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| Gary and Diane Bender at Gleniffer Lake Resort and Country Club, Alberta, on Wednesday, June 13, 2012. Photograph by: Stuart Gradon, Calgary Herald |
Gleniffer Lake resort community gets a crude awakening from oil spill
Residents tally damage from Plains Midstream pipeline oil leak
By Colette Derworiz,
Calgary Herald
June 15, 2012
One week after a pipe-line leaked crude oil into the Red Deer River and closed Gleniffer Lake, Diane Bender is worried about her livelihood.
For the realtor, who also manages rentals at the resort, the stakes are high: She doesn't have any other income.
"People are phoning and wanting to cancel," says Bender, who has already had cancellations on cottage rentals and boat slips in the marina at Gleniffer Lake Resort & Country Club.
Her property sales, which average between 35 and 40 a year, have also dried up.
"I had sales up until the oil spill," she says, noting eight vacation properties already sold this spring. "Now, the phone is not ringing at all."
A week ago, a section of pipeline owned by Plains Midstream Canada running under a river tributary near Sundre leaked up to 475,000 litres of oil.
The company has said high river levels flushed most of the oil downstream into Gleniffer Lake, a man-made reservoir and recreational area about 75 minutes northwest of Calgary.
People like Bender worry that with the lake closed, the resort development, which relies on an already short summer tour-ism season, could suffer.
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