningful Social-CulturalEcological-Economic Change
There are many tools that are relevant; notwithstanding the valid critiques others have
made (McGuirk, 2001) concerning power and influence. They include reframing, redefinition,
visioning and learning. The first step is adoption of a conscious position, aligning with the crossscale systems approach of panarchy and acknowledging the heterogeneity of the decision
landscape. This also includes a vision that change is not only inevitable but that it may be
possible to actively open doors to creative change that supports human scale public goods, such
as vibrant ecosystems, peace, viable livelihoods, healthy children and robust elderly.
Theory is also a tool when coupled with activities of learning organizations. Important
contributions in the context of planning include recognition that transparent and free flows of
information are essential and understanding that, in the spirit of the work of Innes, “many types
of information count, other than ‘objective’ information” [NEED REFERENCE].
Communicative planning offers a valuable nexus for praxis, combining theory and practice. In
this vein, Harrison’s review of the literature (2002: 159) may be helpful when he identifies
pragmatism as a key. He re-visits Dewey’s “radical empiricism” as pragmatism and points to
21
Joas 1998 reference to pragmatism as “a theory of the creative character of human action”.
Elsewhere, critical theory has assisted in creating reflexive understanding and in turn
contributing to what Bandura terms “self-efficacy” (Pinkerton 1991, Doubleday 2007). Learning
by doing and watching what others do is fundamental to human development. Until relatively
recently, citizens have been passive in the face of the slow catastrophes around them in Sarnia,
for example, but this has begun to change9.
Regional planning has bravely attempted integrative approaches to mega project planning
and communicative planning processes before, notably in northern Canada, and particularly in
the case of the Lancaster Sound Regional Study in 1979. In this instance, offshore drilling was
proposed in Lancaster Sound, an important ecological area significant for its wildlife values both
to conservationists and to local Inuit. According to Peter Jacobs, author of the resulting Green
Paper (in 1983), the key to development of a planning process for Lancaster Sound was the
establishment of the principle that a project cannot be evaluated without an understanding of its
context. The Inuit at the time took the position that:
“...the process of development is more important than the nature of the development
project. They accept the idea of development, but within two limits: first, a development
project must not cause long-term or extensive damage to the environment; and second, a
development project must not reduce their economic and lifestyle options, which range
from a subsistence economy to a mixed economy to a cash economy.”10
In essence this would appear to a productive frame for futures planning. It is highly relevant to
First Nations facing the production phase of the oil-tar sands in northern Alberta and to farmers
contemplating a new refinery south of Chemical Valley. It is also a precursor to ideals of
9
http://www.theobserver.ca/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=1285720&auth=PAUL%20MORDEN,%20THE%20OBSERVER
10
http://www.carc.org/pubs/v14no3/3.htm
22
sustainable development articulated by Brundtland, and serves to establish the primacy of the
triad of economy-ecology-equity as a starting point rather than a bottom line. By beginning with
preservation of system integrity and inserting development so that desired conditions are
maintained (rather than conducting environmental assessment aimed at showing that
development will have no effects) it becomes possible to situate advancing development within
an iterative cycle of double-loop learning.
New technologies and in particular open source models now available offer infrastructure
capacity for social processes in ways never before possible. Organisational models for managing
open source approaches are emerging (Surman and Surman 2008). In addition, novel visions and
strategies for panarchical change are emerging that range from the collective to the individual:
“The size of the tar sands issue can seem daunting, but in reality few issues have
presented an opportunity for a social justice movement to truly articulate a different
vision of organizing the world that has as many entry points, and can provide as large of
an impact. The scale and scope of the tar sands is huge and has tremendously deep
implications for the way we approach questions that span the social justice spectrum.
With a coordinated response involving all sectors of North American social justice
movements currently impacted by the largest industrial project in human history we have
the possibility to change the course of human and ecological fate like nowhere else.”11
Pragmatic responses are emerging, like that of the Aamjiwnaang First Nation Environmental
Committee, who formed the Aamjiwnaang Bucket Brigade to take air samples when industry and
government failed to do so to their satisfaction. One consequence of the Bucket Brigade is that
the government air monitoring station has now been moved to a location downwind of the
industrial complex (Scott, pers.com.).
11
"Everyone's Downstream" from OilSandsTruth.org.
23
Writing in 1985, P.H. Frankel described the oil industry’s diversification and (implicitly)
its resulting resilience:
For almost a hundred years, the structure of the oil industry has been determined by the
existence of large and geographically diversified enterprises that comprised all or most of
its phases (exploration for and production of crude oil, transportation, refining, and
marketing). Only such enterprises could afford to take the risk of investing in such
enterprises because of their abilities to average out the different degrees of profitability
involved.12
The distributed, cross-scale nature of the industry is responsible in part for the operational
flexibility that enables its adaptive capacity, allowing it to avoid operating constraints at local,
national and international levels, and maintaining a rigid trajectory that has traditionally
responded only to economic forces. Clearly a adaptive collaborative planning response will need
to cultivate the same capacities and mirror the adaptive capacity of the industry in order to fully
and effectively engage its attention.
Effective adaptive cross-scale response would engage individuals, both as citizens and as
members of groups and organizations that are more usually recognized as “stakeholders”.
Stakeholders include First Nations, farmers, landowners, residents, industries, governments and
other institutions, but all humans share an environment that is socially and ecologically
interdependent. To avoid representation-schemes and their susceptibility to manipulation, the
fundamental right of citizens to participate in decision-making could be recognised. One possible
strategy for doing this is to adopt open source technologies and models, creating new commons
12
https://www.iaee.org/documents/vol_6(4).pdf
24
using internet-based technology to enable horizontal communication and collaboration among all
concerned on a horizontal planning horizon that is virtually limitless, without privileging the
knowledge or power of participants, and ensuring access to digital democratic forums.
Governments do not have the flexibility that the oil business has. Legislative and
regulatory processes are slow and are punctuated by electoral processes and related feedback
loops. Even when government does act, as in the case of the U.S. and the 2007 U.S. Energy
Independence and Security Act, elements of the industry in the U.S. have publicly said that they
expect their government agencies to continue to buy, and burn, heavy oil products. Legal
mechanisms have been of limited utility as enforcement is under-resourced and court challenges
favour deep pockets (Epstein cited in Chernomas and Donner 2004, pp.6-7). The resulting
“democracy gap” has enormous potential for emergent, self-organizing systems to take their
place in the panarchy that the oil-tar sands represents. Scott (2007) has observed that resistance is
a key strategy of the environmental justice movement that is expected to grow in places like
Sarnia where frustration has nurtured self-organization among First Nations and local
government: now they take samples, and conduct health studies. The City of Sarnia itself has
also begun to envision new post-industrial directions and a community planning exercise is just
beginning.
In the language of the adaptive cycle, the conservation phase of the aging industry is
winding down and re-organization is occurring – not uniformly, not everywhere – but in the
patchy heterogeneous panarchy of the oil-tar sands, it is a beginning. Coupled with these winds
of change, are the challenges to the old economic confidence of the industry. Before the 2008
25
financial crisis, amidst the glowing industry reports of potential profitability and benefits such as
continental scale energy security, various oil-tar-sand transport and refining plans received
strong provincial and federal government support in Canada. However, they have also received
criticism from Indigenous Peoples, environmental organisations and conservationists, leading to
what Chris Arsenault13 calls: “a perfect storm of internal and external opposition” that includes
“skyrocketing construction costs, falling crude prices, increasingly vocal opposition from some
native groups, and a little known section of the 2007 U.S. Energy Independence and Security
Act14” all of which have synchronized to “threaten growth projections in northern Alberta”.
The industry does not appear to be in any long-term danger, but situations are less stable and
events are perceived to be less predictable than before. For example, in January 2008, a large
delegation of Albertans and supporters of the oil-tar sands developments visited Washington,
D.C., and called on the White House (Cedoz, 2008). The President and the Energy Secretary
were unavailable due to travel to the Middle East, and the delegation was hosted by then VicePresident, Dick Cheney (Cedoz, 2008). Protesters in polar bear suits outside the White House
campaigned against importing “dirty” oil linked with high CO2 emissions. The President
continued his discussions abroad concerning Middle Eastern oil imports with the House of Saud.
The Alberta delegation returned home and sent a follow up team to Washington a month later. In
addition to the factors identified above, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, global political
positioning around energy security and alliances, and the influence of the international oil
13
holder of the Phil Lind Fellowship at the University of British Columbia for 2008-2009
Section 536 of the U.S. Energy Independence and Security Act prohibits the purchase of synthetic or
unconventional fuels by the U.S. federal agencies (e.g. the military) if the greenhouse gases associated with their
production exceed those of conventional fuels. Clarification of this section specified that it included “fuels derived
from tar sands”, according to Senator Henry Waxman, chair of the House Oversight and Government Reform
Committee, and author of the legislation (http://ipsnews.net/print.asp?idnews=44354). In addition Governor
Schwarzenegger of California has called for a ten percent reduction in carbon in fuels to be sold by 2020. The
elements of the industry have denied that there will be consequences for oil-tar-sands products in the U.S. while
environmentalists believe significant change has occurred (Arsenault, 2008)
14
26
industry players also contribute to the complexity and uncertainty surrounding national and
international energy policy, and to the challenges to forecasting the future through the lens of this
megaproject in particular.
As a counterpoint to the gathering forces produced by the negative social and ecological
impacts of developing the resource, the industry continues to adapt. Relying on expansionary
economics, investment in a continental strategy for oil-tar-sands, (modelled on the pipelineenabled continental natural gas market), has been in play for several years. In July 2007,
Canadian media reported on Conoco-EnCana deals that gave each reciprocal, 50% stakes in the
other’s oil-tar-sands business projects, with Conoco gaining equity in oil sands properties at
Foster Creek and Christina Lake and EnCana gaining equity in two of Conoco’s refineries
(McCarthy, 2007). The strategic implications of this arrangement are several: first the reciprocal
nature of the business deal serves to “insulate” the partners from fluctuations in oil market
prices; second it assures Canadian producers of a market as refineries are upgraded for the heavy
oil; third it offers U.S. interests alternative supplies within continental margins; and fourth, it has
the potential to extend the involuntary commitment of U.S. consumers to the oil-based
economy, rather than to a proliferation of alternatives. Frankel’s analysis still fits: the industry is
on its pins. But it has not yet addressed greenhouse gas (GHG) offsets, a serious issue for an
industry that expends more energy in transport and production of heavy oil than will be captured
when it is consumed.
There are other issues which arise as a result of the transfer of impacts from the point of
production to the point of refining: one of these is the transfer of the emissions associated with
27
the refining process, from northern Alberta to Southern Canada. This includes both greenhouse
gases (GHG) and toxic emissions. Southern Ontario has been recognised as a Canadian “cancer
alley” for more than a decade. Atmospheric science has shown that emissions are transferred
from west to east in Ontario, with Toronto serving as a receptor for emitters upwind to the south
and west, including the Ohio Valley and Sarnia. Peterborough in turn receives these emissions
after Toronto. This means that a majority of the population of Ontario is potentially exposed to
any new emissions generated near Sarnia.
The working hypothesis of this paper has been that by viewing this situation as an
emerging “system of systems” with the potential for multiple “stable states”, through twin lenses
of adaptation and resilience, it is possible to contribute to formulating a public response to what
is clearly a public policy void. To achieve this, it is necessary to consider long-term spatial and
temporal change while finding means to integrate actors who lack roles within decision-making
and recognizing the value of resistance as a force for self-organisation and change. The
significance of weak links (Barabási, 2003, Csermely, 2006) in large systems also needs to be
recognized. Here adaptive co-planning creates opportunity for reconceptualising societal
decision-making by diversifying the both the array of voices heard and the alternative outcomes
that are considered. When dealing with complex systems and a mid- to long-range time horizon,
is change an inevitability or a surprise - or a matter of perspective? While human capacity to
avoid, mitigate or respond to a particular catastrophic event is influenced by many factors,
arguably the nature of the origin ascribed to such an event itself inherently constrains to some
extent the degrees of freedom perceived by humans in making choices.
28
Catastrophic events often have triggers and impact paths at multiple scales, both spatial
and temporal. After the fact, they become subjects of exhaustive, reflexive analysis and
sometimes criticism. In the best of worlds, they may become agents of change. Too often the
signals and warnings that precede crises can be ignored, coming to the fore in post-crisis analysis
and sometimes resulting in punitive, and/or remedial action. Clearly catastrophic damage cannot
often be undone and the best hope is that learning can occur and that catastrophes in analogous
situations in the future can be averted by preventative action based on this learning from past
practice. It is this pragmatic aspect of future application of understandings gained from past and
current practice that Dewey termed “radical empiricism” and that some planners have invoked as
a step toward praxis, linking pragmatism and planning (Harrison, p. 159, referred to above). Here
we could also draw from the theory and methods of science: for example, paleolimnology, where
current conditions serve as proxies for past environments, allowing reconstruction of processes
of environmental change (Smol, 2005).
Why are early warnings in problematic situations not seized as opportunities for redirection and change? According to Pritchard and Sanderson:
“...if change is episodic (that is patchy in time that way ecosystems are patchy in space),
one’s only hope for leverage is to understand where in the episodic cycle the system is,
and to act according. If, in fact, the tendency of social systems is to lock in to a given set
of goals, outputs, and working processes, can it be said that the stable system is locked
into a trajectory of development that can’t be altered until it generates a crisis” (Holling
and Sanderson, 1996: 152).
29
This may be a fair characterization of some aspects of the industry, but given its economic
adaptive capacity, it is not universally applicable.
With respect to those systems in the panarchy that are more concerned with the remaining
two “Es” of the triad of sustainability, different adaptive cycle phases may be in play: reflecting
on the quotation above, and the Aamjiwnaang Bucket Brigade, release and re-organization are
taking place amid the aging facilities of Chemical Valley, both literally and metaphorically.
What is common to both systems is that cross-scale learning is taking place. This needs to
continue and deepen, so that reassessment and adjustment of a collective trajectory can be
considered:
“Learning is viewed as a process of detecting and correcting error, and occurs under two
conditions. The first is when intentions match outcomes of action, and the second is when
intentions and outcomes do not match. Single-loop learning occurs when matches
happen, or when mismatches are corrected by changing one’s strategy or behaviour while
preserving basic values and norms. Double-loop learning occurs by correcting
mismatches by first changing or supplementing existing values and norms, then changing
strategies or behaviour.... Learning occurs at both individual and social levels, but
individuals are the agents for social collectives. Therefore, social learning does not occur
until individuals encode what they have learned in social memory.” (Diduck et al., 2005:
271)
The message here is dual: if we wish to anticipate system failure and avert catastrophes in
the making, we need to understand the state of the system and the forces and processes that are
30
operating to maintain its course, but we also need to engage in “double-loop learning” that
clarifies the values and norms of all of those seeking to influence outcomes. We need to rebalance power through self-organization, and adaptive co-planning enterprises that are
strengthened by inclusivity. It is in this spirit of adaptation through learning and communicative
planning, and of valuing the equitable and ecological components of the triad of sustainability
without privileging the economic, that we must proceed. Resilience thinking has given us the
foundation: human-ecological systems are more than systems of one or the other alone; and all
systems are influx. Adaptive co-management offers a strategic approach and social innovations
are rich with potential for new forms for cross-scale engagement. Around us are the glimmers of
self organization for change across scale that embrace the social-ecological-equitable nexus in
the face of the slow catastrophes that have resulted from continuing to conceptualize systems of
production in the uni-modal terms of the industrial past, when they in fact are also “systems of
systems” or “panarchies” operating flexibly across scales.
Conclusion
Is it a gradual failure to destroy northern human and ecological communities and to
irreversibly contaminate northern waters? Is the death of a few hundred ducks in a waste water
pool as significant as the slow, incremental and inexorable removal of a vast area of habitat
essential for all migratory birds of North and Central and South America in the Western Flyway
during their annual migration? Is it a slow catastrophe to undermine the efforts to restore the
watersheds of the Great Lakes, to further threaten biodiversity, to increase the toxic body burden
of a majority of people living in Ontario, to cast an industrial shadow over and remove from
31
agricultural production 7000 hectares of field and woodland in Great Lakes Basin? Is it
acceptable democratic practice to add to the toxic loads in a region already identified for
remediation and clean up? If we were to wait another 50 years to address these questions, one
suspects that the new generations coming behind us would know the answers with certainty.
In terms of supporting “variability that maintains renewal capacity” – whether from
social, cultural, or ecological perspectives – the deep well-springs of sustainable change:
“The key question for future work is how we can implement ways to expand human
opportunity, sustain resilience, and facilitate human learning.” (Holling et al., 2002: 416)
The oil-tar-sands development is transforming social-ecological systems on continental scales,
with nodes of impacts in widely-separated and very different locales. The industry is highly
adaptive and multi-centric. Those affected in some of the local nodes of impact have begun to
self organize and to achieve learning that is durable and “encoded in memory”. Perhaps most
importantly there is evidence that conceptual innovation, including a vision of collaborative
learning and planning for a future of sustainable change, is occurring, bring with it cross-scale
aspirations for change. For example:
“With a coordinated response involving all sectors of North American social justice
movements currently impacted by the largest industrial project in human history we have
the possibility to change the course of human and ecological fate like nowhere else.15”
This spirit of resilience in action is new in scale and magnitude: both spatial and temporal. It is
new because it is the consequence of a broad understanding of the nature and meaning of socialecological change distributed across scales, across time and space, and has been called into being
by the large forces of energy development and industrial economics, in this case. For some, it is
15
http://oilsandstruth.org/conf
32
clear that the oil-tar-sands has crossed a conceptual threshold and has moved from slow change
to slow catastrophe. Others remain invested in a status quo of competing constructions and
contemporary priorities. Reframing issues in order to bridge silos and open the doors to change is
heavy conceptual work.
However with these strong winds of social and technological innovation, “double-loop”
learning and strengthened collaborative linkages, evidenced also in this new initiative in
planning for resilience, we begin to co-create alternative scenarios, redirect gradual failures,
transform slow catastrophe, and chart paths from crisis toward the opportunities that we
envision, by planning for the unthinkable – and planning with courage and hope.
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Map 1: Locating the Oil-Tar-Sands and It region of Influence
Source: Commission on Environmental Cooperation (CEC)
http://www.cec.org/naatlas/maps/index.cfm?catId=8&mapId=4&varlan=english accessed
October 24, 2008
Description: This
North American
Atlas base layer
shows a selection of
Box 1. Fort
McMurray
and
Oil-Tar-Sands
Production
named populated
places suitable for
Box 2.
SW
Ontario
use at a scale of
1:10,000,000. Places,
which refer to
individual
municipalities, are
represented as points. Each point indicates the approximate location of a place, relative to data in
the North American Atlas roads, railroads, and hydrography layers. The selection of populated
places was based on local importance (determined by population size), importance as a crossborder point, and, occasionally, on other factors. All capital cities (national, provincial, territorial
or State) are included for Canada, Mexico, and the United States of America
38
Priority Environmental Site Map
Source: Office of the Environmental Commissioner of Ontario website
http://www.eco.on.ca/eng/index.php/about-ontario/priority-environmental-site-map.php accessed
October 24, 2008.
Proposed Site of
the Shell Refinery
in St. Clair Twp.
39