Earth Day 2022 & Surerus Murphy's Commitment to the Environment

In 1969, US Senator Gaylord Nelson had long been concerned about the deteriorating environment in the United States. He witnessed the ravages of a massive oil spill in Santa Barbara, California. Senator Nelson and Pete McCloskey, a conservation-minded Republican Congressman, choose April 22 as a day to bring awareness to environmental issues. 

This day was named Earth Day, which immediately sparked national media attention. 

Earth Day inspired 20 million Americans to demonstrate against the impacts of 150 years of industrial development which had left a growing legacy of human health impacts.

Earth Day 1970 achieved a rare political alignment, enlisting support from Republicans and Democrats. By the end of 1970, the first Earth Day led to the creation of the United States Environmental Protection Agency and other first of their kind environmental laws, including the National Environmental Education Act, the Occupational Safety and Health Act, and the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, the Endangered Species Act, the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and the Rodenticide Act. 

In 1990 Earth Day went global, mobilizing 200 million people in 141 countries and lifting environmental issues onto the world stage. Earth Day 1990 gave a huge boost to recycling efforts worldwide and helped pave the way for the 1992 United Nations Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. Today, Earth Day is marked by more than a billion people every year as a day of action to change human behavior and create global, national, and local policy changes.

In Canada, environmental legislation and regulations were also introduced on the federal and provincial levels. During the planning stages of pipeline development, key environmental indicators such as soil, wildlife (e.g. fish, birds, bears), and water quality are assessed before the project so appropriate mitigations can be applied during construction to minimize the effects of construction on these environmental elements.

For Surerus Murphy (SMJV), there is a commitment from the company to reduce environmental impacts in our construction projects. 

This means that we will follow all environmental legislation and regulations where we work. This can be seen on a pipeline project when we work around bird nesting periods, fish spawning periods, ungulate timing windows, timber and topsoil salvage, erosion and sediment control, and conduct careful site reclamation. Our new initiative to reduce vehicle and equipment idling on our projects is a proactive effort reduce emissions to the air.

SMJV has also recently initiated an environmental sustainability focus. Sustainability means to minimize impacts or effects to all environmental components (soil, wildlife, vegetation, water, air) as much as is technically possible so these can be preserved for the future. Sustainability also means to shrink the project footprint resulting in a less extensive impact to the environment, or no impact at all. Minimized environmental impacts results in a better chance for important environmental features to carry on after the project is done, or to be avoided entirely.

The purpose of Earth Day is to teach people simple strategies to conserve energy and participate in environmental conservation and demonstrate how easy it is to conserve energy without causing any inconvenience.

To mark this special day, we challenge all SMJV employees to consider reducing idling, avoid single use plastics, and check housekeeping in your work areas.

For more information on this day, visit the official Earth Day Organization website.