Conclusion
From a socioeconomic standpoint, the Enbridge pipeline does not seem to purposefully bend towards dissemination areas where people are worse off. Due to the high cost of constructing a pipeline, Enbridge seems to have taken a more direct approach, going directly through the corridor that has minimal extreme slopes, minimal ecologically sensitive areas and lakes, and also no significantly poor populations nor populations with high numbers of aborigines.
Out of the 3 least cost paths produced in our analyses, path 2 was the shortest and was also the most environmentally friendly. In comparison to Enbridge’s currently proposed route, path 2 was much more contorted and therefore much longer as well. This would amount to higher material costs and thus greater overall development costs. Environmentally, path 2 was much sounder than the proposed route though. From our analyses we determined that the currently proposed route crossed through approximately 18.2 km of agricultural land reserve, 9.7km of provincial parks, and 11.2km of old growth forest. In contrast, path 2 crossed no provincial parks, 1.4km of agricultural land reserve, and 1.1km of old growth forest. It is possible that environmental impacts were more valued in our analyses thus the arbitrary cost values assigned to different environmental factors, as well as elevation and slope played a big role in determining the more environmentally responsible route that path 2 took.
Overall, it seems this project could potentially be an economic benefit to the Northern Interior of British Columbia due to large-scale job creation with a minimal impact on the environment assuming it is properly maintained. The most harmful aspect, however, could be the pipeline's unpleasant scarring of the forest, as a pipeline requires a large strip of forest to be cleared in order for construction to be possible.