Jessica Hutchinson, executive director of conservation group Redd Fish Restoration Society, remembers the long, restless night in December 2025 listening to the thrum of a rainstorm in Tofino, B.C. Lying in her bed, she hoped the culmination of years of planning, weeks of construction and eye-watering helicopter bills would hold. 

As Hutchinson lay awake, rain poured down from the steep hillsides surrounding Tranquil Creek like it normally did, sending a surge of water into the river below. But now the deluge had an obstruction: a tangled mass of around 50 trees, tufted like a giant bird’s nest and lodged into the riverbed, causing the flow to ricochet and swoop under and above. Pools and eddies had begun to form below the wooden mass of the river’s new intruder, also known as an engineered logjam, reflecting a years-long effort that is relatively uncommon in B.C.

Engineered logjams are large-scale interventions for places with large-scale problems. In Tranquil’s case, the watershed needed life support.

Redd Fish watershed restoration director Tom Balfour describes the approach as “open-heart surgery.” 

“You don’t do this to rivers that need a little help,” he says. “You do it when things are really desperate.”

Logged extensively between the 1960s and the 1990s, the valley soon became a funnel for sediment flowing down from the steep hills. The river weaving through it had become a highway of fast-moving water, and sand and gravel, threatening to bury or drag salmon eggs out to sea. By 2017, Chinook were on the verge of local extinction, while chum, coho and steelhead were in severe decline.

The Tla-o-qui-aht First Nation, whose territory encompasses Hiłsyaqƛis (the Nuu-chuh-nulth name for Tranquil Creek), identified the region as an urgent priority, and Redd Fish subsequently launched their multi-year quest to figure out how to help it heal.

“Tranquil’s got a special place in my heart,” Tatt Charlie, lead guardian for Tla-o-qui-aht First Nation, says. Tla-o-qui-aht guardians are working with Redd Fish to restore the watershed. “It’s one of those amazing ecosystems where we could get almost all of our salmon spawning in that again and rejuvenate it for our people.”

The Tla-o-qui-aht First Nation worked in partnership with Redd Fish to develop a long-term plan for Tranquil. It required learning about what went wrong, and then gradually bringing the missing pieces back. It wasn’t cheap or easy, but ten years into their journey, Hutchinson says it’s been worth it.

Tranquil Creek’s trajectory

“The dock is very slippery,” calls out Frank Witter as he steers the silver skiff up to the small wooden landing just outside the mouth of the Tranquil Creek inlet. Witter, Charlie and fellow Tla-o-qui-aht guardian Nathaniel Currie get ready to disembark.

The dock is remnant infrastructure from the watershed’s heavy logging days. So is the dusty sorting yard to our left, replete with metal loading skids angling into the ocean, as if the valley’s forests were still full of big trees to take away.

Hutchinson has come back from working on the riverbed to meet us, and we pile into one of Redd Fish’s company trucks. From the window, other signs of change soon follow: we pass a pile of pipes and metal planks near a recently decommissioned forest service road.

Witter, Redd Fish’s project manager, stops the truck as we reach a high point on the road, and we climb out to take a look. From here, the watershed’s history opens like a storybook. 

What appear to be white, fuzzy scars carved into the mountainside are actually landslides, Hutchinson tells me. These are the places where disturbance-loving alder trees have lodged themselves onto the scree slopes, their foliage still bare from the winter. 

After they lost the big conifer trees whose roots were anchors, the fine-grained sediment, gravel and jagged rocks that comprise the region’s hillsides started to fall. Logging roads made things worse, cutting holes in the hillside like a dispenser below a gumball machine. When Clayoquot Sound’s famous rainstorms bear down on the valley, they tend to pull the already-loose sand and rocks down with them. 

The valley bottom, too, had lost its defences. Once fortified by big, steadying trees like cedars and spruce, the flat-lying ground is now peppered with daintily rooted species like alder. Over time, the river got wider and flatter.

For salmon, this layered onslaught of sediment spells trouble. 

All five species of North American Pacific salmon have historically spawned in the Tranquil watershed, and for salmon, spawning is a miraculous event. It requires adult salmon to survive in the open ocean, replete with fishing nets, predators and pathogens, sometimes for up to around decade. If the salmon is fortunate enough to reach its elder years, it tracks the earth’s magnetic field and then draws on its keen sense of smell to return, sometimes over thousands of kilometres, to the same stream channel where it was born.

Under the right conditions, the salmon digs a nest beneath the gravel just deep enough for its eggs to stay covered during the river’s most turbulent months. If things go wrong, baby salmon can asphyxiate beneath a buildup of sand, or if the water moves too fast, they get washed out to sea. 

It wasn’t always like this, Charlie says, as he gestures to the mouth of the estuary below us. It was once the bustling village of Hiłsyaqƛis, one of many village sites in the territory, where members of the Tla-o-qui-aht came to fish and camp each year.

Back then, surrounded by an intact forest, the now-rushing Tranquil Creek consisted of meandering paths of water braiding together. For millennia, the Tla-o-qui-aht people helped keep it that way, using various techniques to keep the populations in balance: cultivating strong-rooted crabapple trees that helped mitigate erosion in the estuary, for example, and building rock weirs to count and manage how much salmon swam up to spawn.

“You would allow the strongest of the river to go up, enough fish to make sure every square inch of gravel is spawned,” Saya Masso, Tla-o-qui-aht First Nation’s natural resources manager, says. Once enough salmon had travelled up the river to support the forest and its animals, Masso says the community would then begin their own harvest. 

That stewardship was suppressed as Canada dispossessed the nation of its territory. 

Over a century later, the Tla-o-qui-aht partnered with Redd Fish to conduct a years-long investigation to determine the damage caused in the interim, piecing together Tranquil’s history of disturbance through historic photos and terrain assessments. Their research determined logging strongly contributed to the watershed’s downhill slide. They also discovered that the watershed was unlikely to heal on its own in time for salmon to benefit.

“It’s not on a healing trajectory,” Hutchinson says. “It’s actually unravelling and becoming worse through the years.”

Witter’s team worked to stabilize the landslides, creating terraces and staking willow trees, known for their hearty roots, to prevent further movement. Throughout the lower watershed, Redd Fish planted 120,000 trees and restored 100 hectares of young, replanted forests by thinning out trees to create light to help big ones grow. 

They also turned their attention to the river. 

“Rivers take annual presence to become productive,” Masso says. “Our plan is to get to a system of abundance.”

How logjams help salmon

Western science was slow to realize that wood and salmon need each other. 

Since at least the last Ice Age, salmon’s decomposing bodies have fed and plumped the big trees of the Pacific Northwest. Those trees, in turn, feed the river, depositing big logs that create the smorgasbord of habitat types and pools salmon require to survive. Logs and logjams act like sorting hats for gravel, distributing patches of coarse and fine gravel that suit different species’ needs.

“It quickly became apparent to me in studying the rivers of this region that wood was as important as sediment and water,” geomorphologist David Montgomery says. He was one of the early contributors to a growing scientific recognition of the relationship between wood and salmon in the 1990s. 

By then, much of the damage to these ancient Pacific rivers was done. Logging companies had clear-cut many watersheds, as they did in the Tranquil. Some fish biologists even encouraged wood removal from streams and rivers, thinking it would help fish travel upstream.

This antipathy to river debris had deep roots. Large-scale “log drives” in the late 1800s and early 1900s culled wood from the vast rivers, including in the Cowichan Valley, where people used explosives to clear off wood and other impediments. 

In B.C. and throughout the Pacific Northwest, government-funded restoration crews gradually began bringing wood back in the 1990s. Early interventions were often targeted to smaller streams where a single log or two could make a meaningful impact. But big rivers like Tranquil Creek’s mainstem require something sturdier.

A short walk downriver, one of Redd Fish’s many engineered logjams comes into view, knotted and gnarled with trees piled atop one another, holding firm like a fortress as water passes dutifully around its edges.

“Frank, have you seen it?” Hutchinson says, getting Witter’s attention. River debris is accumulating in the logjam, a natural addition to the engineered effort. “That’s not even us, that’s just wood piled up.”

This is the promise of a well-built logjam: it takes up a life of its own, collecting wood the river throws at it. Ideally, it becomes self-sustaining, forming forested islands in the river that contribute their own source of wood.

To match the ferocity of the Tranquil’s rainy season flows, Redd Fish had to craft logjams with around 50 trees piled atop and between each other, lasagna-style, staked in place with tall logs piled deep into the riverbed. 

“It basically is trying to mimic what an old growth tree would do if it rolled into the river with its giant root plate,” Hutchinson says. 

“It would maintain the force of the river.”

These human-made jams are not cheap, requiring heavy equipment to temporarily isolate a spot along the riverbed with pumps and sandbags, and helicopters to haul wood and logs up to 15 metres tall. They also require teams of engineers working closely with traditional knowledge holders, geomorphologists and other scientists to ensure the investment and design will hold up.

“It’s a team effort,” Montgomery says.

“All those gears have to sing. But when they do, I’ve seen really good results.”

‘They’ve done all their homework’

A shock of cold hits my legs as I venture forward into Tranquil Creek, in a channel that’s surprisingly deep and aquamarine blue. 

Last year’s work is already visible, marked by the first crop of young willow trees clawing their roots into the gravel, one of many impediments Redd Fish and Tla-o-qui-aht Tribal Park Guardians have installed to slow the water down. 

Redd Fish staff are here, hammering the new generation of stakes into the dry riverbed. For a moment, conversation lulls, and there’s just the sound of running water and syncopated tapping, then the conversation starts up again.

So far the outcomes of their efforts appear hopeful, though Hutchinson avoids drawing early conclusions. On snorkel surveys through the river, one of the organization’s efforts to monitor the completed work, Redd Fish has found salmon taking refuge in the pools created by the logjams, including during heat waves. In the last two years, those pools have gotten deeper.

Though costly and time-consuming, Redd Fish’s monitoring efforts and years spent studying the watershed are critical, Jason Hwang says.

“It’s an excellent example of a project in the current day that is doing all the right things,” Hwang, who is the chief program officer and vice president of salmon at the Pacific Salmon Foundation, says. “They’ve done all their homework.”

But the Tranquil faces pressures old and new.

Climate change is heating Tranquil’s waters, and fish farms nearby pose additional risks for the Tranquil river’s returns, potentially spreading pathogens that can infect migrating wild salmon as they move past. At the same time, restoration efforts across the province face constant funding challenges as government priorities shift. 

This February, the mining company Imperial Metals received a permit to conduct extensive exploration work in the Tranquil watershed’s headwaters, in hopes of eventually opening a gold mine there. The Tla-o-qui-aht First Nation and representatives from the broader Tofino business community have voiced their opposition to the mine.

Many of Tranquil’s challenges remain, but for now, Hutchinson is glad to watch the river evolve on its own terms now that it’s had some help. She hopes it might be a model for what’s to come. 

“We haven’t restored a single entire watershed, top to bottom,” she says. 

“I was always hoping that Tranquil would be that watershed.”

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The parking lot off the highway is busy and there’s a line-up for the outhouses next to a Parks Canada information stand featuring maps from years past. To the left, a wide accessible trail leads to the well-trod bridges and pathways crisscrossing Marble Canyon in Kootenay National Park in southern B.C. just 50 kilometres from the Alberta border. 

The walk up the length of the canyon is short, barely a kilometre, with a little detour near its end where the ubiquitous red chairs of the national park system sit on a rise looking back toward the parking lot. It’s about as far as most people venture, but those red chairs don’t mark the end of the trail system through the valley. 

A few more steps and walkers encounter a sign warning that the trail ahead — still listed on those yellowing maps — is no longer maintained. The sign doesn’t lie. Heading up through Tokumm Creek valley requires climbing over and under fallen trees, over collapsed log bridges and through overgrown brush. 

It’s the sort of trek that eats at Trevor Willson, the president of the Canadian Backcountry Trails Preservation Society. 

“I’m an engineer,” he says, driving through the Rocky Mountains toward Marble Canyon one fall weekend. “So if you have a problem, you don’t ignore the problem, you solve the problem.”

His organization is trying to convince Parks Canada to reinvest in trails it says have been abandoned, hindering backcountry access in parks at a time when more and more people are visiting. That’s particularly true for the Rocky Mountain parks of Banff, Kootenay and Jasper.

According to Willson, the cost of his plan to fix the nation’s parks is minimal, approximately $50 million to replace bridges and fix all of the existing trails, plus one-to-two million dollars per year in maintenance. Parks Canada, he says, doesn’t want to spend the money in an era of budget cuts, and doesn’t want volunteers taking on some of the load. 

But the question runs deeper than dollars and cents, touching on a philosophical debate about the purpose of Canada’s national parks and whether to prioritize recreation, conservation or some balance between the two. 

“Hiking and horseback riding are the classic activities to do in the mountains,” Willson says. “If you want to see the national park, you need to get out of the town of Banff because it’s beautiful, but it’s a very civilized, very well-developed little chunk of real estate.”

It should not be, he says, a “drive-through park.”

‘Proverbial pulling of teeth’: backcountry hikers frustrated with perceived lack of action from Parks Canada

Willson has been involved in trail building and maintenance for years, including building bridges and negotiating partnership agreements with governments. He was inspired to start his society when he tried to convince Jasper National Park to replace a bridge along a historic passage across its northern border — and was rebuffed. 

The Simon Creek bridge broke around 2015, severing a trail that was once a thoroughfare for First Nations and then the fur trade. Willson says he approached Jasper National Park about fixing it but was told there wasn’t enough money. Not one to take no for an answer, Willson found private funding but says he was eventually told rebuilding the bridge would have a negative impact on the ecology of the area. 

Willson and his organization focus their efforts on existing trails and areas where bridges once spanned significant waterways. They do not, as he puts it, campaign to get rid of all obstacles or prevent your feet from getting wet. 

“The point is, if you come to a river or creek and it’s impassable — like you can’t get across — and therefore you have to turn back, that bridge should be replaced,” he says, adding the bridge on Smith Creek crosses a section of fast, opaque and boulder-filled water.

Gavin Fitch, a fellow society member and environmental lawyer based in Calgary, says the group had a formal meeting with Jasper National Park officials in April, but still haven’t received a response. 

“Our optimism has, I would say, changed to pessimism,” he says.

Not only is the Canadian Backcountry Trails Preservation Society trying to convince the government to make investments in trails and bridges — potentially one of Willson’s own designs — but to allow certified volunteers to help maintain the trails. That’s common in provincial parks, particularly in B.C., but Parks Canada has moved away from the practice and is reluctant to change tack, Willson says.

Parks Canada did not directly answer questions emailed by The Narwhal, but says it regularly reviews investments in the more than 8,000 kilometres of trails in its network based on visitation and conservation priorities. 

“These decisions help ensure available resources are focused where they provide the greatest benefit to visitors, Indigenous partners, communities and protected places,” spokesperson Charlotte Bordeleau says in an email. 

“In Kootenay National Park, for example, maintenance on portions of the Tokumm Creek Trail above Marble Canyon was discontinued as part of broader wilderness management decisions designed to support conservation objectives and wildlife habitat protection.”

Climbing over trees and scrambling through brush on the hike from Marble Canyon, Fitch says abandoning infrastructure doesn’t just prevent access to the backcountry, it erases public trails.

The trails are not decommissioned, simply allowed to deteriorate, he says. Then they disappear from government websites. Soon, the hiking apps used by modern adventurers downvote them into near obscurity. 

It’s one reason Fitch carries around a well-worn trail book from 1990, an encyclopedic guide to routes across the Rocky Mountain region that’s fading in the digital age.

“One of the issues here is — now I’m putting on my administrative lawyer’s hat — these are decisions that Parks Canada makes with zero consultation,” he says. 

“And of course, once the decision’s made, as we are finding out, trying to get them to reverse a decision that they’ve made on maintaining a trail is like proverbial pulling of teeth.”

Who is a national park for?

It’s only a matter of minutes up the valley from Marble Canyon and those red chairs before the crowds feel far away. It is quiet and empty and the trees blocking the route multiply as you move farther in. The live trees are short, showing only about 20 years of growth since a fire ripped through this area. Skeletal burnt trunks still hover high amidst the green. 

The quiet, even this close to a highway tourist stop, isn’t uncommon in the sprawling mountain parks that hug that Alberta-B.C. border. The vast majority of land in these parks is tucked far away from main thoroughfares. In Jasper, Willson says his own calculations show 83 per cent of the land is more than five kilometres from a highway. 

“If you don’t have trails to access that 83 per cent, that’s a huge loss,” he says.

But not everyone would agree. 

Bordeleau says Parks Canada has invested approximately $155 million in trail infrastructure since 2015, a figure that goes beyond backcountry trails. But she says the first priority of the agency is protecting the ecological integrity of the parks. 

Willson argues that focus is too restrictive and ignores Parks Canada’s commitment to enjoyment of these vast public spaces.

“Ecological integrity is the number one priority in national parks. It’s written into the National Parks Act, and it states that the national park shall be maintained for future generations, which is fine, is great,” he says. “But they interpret that as ‘Keep people out of the back country.’ ”

At the same time, he says, more and more people are crowding into tourist hot spots. 

According to data from Parks Canada, more than 11,000 people visited Lake Louise in Banff National Park each day in 2025, and the park itself set a new record with 4.5 million visitors that year.

Data from digital tools could help inform Rocky Mountain trail decisions: conservation advocate

Nadine Raynolds, the director of communities and conservation at the environmental group Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative, says there are ways to balance human access with ecological integrity, given the proper data and funding. 

But that doesn’t necessarily mean maintaining existing or historic routes and will depend on wildlife routes, the specific species that use an area, the impact of human activities and even the time of year. 

“What is the information that we need to support decision-making on the landscape?” she says. “Often what that leads to is making choices about where those trails should be and where is a place where we maybe shouldn’t put trails because of the wildlife needs.”

Unlike Fitch and his guidebook, her organization leans into digital apps and technologies to determine what areas are popular among humans and wildlife as it decides where to invest tight budgets. And she argues those tools can be effective in monitoring. 

“Land managers that we spoke with in B.C. and Alberta were really keen to explore all these options because they need this information,” Raynolds says, adding those managers don’t have the staff or resources to implement sufficient monitoring programs. 

When it comes to underused backcountry trails, the impact of human activity is unlikely to be significant, and it would be easy to manage numbers with trail restrictions and campsite access. 

But Fitch acknowledges the calculus could work against them, precisely because the number of people who want to trek in the backcountry is small. 

“So I think it would be the bean-counter argument, that the scarce resources which we have should be put to use on essentially front-country infrastructure, so the stuff you can reach easily from the highway,” he says.

‘A very quintessential Canadian thing’

In March, the federal government announced $3.8 billion for initiatives it says will protect Canada’s natural landscapes. Of that, $267 million will go to the creation of two new protected areas overseen by Parks Canada. The plan also calls for private partnerships and investments in Indigenous-led stewardship. 

It’s unclear if those moves will include a reinvestment in backcountry trails, but Willson and Fitch aren’t waiting to find out. They’re stepping up lobbying efforts, meeting with Corey Hogan, the sole Liberal MP in Calgary, and hoping that one of the doors they knock on opens.

Raynolds says the tools and the research exists to plan trails and parks that benefit both wildlife and recreation. But implementing those plans will take political will and a bit of investment.  

Willson hopes there’s more to it than a simple cost-benefit analysis. 

“The park is not only the highways and the towns,” Willson says. “The park is the trails too. Walking and hiking on a trail in wilderness is a very quintessential Canadian thing.”

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“Look at the size of that logjam,” Richard Bussanich exclaims with excitement as we fly low over one of the upper reaches of the Skagit River just north of the U.S.-Canada border. Bussanich, a senior biologist for the Okanagan Nation Alliance, and two of his colleagues are surveying the upper Skagit River and its main tributaries north of the border. They want to understand if salmon could survive here — after more than a century of absence. 

The Skagit originates in the B.C. Cascades, following the mountain range south into Washington state before flowing west to the Puget Sound. But ever since the 1920’s construction of the Gorge Dam in Washington state, the Canadian waters of the Skagit have been devoid of salmon. It was the first of three dams built on the river south of the border by Seattle City Light, Seattle’s public electricity provider, which today supply about 20 per cent of the utility’s power. None of these dams’ construction included fish passage. But that might finally be about to change.

After decades of pressure from tribes and conservation groups, the publicly owned utility is now committing to design and implement a plan to allow salmon to once again reach the upper river.

A landmark multilateral legal settlement between Seattle City Light, several tribes and non-governmental organizations, as well as various federal, state and county governments, was reached in March 2026. It commits the utility to funding nearly US$1 billion over the next 24 years to restore salmon runs and create fish passage. The agreement by the utility represents a reversal of its long-held claim that salmon never reached the upper Skagit before the dams — a position contradicted by historical records, archaeological evidence and Indigenous Knowledge.

The agreement is prompting First Nations in British Columbia to consider what the return of salmon could mean on their side of the border. Bussanich is excited by the chance to witness and support the return of salmon on this stretch of river. “If you provide them the opportunity, the fish will find a way,” he says.

Assessing salmon habitat from the sky

Every 30 to 50 years, the three dams on the Skagit have required an updated permit from the U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to legally continue operations.

The project’s recent permit expired in 2025. Since then, the dams have been operating on annual licenses as negotiations for the terms of the new permit are settled. As part of the relicencing process, the public utility is required to carry out numerous studies to look at how the dams affect a variety of environmental, economic and social considerations and how to mitigate harmful impacts. This created the window for action by U.S. tribes to push the utility to deal with their role in depressing salmon runs across the entire Skagit River system.

The March legal settlement dictating the terms of the future management of these dams followed an ambitious lobbying campaign and legal action spearheaded by the Upper Skagit Indian Tribe in Washington state, along with pressure from the neighbouring Sauk-Suiattle Indian Tribe, conservation organizations and the public spurred by regional and national investigative journalism.

At the signing ceremony for the legal agreement in May 2026, Scott Schuyler, a member of the Upper Skagit Tribe and its cultural and policy representative for natural resources, shared some hope and history. 

“Today is a day of reflection for the Upper Skagit People,” he said. “We do appreciate everything that has occurred over the last eight years [of negotiations] but this journey actually began 124 years ago for the Upper Skagit when we were not allowed a voice or a choice.”

The day after the settlement was signed, an engineering firm was hired to start work on designing fish passage, Schuyler later told The Narwhal. With the public utility committing to create a pathway for salmon to access areas above each of its three dams, and thereby potentially unlocking spawning habitat in Canada, the Okanagan Nation Alliance is interested in how this effort will interface with the lands and waters it is part of stewarding north of the international border. 

 “Our mandate is ‘kł cp̓əlk̓ stim̓, ’causing to bring back’ water and salmon,” Bussanich says during the field trip to the Skagit. “Salmon reintroduction … and restoring habitat and protecting it is the core of everything, that the Okanagan and its members in the nation adhere to and guide us.”

The goal of the upper watershed’s aerial survey Bussanich and his team are doing is to better understand conditions on the ground for returning salmon. According to Bussanich, the flight is part of ongoing work being carried out collaboratively by the Okanagan Nation Alliance (representing the Upper Similkameen Indian Band), Stó:lō Nation, Parks Canada, the Washington-based organization Conservation Northwest and a consulting company called Biodiversity Pathways. Their collective goal is to protect the area and its sensitive species through Indigenous-led conservation efforts.

We touch down briefly on a sandbar on the river on the Canadian side of the border to survey conditions more closely at the location. Bussanich carefully photographs and notes the structure of another impressive logjam and the side channel it helped create.

“Coho will spawn in side channels like this,” he says. In the Okanagan River east of here, the Okanagan Nation Alliance and its partners have been creating artificial logjams to restore streams where the wood was removed and the streambed was straightened for flood control and agriculture. Here, on the upper reaches of the Skagit, the braided channel and natural woody structure provide a template for what they aim to create elsewhere for salmon habitat. Through Bussanich’s eyes, this part of the river appears in excellent condition for the return of anadromous (fish that are born in freshwater, migrate to the sea and return to freshwater to spawn) salmon. Now they just need a path to reach it.

As we cross the border into the U.S., we fly over the massive reservoir backed up behind the Ross Dam, the northernmost of the three Skagit dams. Around us, the high peaks of North Cascades National Park rise up from the reservoir shores. Bussanich is impressed with the quality of the spawning habitat in several of the tributaries entering the reservoir we fly over. Some locations look better for sockeye, others for Chinook and coho, according to Bussanich’s keen eye.

Then we see the Ross Dam. At 160 metres tall, it is the largest of the three hydroelectric dams on the river. The height of the dam itself is still a formidable challenge for engineers to figure out how to get migratory fish around. In the first half of the 20th century, it was considered insurmountable.

The long road to salmon recovery

From the Ross Dam, we fly downstream over the Diablo and then the Gorge dams. Immediately below the Gorge lies a stretch of the river that is completely dewatered by Seattle City Light, with the entire river’s flow diverted into a tunnel leading to a power-generating station about three miles downstream in the town of Newhalem, Washington, a former village site of the Upper Skagit Tribe. After passing through the power station’s turbines, the water is returned to the Skagit, which continues unimpeded the rest of the way to the sea, meeting the completely undammed Sauk River, its largest tributary, along the way. 

Below the dams, the Skagit River is home to runs of Chinook, coho, pink, sockeye and chum salmon, as well as steelhead trout. The Chinook and steelhead populations are both listed as threatened under the United States Endangered Species Act and noted as a species of greatest conservation need in Washington state. In the U.S., the Upper Skagit Indian Tribe, the Sauk-Suiattle Indian Tribe and the Swinomish Tribe all retained their right to fish these runs— a right that has been deeply impacted by the steep declines in fish returns in the river. These declines also affect other species that depend on salmon such as the endangered population of resident orcas in the Salish Sea.

The construction of the Gorge Dam cut off about 40 per cent of the watershed from anadromous fish, while also depriving the river downstream of sediments critical for refreshing fish habitat and the estuary downstream. The subsequent construction of Diablo and Ross dams upstream went forward also without fish passage. 

In the legal settlement agreed to in March, Seattle City Light committed to returning water to the reach of the river downstream of the Gorge Dam, a culturally significant stretch of the river for the Upper Skagit Tribe, and a vital step toward connecting the lower and upper rivers for anadromous fish. The utility also committed to funding studies of the technology needed to move fish back and forth over each of its three dams and to work on this collaboratively with the other stakeholders in the settlement, including the U.S. tribes whose territory includes the Skagit River.

The utility lists 38 different participants in the licensing agreement for the three dams, including conservation organizations and county, state and U.S. federal agencies, as well as 10 U.S. tribes and two First Nations in Canada, the Nlaka’pamux Nation and the Stó:lō Nation.

Tribes that signed the Treaty of Point Elliot in 1855 explicitly retained their right to harvest salmon in their usual and accustomed locations. This right was upheld in court in 1974. This fact provides a large portion of the legal leverage that tribes are using to pressure Seattle City Light to do more to protect and restore salmon, including creating access above the dams.

On May 12, the Mayor of Seattle formally signed the settlement agreement for the Skagit River dams. At the signing ceremony, Scott Schuyler, who led the Upper Skagit Tribe’s efforts, reflected on the moment. “We were not allowed a voice or a choice when the first dam was built,” he shared. “We see redemption today by signing this agreement. We do have that voice from now on.”

However, he also noted the signing of the agreement is not the same as real action on the ground. “Today is not the day to celebrate for the Upper Skagit. The celebration will come in the future. When we see the river return to its banks, the Upper Skagit people will rejoice and celebrate. When we see the first salmon pass over the dams and the dams start contributing to these depressed runs, then the Upper Skagit will celebrate.”Schuyler tells The Narwhal that while design work for fish passage above the dams has already begun, it could be years before we see water flowing again in the bypass reach of the river, or salmon moving back and forth over the dams, due to permitting and engineering. “I would like to see it done in my lifetime, but you never know.”

Editor’s note: David Moskowitz is involved in long-term documentary work of the Okanagan Nation Alliance and grizzly bears.

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Norm Lamothe soiled his undies twice. The second time, he was much happier with the result. 

Soiled them — in a manner of speaking that is. After two months, buried in the ground, the cotton fabric of a once-pristine set of white men’s briefs had largely disappeared, and mostly just the elastic waistband remained. It was a sign changes in farming techniques were paying off. 

Lamothe runs the family-owned Woodleigh Farms outside Peterborough, Ont. Far from the realm of bodily functions, the brief burial experiment — dubbed a “Soil Your Undies” test — is popular in farm country. It’s a simple, albeit cheekily named, way of measuring just how active the tiny organisms like bacteria and fungi are in soil — and by extension, how healthy the soil is. Just bury a plain cotton undergarment, wait a couple months and dig it back up. The organisms chew up the natural cotton fabric, so more microbial activity means a more degraded undergarment. Dig up a fully intact set of tighty-whiteys, and you know the soil in that area needs some TLC. 

Lamothe first diagnosed his poor soil by doing a Soil Your Undies test in 2015.

“That’s really what started my journey down the soil health path,” Lamothe says, standing in front of one full pair of Hanes and the tattered remains of another, lovingly displayed on his office wall. “Much to our chagrin, they were completely intact.”

It was a self-described “wake-up call” to improve his farm’s practices for the climate, biodiversity and his own business resilience. 

The environmental impact of farming is an extraordinarily complicated subject, and the footprint agriculture leaves is suitably quite varied. In terms of emissions, agriculture accounts for about eight per cent of our national total, or 10 per cent if you include emissions from energy use on farms. The culprits are many: nitrous oxide, a greenhouse gas, can escape to the atmosphere from soil. Cattle, sheep and other ruminant livestock create methane — another greenhouse gas — through their digestive processes and release it into the atmosphere, mostly by way of belching. And carbon dioxide is released by decaying plant matter.

Another major source of emissions is fossil fuels. Diesel, made from crude oil, is the main fuel source for the vast majority of tractors and other farm equipment, and fossil fuels — used on and off farms — are the single greatest contributor to climate change globally.

On the flip side, some farming methods can also be a real boon for ecology. Grazing cattle on native grasslands or in pastures with a diverse array of plants (called forage crops in farming circles) can benefit soil health and bird communities, while sequestering enormous amounts of carbon. On the other hand, regular ploughing and excessive fertilizer use can be harmful to soil and waterways. When it comes to environmental impact, the reality on the ground often necessitates doing things that are both better and worse for the environment.

Lamothe isn’t unique in his drive to find climate solutions on his farm. He joined peer groups like the Ontario Soil Network and Farmers for Climate Solutions for guidance, and to support others looking to make positive change. There are farmers and ranchers across Canada — and across the globe — doing this work. I’ve had the good fortune to meet many of them, as a farmer myself, as well as a journalist. They are doing their best to produce the food and commodities we all rely on, in a way that leaves the land in a better place. Some are motivated by water quality and biodiversity, others by profitability and resiliency in the face of extreme weather conditions like heat waves, floods and drought. Some have their eye on trade disruptions and other business challenges forcing them to rethink the status quo. 

Each has a compelling story. And not every one involves undies.

Energy

Lamothe’s farmyard sits at the end of a meandering tree-flanked driveway, eventually opening to buildings set partway up a gentle slope. The landscape here is a mix of rolling pasture, cropland and woodland — all things a flat-lander like myself can appreciate; from the centre of the county where my family farms in southwestern Ontario, it’s so flat you can see the skyscrapers of metropolitan Detroit, about 33 kilometres away as the crow flies, on a clear day. From Lamothe’s driveway, I can’t even see the extent of his property.

Photographer Bryan Dickie and I arrive to find Lamothe in the greenhouse near a cluster of outbuildings and then a pasture where a flock of sheep graze at the far end. Past the outbuildings, we can see the beginnings of his crop fields.

As is typical on farms, there is a little bit of everything everywhere at Woodleigh. Not messy, but clearly busy.

Lamothe is rinsing a pile of plastic flower pots used in the greenhouse —  a structure he calls a “passive solar” facility. It’s built with a sloped roof to capture ambient heat at the peak. That heat gets pulled down into the ground where it’s stored in ducts during the hottest parts of the day. That heat can then be recovered in the cooler months, and at night when the temperature drops, keeping the greenhouse above freezing, even when it is -25 C outside. No additional heating is needed.

Reducing fossil fuel use, as it turns out, is just one of Lamothe’s many proclivities. Norm assures me he “absolutely loves” his fully electric pickup truck, not least because it saves him about $6,500 a year in fuel. 

Another is soil health, ever since that fateful and telling first untarnished pair of Hanes.

Soil

The two most common field crops in Ontario are seed corn — the kind used for animal feed, ethanol and myriad other purposes — and soybeans, both for human and livestock consumption. Winter wheat, which is planted in autumn, typically into recently harvested soybean fields, takes third place. A typical yearly crop rotation for farmers in much of Ontario will involve at least a couple of these. What farmers plant ultimately comes down to economics. Corn and soybeans tend to pay better than winter grains, meaning the latter can sometimes fall out of favour.

Soil health, however, thrives on diversity. 

Keeping different crops in the rotation adds different root structures, helping to break up hard soil to create better water retention and provide a more biodiverse environment that, in turn, supports a wider (read: healthier) variety of soil organisms. Long-term research trials from the University of Guelph have shown more diversity helps build soil health, as well as crop yields. 

Lamothe’s crop rotation was once dominated by corn and soybeans. Adding wheat and oats was one of the first things he did after failing that undies test. When I visit in July, Lamothe’s fields are flush with corn, soybeans and oats. He’ll sow winter wheat on some of his soybean acres later in the year. On areas of the farm that have historically been less productive, he planted trees and native grasses. Cover crops — planted to improve soil, rather than for harvest and sale — will go on his winter wheat fields after they’re harvested.

He also started growing hay on areas prone to erosion, so there would always be roots present to anchor the soil. 

Then came the sheep. 

In 2022, Lamothe brought in the flock to graze the hay. The manure from the sheep flock also reintroduces nutrients to the fields — alongside compost Lamothe makes from wood chips, crop residue and other organic waste. 

Ten years after burying his first pair of britches, Lamothe tried soiling his undies again. The results were much better.

“Whether the change came from our practices or differing weather conditions is up for debate, but certainly we saw we had microbial activity,” he says, adding the physical remains, framed in his office, “make a nice conversation piece with people in here wondering why there is underwear on the wall.”

Carbon

A common challenge for farmers — myself included — is ensuring crops get the nutrients they need at the right time. Sometimes there might not be enough of a given nutrient in the soil, like phosphorus or boron. In other cases, the amount is fine, but they timing is off. 

Fertilizers help, which brings us to another outbuilding on Lamothe’s farm. This one is rich with the smell of barbecue smoke. 

It was the main farm workshop in a past life, a large steel shed that’s more steampunk than down-in-the-country. Conveyor belts and hay bale elevators connect two large trailers with steel sifters, feeding into a cylindrical dryer the size of a bus. It’s all part of Lamothe’s latest venture: a biochar production system.

Biochar is a black, charcoal-like substance created by heating organic material, like wood, in an oxygen-free environment (known as pyrolysis, if you’re technically inclined). The process starts with wood chips from the farm’s forestry business — as I said, there’s a little bit of everything here — which are loaded from old trailers, previously used for hauling potatoes, onto the conveyors and sifters, where they’re sorted by size. Chips that are too big or small are removed for composting, while what remains is put through the dryer, then into a burner.

“Ecologically speaking, this plant is very efficient because we’re using the energy it’s creating to run the whole system,” Lamothe says. And even the acidic byproduct of this process, known as “wood vinegar” — a product similar to the liquid smoke you might use in barbecue sauce — has valuable properties for soil. It helps with plant growth and acts as a natural pesticide.

Biochar is full of carbon, which when added to soil, becomes soil organic carbon — an indicator of good soil health. It helps to regulate nutrients in the soil, microbial activity and moisture. Combined with compost and manure, that can translate to more nutrients slowly released to crops over a long period.

“We’re taking all that carbon that would otherwise go up in the atmosphere and sequestering it in these particles that are going into the soil forever,” Lamothe says. On an annual basis, running at full capacity, the system will sequester 1,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide a year, making approximately 500 tonnes of biochar. 

“That’s net — after all the trucking, the forestry activities, moving of materials,” Lamothe says. “That’s pretty remarkable, and it says something about what could be done at scale for the environment in this country.”

Biodiversity

On the other side of the urban hive that is the Greater Toronto Area, and closer to my own family’s farm, I find myself looking at a beautiful herd of Hereford cattle. They’re grazing, rather lazily, in what to the untrained eye might look like a pasture overrun by weeds.

It’s actually a 19-acre tallgrass prairie, established by farmer Blake Vince in 2018. Here, outside Chatham, Ont., we’re in what’s known as the Carolinian forest zone that covers the southernmost part of Ontario, and peters out just north of Toronto. Vince is cultivating grasses like big bluestem, flowers like black-eyed Susan, prairie dock and much more. My favourite might be the compass plant, with its weird leathery leaves that look almost tropical. The prairie has become Vince’s self-described “happy place,” and is the result of years spent trying to improve his farm’s ecology.

Vince planted the tallgrass prairie as part of a federal government initiative to bring at-risk species back to agricultural lands. Insects, birds — and the birders that come with them — have arrived from near and far. One memorable birding visitor, Boris from Bulgaria, encouraged Vince to sell coffee at the roadside. “He said ‘Charge $10 a cup. People will pay. You’ll make money,’ ” Vince says with a chuckle. As of this writing, he’s opted to not pursue that particular revenue stream.

Most recently, the cattle brought the prairie pasture to another level. 

Despite their reputation as a source of methane — a potent greenhouse gas that breaks down into carbon dioxide over about a decade — Vince says livestock can complete the proverbial circle on farms. Among rows of crops and cover crops, or on pastures, cattle add nutrients to the soil (via manure) and encourage nutrient cycling as they eat the plants, which regrow, pulling more carbon into the soil. He introduced the small herd of Herefords to his fields, where they graze in different areas on a rotating basis, including the prairie.

The side benefit was yet more insects — including dung beetles, highly valued for their ability to transfer nutrients from manure into the soil — and more birds to eat those insects. 

He encourages me to “just listen” as I go by the prairie. The chirping, buzzing and other sounds of life are distinctly loud compared to the adjacent corn and soybean fields, and get louder the closer you get.

“I wanted to do something for nature,” Vince says. “And realized the only person stopping me was the guy looking back in the mirror.”

Water

Like myself, Vince farms a landscape that is very flat, relatively void of trees and intersected everywhere by roads and drainage infrastructure like culverts. In 2011, when nearby Lake Erie endured a particularly severe summer of algae blooms and attention focused on the farms sprawling across that flat land, Vince started thinking more about the impact his own farm had on the surrounding environment. 

Generally speaking, algae are organisms found in water that can rapidly expand into large blooms if they encounter excess nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorus — two elements used extensively on farms. In turn, large algae blooms can create toxins and low-oxygen “dead zones” in the water. Lake Erie is particularly prone to algae blooms because of its warm, shallow waters that encourage growth.

Excess nutrients come from many sources, including municipal and industrial wastewater. On the farm, nutrient runoff can spike when fields are hit with heavy rain shortly after fertilizer is applied. Because nutrients bind to soil particles, soil loss from wind or water erosion can also contribute to algae blooms. The nutrient losses from individual farms might be small, but because agriculture dominates the landscape here, repeated small losses add up. 

While he can’t control municipal water systems or the weather, Vince recognized he could exert more control over how much water and nutrients his soil was capable of holding. In 2013, he enrolled in an agricultural scholarship program — the same one I completed earlier this year in biodiversity and climate solutions — to investigate methods of keeping soil, and soil nutrients, in the field where they belong.

By the end of the two-year program, Vince had adopted a new mantra: “roots, not iron.” It means using plant roots to manage the soil, rather than metal tillage equipment. As Lamothe saw, living roots improve the soil’s ability to hold water like a sponge, whereas a hard surface lets it run off. All of it helps keep soil and soil nutrients in the field, and out of local waterways.

And these days, with up to 18 different cover crops potentially growing in his fields during parts of the year, there is almost never bare soil left to potentially wash or blow away.

As the soil holds the water better, it helps insulate crops from drier conditions. That’s key, as more severe swings in weather conditions are being seen by farmers as the climate changes. With so many nutrients inherent and available in his soils, Vince’s fertilizer bill is also substantially lower. He estimates saving “a minimum of 10 per cent” each year for nitrogen fertilizer, which “is a huge cost savings” for nitrogen-hungry crops like corn and wheat. Nutrients can still leave his fields after a heavy rain, but data he collected in partnership with his local conservation authority indicate he’s losing less overall. 

And remember that Soil Your Undies test that kicked off Lamothe’s journey into underground health? Vince is one of the originators. He buried his first pair of briefs in 2015, and helped kick off a trend that, just this year, won an Ig Nobel Prize — a parody of the prestigious awards — for soil science.

“Soil is a collection of living, breathing organisms,” Vince says. “We need to learn to appreciate and respect them.”

Economics and the environment

Across Canada, farms operate on slim margins. Land and equipment are horrendously expensive, and for most, the price they earn for their crops and livestock is beyond their control.

I like to say farming, just the biology of farming, is inherently complex. Then add to that the complexity of weather — with climate change bringing on even more variability, and the occasional introduction of new crop and livestock diseases — along with economics, politics, family and social dynamics, even what it takes to keep machinery running. Most of the time, farmers and ranchers want to do whatever they can to reduce the number and size of variables they face. Trying something new more often adds uncertainty, rather than reducing it. 

I know this firsthand. On our farm, for example, we have been trying to introduce more cover crops after we harvest soybeans. The first year, our cover crop of oats hardly grew because we planted it too late. Another year, the spring was so wet we couldn’t drive machinery into the field to knock back the cereal rye cover crop, meaning it was chest-high and a pain to deal with come spring planting. 

Still, we want to try new things. A lot of farmers do.

There’s the Bernard family, from Prince Edward Island, who are rebuilding their soils and local biodiversity by incorporating cattle into their organic cereal crop business. In Manitoba, the Nerbas family have adopted a grazing system that maximizes the time their pastures have to regrow, supporting their farm’s biodiversity and carbon sequestration potential. Sean Smith, another Manitoban, has partnered with local conservation groups to turn a low-lying and unprofitable part of his family’s farm into a naturalized wetland. 

I could go on.

Lamothe and Vince are the first to tell you they don’t have everything figured out — and likely never will. Investing in ecology on the farm can be complicated, frustrating and require constant troubleshooting. It took time for them to get where they are, and whatever they try next will necessitate the same learning process. But it can be fun, and rewarding as well.

Back in July, as we walked through one of Vince’s fields, some parts waist- or knee-high with a cover crop of crimson clover and cereal rye, I nearly stepped on a wild turkey hen. She was minding her clutch of eggs and I could barely make out her brown-feathered form among the greenery. It’s a sign that I should watch where I’m walking, but also that Vince’s efforts have done a lot for above-ground ecology. White-tailed deer also like to bed down in the thick green cover.

Just the day before, Vince had planted corn directly into that cover crop. In a little more than four months, he’ll harvest it. In spring, the cycle will start again.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

“Premature, ill-advised and respectfully should be reconsidered.” 

That’s how Pictou Landing First Nation Chief Tamara Young described Canada’s decision not to require a federal environmental review of two proposed 300-megawatt gas-fired power plants near her community. The comments came in a letter Young sent to the Impact Assessment Agency of Canada in July, two months after the agency declined to study the impacts of the Marshdale and Salt Springs natural gas power plants in Pictou County, N.S., an hour-and-a-half drive northeast of Halifax. 

The letter, shared with The Narwhal by the Mi’kmaw rights organization Kwilmu’kw Maw-klusuaqn, detailed “widespread Mi’kmaq and public opposition” to the proposed projects due to concerns about climate change, water use, public health, wildlife and other “cumulative effects associated with two large fossil-fuel facilities located approximately 20 kilometres apart.” These concerns, Young wrote, “require careful assessment in relation to Mi’kmaw Rights and the lands, waters and resources upon which those rights depend.” 

But according to Janiece Walsh, a spokesperson for the Impact Assessment Agency of Canada, these concerns don’t meet their threshold for a review. According to a statement she emailed The Narwhal, they fall outside “the potential adverse effects within federal jurisdiction.” 

The impacts on Indigenous Rights that Young called “significant constitutional, procedural and substantive concerns” are just one of the many issues raised in public comments about the two proposed plants. Dozens of comments submitted between Jan. 5 and Feb. 9, 2026, raised questions about public health, climate change, energy access and which level of government would monitor threats to endangered species like Atlantic salmon, mainland moose and black ash.

Then there are the concerns about speed. Unlike most big industrial projects, Marshdale and Salt Springs weren’t proposed by a company. Instead, they were floated by Nova Scotia’s Independent Energy Systems Operator, an agency created by the province in 2024 to manage the province’s electrical grid. According to Chris Milligan, vice president of planning and procurement for the operator, plants like these are necessary stopgaps for Nova Scotia to meet its goal of ending coal-fired electricity use by 2030. 

“Fast-acting natural gas-fired generators are the resource that can provide the firm capacity the province needs to meet demand when wind and batteries can’t,” he told The Narwhal. 

But comments to the federal review questioned this conclusion, including one from the Sipekne’katik First Nation, a Mi’kmaw community located south of the proposed plants. 

“Although the project may help reduce coal use specifically, it represents an additional investment in alternative fossil-fuel-based infrastructure,” it explained, calling that inconsistent with long-term climate commitments made by both the provincial and federal governments.

This all worries Anna Johnston, a staff lawyer at West Coast Environmental Law and member of the federal Minister of Environment and Climate Change’s advisory council on impact assessment. Johnston told The Narwhal she sees the Nova Scotia power plants issue not just as one isolated decision, but part of a broader “build baby build mentality” spreading across the country that is fast-tracking project approvals without adequately considering environmental and social impacts. 

“You’re effectively giving the green light to the project before you’ve done any of the studies on what the effects are going to be,” she said. “Before you’ve had any opportunities for meaningful consultation or engagement or participation. It’s a rubber stamp.” 

Nova Scotia claims power plants “not likely” to affect Mi’kmaq rights, despite dozens of impacts flagged by federal agencies, communities

In December 2025, the Nova Scotia government posted a project summary claiming the power plants would have a limited impact on “traditional Mi’kmaq land use.” 

“Overall, impacts on Mi’kmaq hunting, fishing, plant gathering or other traditional activities are anticipated to be low and confined to the project footprint,” it said. 

Around the same time, Young’s letter to the agency stated, the provincial government sent letters to Kwilmu’kw Maw-klusuaqn advising “the nature of this project is not likely to lead to appreciable adverse impacts to credibly asserted or established Mi’kmaq Aboriginal or Treaty Rights.” As such, the province asserted, the duty to consult was not triggered.

The same line alarmed Twila Gaudet, director of consultation for Kwilmu’kw Maw-klusuaqn, an association that advocates for Treaty Rights on behalf of the Assembly of Nova Scotia Mi’kmaw Chiefs. She quoted it in a letter she sent to a provincial environmental assessment officer in February 2026, in which she argued that assertion runs counter to what’s written in the actual project descriptions for the two plants. The section on Mi’kmaw community impacts states that “the Crown has a duty to consult with the Mi’kmaq of Nova Scotia” before moving forwards. 

“The government has neglected their duty to consult,” Gaudet told The Narwhal.

Comments submitted to the federal review that were acquired by The Narwhal through an access to information request also raise questions about the assertion that these projects would have a marginal impact on Mi’kmaq communities. 

According to these documents, Mi’kmaw organizations and federal agencies, including Indigenous Services Canada, Environment and Climate Change Canada, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans and Health Canada, submitted dozens of statements about the impacts these projects would have on Indigenous communities.

They included concerns about how water use and chemical pollution from the plants would impact threatened Atlantic salmon populations in local rivers, an important food source and cultural species for the Mi’kmaq. Kwilmu’kw Maw-klusuaqn shared similar worries about impacts on mainland moose. 

Some statements raised red flags about how air and water pollution could impact the health of downstream and nearby communities, a particularly important subject for Pictou Landing First Nation, which has already dealt with decades of industrial pollution in nearby Boat Harbour.Once a pristine tidal estuary known as A’se’k, or “the other living space,” Boat Harbour’s waters were used by Pictou Landing for generations. Then, in the late 1960s, a pulp mill was granted permission to discharge wastewater from a treatment facility into the area. It quickly became a toxic soup, and the community started dealing with a range of health impacts. The mills only stopped dumping waste into the estuary in 2020. 

This “dark history of large-scale industrial developments” is why “it is imperative that the local Mi’kmaq communities are adequately informed well in advance of large-scale projects such as the power plants,” Gaudet explained in her February 2026 letter to the province.

The federal agency grouped concerns from the review into five broad subject areas in its summary of issues: fisheries impacts, health conditions, land use and resources, cultural heritage and Indigenous and Treaty Rights. 

The agency also acknowledged that Mi’kmaq communities “raised concerns about inadequate consultation by governments” but said those concerns were considered in making its decision. 

“In determining whether further assessment is required, [the Impact Assessment Agency] considers several factors, including any adverse impacts the designated project may have on the rights of Indigenous Peoples of Canada,” Walsh said.

She added that provincial environmental assessment approvals require proponents to develop “a Mi’kmaq communication plan. This must include … seeking input from the Mi’kmaq on the development and implementation of project mitigation and monitoring plans.”But, Gaudet said, a communication plan isn’t the same as a consultation process that would address the nation’s “Section 35 constitutionally-protected rights and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.”

“The blatant disregard for the Mi’kmaq Nation and the impacts these power plants will have on our Mi’kmaw rights is disappointing and unacceptable,” she added.

Nova Scotia’s Department of Environment and Climate Change declined to comment for this story, citing an ongoing judicial review related to the two power plants that has been brought by Living Ecosystems and Power, a Pictou County community organization that launched in April 2026 to oppose the plants. 

Concerns that impact assessment agency ignores emissions 

One big question is which level of government — if any — will monitor or demand mitigation of the plants’ greenhouse gases. Because they’re going to be significant: the initial project plans estimated that each plant will produce 325,594 metric tonnes of carbon dioxide annually each, the equivalent of adding nearly 75,000 cars to the road. And those emissions are based on the plants only running for 2,190 hours, about one-quarter of their actual capacity. 

The federal government’s climate plan doesn’t track or apply to individual projects. 

When asked to comment on the projects’ potential climate impacts, Environment and Climate Change Canada recommended “greenhouse gas and climate change impacts be assessed and mitigated consistent with guidance in the Strategic Assessment of Climate Change.” 

But in 2024, the federal government amended Canada’s Impact Assessment Act, removing greenhouse gas emissions from federal jurisdiction, following a Supreme Court ruling that found this to be an overreach of constitutional authority.  

At the same time, Anna Johnston explained, impact assessments “do consider whether projects would hinder or contribute to Canada’s ability to meet its climate change commitments.” If that sounds confusing, it’s because it is. 

Basically, the agency can’t assess greenhouse gases as its own issue. But if greenhouse gases harm something within federal jurisdiction — “like fisheries, migratory birds and Indigenous peoples,” she explained — then the agency can trigger an assessment, and recommend ways to reduce or eliminate that harm.

Lori Skaine, executive director of the climate change division within Nova Scotia’s Department of Environment and Climate Change, responded to comments focused on emissions concerns that were sent in to the province’s project review. “The project’s overall [greenhouse gas] impact will depend a lot on how many hours the facility runs each year,” Skaine wrote, also noting the amount could vary depending on the fuel used, noting that these plants could run on diesel if natural gas isn’t available. 

Burning diesel produces up to 40 per cent more carbon emissions than natural gas. It also releases more fine particulate matter and increases local health risks. On-site diesel storage adds increased spill risk to the local ecosystem. 

Karen McKendry, senior wilderness outreach coordinator with the Ecology Action Centre, called potential changes to capacity or fuel type “scope creep.” Something, she said, there is no current remedy for. 

“Everything can change about the project, even after it was approved,” she says. “The environmental assessment process is a one-and-done.” 

A “material change” in the projects’ water use

When they were first proposed, the Marshdale and Salt Springs power plants planned to draw tens of thousands of litres of water from local watersheds each day to cool down turbines, clean equipment and mitigate emissions. But there’s a problem. According to Milligan, when the energy systems operator assessed the region, they determined there is not enough groundwater available on site to proceed with this plan. 

Instead, the operator pivoted to use dry technology systems that employ chemicals instead of water. The type and amount of chemicals have yet to be disclosed, and Milligan says that there are “several commercially available technologies routinely used at power generation facilities that can accomplish this.”

Young thinks this change should reopen the federal decision.

“These changes may materially affect the scope, effects, mitigation requirements and cumulative impacts of the projects,” she says.

They also heighten concerns about impacts on Atlantic salmon, which spawn in Eight Mile Brook, a tributary of the West River Pictou located about 300 metres from the proposed Salt Springs facility. 

It’s one of only a handful of rivers in Nova Scotia with Atlantic salmon populations robust enough that the province allows catch-and-release fishing. In their comments to the federal review, Kwilmu’kw Maw-Klusuaqn described Atlantic salmon as “a foundational food source across Mi’kma’ki.” 

“Loss of access to salmon threatens Mi’kmaq food security, self-determination and rights-based harvesting practice,” it added.

The salmon in the West River could soon be listed as a federally protected population after the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada determined that they were “endangered” in late 2025. Other threatened species impacted by this project include mainland moose, which has been listed under Nova Scotia’s Endangered Species Act since 2003, and black ash, which has been federally protected since 2018. Both were flagged as “culturally significant species for the Mi’kmaq” in the federal review. 

In her response to The Narwhal’s questions, Walsh of the federal assessment agency said it “was aware of this recommendation when it issued its determinations,” and that “the proponent is still required to follow the federal requirements of the Fisheries Act and the Species At Risk Act, as well as conditions issued by the province.” 

The federal government says impacts to these species can be managed without a federal impact assessment. But the provincial system has challenges. In 2020, the Nova Scotia Supreme Court found that the province had “a chronic systemic failure to implement action required” to enforce its Endangered Species Act. In February 2026, the provincial natural resources department eliminated its dedicated wildlife division.

In a statement, the department told The Narwhal “all wildlife-related functions are continuing as before” and that the move is simply a restructuring.“No scientists, biologists, forest technicians or wildlife staff were laid off, and no wildlife programs or services have been reduced, eliminated or transferred outside government,” the statement explained.But conservation groups disagreed, arguing that positions dedicated to biodiversity, ecosystems and habitat protection had been all but eliminated. They were backed up by sources within the department, who told the Halifax Examiner the changes were “absolutely gutting” the wildlife department. One source described them as something done “to punish the scientists working on behalf of wildlife and ecosystems.”

A worrying precedent for expedited project processes

On Sept. 9, the federal government announced plans to further expedite project reviews by shifting reviews for things like pipelines, power plants and oilsands mines from the impact assessment agency to the Canada Energy Regulator. These changes won’t apply to the Salt Springs or Marshdale power plants, but to Anna Johnston, they’re part of the same trend. One that she worries will “essentially eradicate federal environmental impact assessment, the best tool we had for avoiding the environmental harms of risky projects and often the only way for the public to have a say.” 

These most recent changes follow previous federal actions, including Bill C-5, which allowed the government to exempt projects from some stages of federal impact assessments, and agreements between Ottawa and the provinces to streamline joint reviews. Prime Minister Mark Carney and Nova Scotia Premier Tim Houston signed one of these co-operation agreements back in March. And Ontario, British Columbia, New Brunswick, Manitoba, Prince Edward Island and Alberta all have similar agreements, while Quebec is in the process of finalizing one. 

The agreement with Nova Scotia states that the province can decide when the federal government should rely on provincially “applicable environmental assessment and regulatory processes” in reviewing and regulating major projects, as the Nova Scotia agreement puts it. The agreement also directs Canada’s impact assessment agency to “[avoid] duplicative decision-making processes related to assessments by relying on provincial processes.” 

Johnston worried this slew of agreements undermine the basic goals of impact assessments. 

“[There is] a risk that we’ve been flagging for a while that the federal government says, ‘Oh no, we don’t need to look at that, the province is going to do it,’ ” she explains. “Meanwhile, the province is saying ‘we don’t have a role here, or we’re going to fast-track,’ or for whatever reason, it’s not going to look at the issue.” 

That, she said, means no one is looking at the bigger picture, that “you’re getting an authorization under the Fisheries Act, you’re really only looking at the fisheries impacts, [and] if you’re getting a navigable waters permit, you’re only looking at impacts on navigation and navigability.”“Environmental impact assessment is meant to take a look at all of those effects under one umbrella, so that decision makers have a more comprehensive understanding of what the full-picture effects are and how they interact,” she said.  

With all of these questions about the process, opposition to the two power plants has been growing, with petitions and two rallies through the summer in New Glasgow, one outside of a speech directly targeting Nova Scotia Premier Tim Houston. On Sept. 3, he weighed in on the plants, saying that he would like to see the energy system operator consider other technologies than natural gas. In a press conference, he said that the energy regulator had been “too focused on [natural] gas” and should consider “a proper and more fulsome assessment of different technologies.” 

The energy systems operator responded a week later with a press release announcing that it would open up the door to project proposals that could meet the same power generation needs of these two plants with “energy storage and other on-demand electricity generation technologies.” 

In the meantime, a legal challenge filed by Living Ecosystems and Power is moving through the Nova Scotia courts. And Twila Gaudet says that Mi’kmaw leadership is considering their next move, “which may include meetings with provincial and federal ministers, legal options [and] peaceful protest.” 

Johnston thinks these responses could multiply across the country as governments continue to try to fast-track project reviews. 

“I think that we’re going to see a much bigger wave of lawsuits,” she says. “That’s not good for taxpayers. Litigation is expensive, and Canadians end up paying for it.”

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On a grassy slope in Kanaka Bar, a herd of goats frolic and play. But this isn’t a farm or a petting zoo — it’s an innovative wildfire mitigation effort from the First Nation.

Some of the goats loudly bleat as they chow down on invasive species and overgrown brush. 

“In the last five years, Kanaka community has been experiencing devastation with fire,” Pauline Michell told The Narwhal.

That includes two evacuations due to wildfires, as well as floods and mudslides that have closed roads and cut off her community from the world. And in Kanaka Bar, there is no fire truck or fire hall. “Kanaka has solely been on its own in regards to fire,” said Michell.

Located in Nlaka’pamux territory, 20 kilometres south of Lytton, Kanaka Bar Indian Band also goes by T’eqt’ aqtn’mux, “the crossing place people.” 

In 2021, the Lytton Creek wildfire devastated the area, evacuating numerous First Nations for years, while burning structures and homes to the ground. 

Later that year, an atmospheric river raged through the Fraser and Thompson Rivers, washing out roads and cutting people off from leaving Kanaka Bar.

According to a new report from the office of the B.C. human rights commissioner, between 2000 and 2024, First Nation reserves accounted for 36 of 37 communities where at least half of the total land area was burned by wildfire, with the only non-reserve community being Lytton.

Further, First Nation reserves in B.C. are four times more likely to be impacted by wildfire than non-reserve communities. 

This prompted Michell, an elected councillor in her community, to take a proactive approach to the wildfire season. 

Since late July, a herd of goats have been eating their way through the Kanaka Bar Indian Band, targeting areas with built up fuel and brush that would burn up in a fire. 

About 80 goats have been clocking in this summer, while a few goats like Dandelion and Cuddley are part of a rebel club in their own separate enclosure.

“This is a trial for Kanaka, to look at fuel management in this way,” said Michell. 

“Hearing about these goats being able to do this sounded really intriguing and interesting,” she added.

The idea came by accident, after an area grazed by sheep acted as a fire stop during a wildfire three years prior.

“Back in 2023, the Kookipi Creek fire came through … We had been grazing the sheep that we had out in this back area, and when that fire came through, it actually came pretty much all the way down to community, and then it stopped where the sheep had been grazing,” Emma Bryce told The Narwhal.

She recalled thinking, “This is really cool, we just kind of made our own fire break without really intending to.”

Bryce has been the nation’s food self-sufficiency lead since 2022, and after the sheep experience, started researching different animals to graze in the community.

“In conversations with chief and council, I brought it up and was like, ‘What if we used goats to do wildfire risk reduction?’ They were like, ‘okay, let’s do it.’” 

“This goat grazing project has been a passion project of mine for the last couple of years,” Bryce said, after she took the green light from Kanaka and ran with it. That’s when she met Bruce Bradley, who does contract work across B.C. with his herd of goats. 

Based on Vancouver Island, it took three trips by ferry to bring his herd to the mainland and then to Kanaka Bar this summer. But the Ainslie Creek and Brunswick Creek wildfires impacted initial operations back in July. 

As of Sept. 11, those wildfires remained burning 31 kilometres down the road from Kanaka Bar, though they  are now contained. Once it was safe, the goats got to work. 

Goat grazing benefits for biodiversity and wildfire

The goats have grazed about 12 hectares of ground since arriving in the community earlier this summer.

“We’re trying to get in all the nooks and crannies, especially around the houses and around the roads, the important spaces to make them more defensible and resilient to fire,” Bradley told the Narwhal.

On top of reducing wildfire risk, “the ecological benefits are huge because the goats are trampling, they’re fertilizing … and they’re especially effective for invasive weeds.”

“We’ve tackled this year quite a bit of Canadian thistle, Himalayan blackberry and Scotch broom.” 

Bradley’s been deploying his fire-mitigating goats since 2018, through his company BC Timber Goats.

“It’s a very unique tool, and I think a powerful tool to get wildfire risk reduction benefits and silviculture benefits on the same site, at the same time,” he said. 

According to the B.C. government, silviculture is “the thoughtful, deliberate and balanced management of forests and surrounding local ecosystems” that encourages tree diversity to increase resilience against threats like pests, climate change and disturbances.

The idea to start a goat grazing business came from Bradley’s experience in farming.

“I grew up on a farm that had lots of weed control issues. I’d always spray and mow, and we’d break the mowers. I’d get sick with the spray and so I thought, there’s got to be a better way,” he said.

Bradley said that in areas of the farm sprayed with pesticides, “everything would just turn brown, and half the time it would burn in wildfire in the summer.” 

Goat grazing achieves similar outcomes as pesticide use but is much healthier for the environment.

According to the University of Calgary, which piloted a goat-grazing project at their main campus last year, “targeted grazing is a proven land-management technique that uses livestock to naturally control vegetation growth. Unlike herbicides, which can have a lasting environmental impact, goats provide a natural way to reduce unwanted plant growth while encouraging native vegetation to thrive.”

Animals grazing through southern Interior communities has become less common with wildlife populations declining.

“Using goats actually mimics what you would have typically seen if you had large herds of elk moving through. … Goats mimic a natural system that this landscape would have evolved with already,” Bryce said.

An addition to the FireSmart toolbox 

Over the summer, the goats have been working alongside Kanaka Bar’s fuel management crew.

As the FireSmart team gathers fuel and brush into a pile, the goats eat until it’s gone. It’s a win-win situation: feeding the goats and disposing of the community’s built-up fuel.

“I don’t think there’s ever going to be a scenario where we don’t need people out on the ground, going out and doing the bigger fuel management,” Bryce said, adding goat grazing complements other fuel management strategies. 

“They can go in and defoliate, which is great to have more visibility when you’re out there working in really dense brush,” she said. 

Bryce and Bradley estimate the goats haven eaten 0.25 hectares of ground each day. They’re scheduled to wrap up their work on Sept. 21.

“The goats are going in and doing a really efficient job at something that is really challenging to do with just human crews alone,” she said. 

When the project was first brought forward to the community, residents were interested in learning more about it, but not exactly excited about goats – that quickly changed.

“Now it’s to the point where members want a couple of goats to tackle the brushes in their yard as well, so that’s really good,” said Michell.    

“When wildfire comes to Kanaka, we’ll be more prepared.”

Updated on Sept. 16, 2026, at 11:11 a.m. PT: This story has been updated to correct the dates that the goats are in Kanaka Bar.

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In the 1960s, David Crawford was boating in his backyard on Nipigon Bay when he thought he spotted raw sewage floating in the once-pristine waters of Lake Superior. Years later, he realized the “turds,” as Crawford describes them, were craft paper deposits from the nearby pulp mill in Red Rock, Ont. The mill was also known to billow a harmful smoke into the air and release a hot, foamy plume of effluent into the lake. If the noxious smell wasn’t enough, log drives filled the bay with floating timber and bark, meaning Crawford didn’t often tempt the tumultuous waters of Nipigon Bay.

Along with the pulp mill, raw sewage actually was poisoning the clear bay, coming from two inadequate municipal wastewater treatment plants, but trouble didn’t stop there. The unnatural rise and fall of the water level, due to four hydroelectric dams upstream on the Nipigon River, were causing riverbanks to erode, adding silt to the water, while simultaneously washing out fish spawning habitat.

The reality, Crawford said, was haunting: Nipigon Bay was on the verge of dying.

But in late August, as fishing boats glided across calm, turquoise water behind a podium set up at the Red Rock marina, it was easy to forget about the bay’s past.

A small crowd was gathered as federal Environment Minister Julie Dabrusin visited Red Rock, a town of fewer than 1,000 people, to celebrate those very waters. The air was fresh with the smell of wild mint and Canada geese migrating in undulating waves, stopping to feast in and by the water, honking their approval. Dabrusin spoke into the quiet space left by the calm waters, about “a bay that was heavily polluted and is healthy again. The fish came back, the habitat was rebuilt, and water that people once could not trust, they can trust again.”

Gone are fish with tumours, unnaturally fluctuating water levels, noxious odours, effluent foam barriers, mill plumes and drifting timber. Nipigon Bay is a success story that stretches beyond the Canadian border. It’s one worth noting at a time when the relationship between Canada and the U.S. is strained by President Donald Trump’s trade war and moves to rename another Great Lake — Lake Ontario — to Lake America.

In 1972, Canada and the United States agreed upon their mutual role in polluting a portion of the Great Lakes, which contain 20 per cent of the world’s fresh water. The two countries joined forces to create the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement. In 1987, the agreement listed 43 official areas of concern where this industrial pollution was the most deleterious. Twelve of those were in Canada, including Nipigon Bay. 

It was a time when the countries were friendly neighbours, the type that could agree to clean up their backyards and prioritize clean drinking water for millions of people. Remedial action plans were created for the affected areas to create a pathway for healthy environments to thrive.

Which brings us to Nipigon Bay, on Aug. 28, 2026. Four decades after being identified as an area of concern, the federal government announced it was officially delisted at the small celebration beside the still waters of Lake Superior. It was attended by ministers, government officials, local First Nations and Crawford, who chairs a public advisory committee made up of local residents who help to monitor the remediation work.

For Crawford, witnessing the bay heal over his lifetime is a cup of water he’s happy to enjoy. He still worries about the pressures of a rapidly changing world. Currently, there’s a proposal to build a lithium processing plant on the shores of Nipigon Bay in Red Rock, talk of further dams being built upstream on Lake Nipigon and geopolitical tensions straining longstanding bilateral agreements. All the while, climate change has created greater pressure on fresh water and how humans interact with it, from floods to drought and invasive species. 

But for now, Nipigon Bay is one of four areas of concern in Canada that have been delisted. To Crawford, that’s worth celebrating.

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It was 6 a.m. when Qutxulenuhw Tim Kulchyski got the call.

On the phone was Elder Siilh’na’mut Ken Elliott, a fellow member of Cowichan Tribes. Elliott had been working in a place known as Fish Gut Alley, named after the abundant salmon that spawned and then decayed there. It’s a naturalized wetland spread out over nearly four hectares of Duncan, B.C., within Rotary and McAdam Parks, just north of the Cowichan River on Vancouver Island. It was June 2007, and he was restoring the natural habitat around the city’s sewage lagoons — essentially, large pond-like areas that local wastewater flows into.

That morning, Elliott, a Quw’utsun Knowledge Keeper and expert on native plants, had been taking inventory along Fish Gut Alley. As he moved downstream, a strange cacophony grew louder and louder.

“Crows, ravens, kingfishers — just an incredibly large amount of bird activity. Everyone was squawking and making a lot of noise,” he said.

Following the sounds, Elliott came across a scene that was “a blow to the gut,” he said. 

From bank to bank the river was filled with thousands of juvenile coho salmon on their sides, swimming in circles, mouths wide, gasping at the surface. Birds had descended on the area to feast on the dead and dying fish.

Elliott called Kulchyski, a biologist, and told him to get down to the river quickly.

Once he arrived, the two men began looking for the cause of the mass casualty event. “We ran up and down the stream looking for something that may have poisoned them, but we couldn’t find any gasoline or anything like that,” Elliott said.

Before leaving to meet Elliott, Kulchyski had phoned Willi Aquino, a local fishery officer with the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, who soon joined them at the river.

“You could see where the fish had died,” recalled Aquino. “It was very close to this storm drain. So, it’s like, ‘OK, something’s coming out of there.’ ”

There had recently been significant rainfall in the area, Elliott recalled. At first, he thought maybe one of the local businesses had dumped something toxic into the storm drain system, which the rain could have washed into the river. Later that day he drove around to ask at dry cleaners, car washes and gas stations, but he found no leads.

Around the same time that Kulchyski, Elliott and Aquino were scratching their heads over the dead coho on Vancouver Island, marine researchers and streamkeepers in Washington state were investigating a similar phenomenon in their own neck of the woods: for decades, they had noticed dramatic die-offs of coho salmon in urban areas, close to roadways, but couldn’t figure out the cause. It wasn’t until 2020 that the Washington researchers hit on a major discovery — one that not only connected the dots for Kulchyski but solved an environmental mystery that had been puzzling scientists for decades.

The culprit: a highly toxic chemical compound called 6PPD-quinone. It comes from the breakdown of a compound called 6PPD, a preservative added to car tires to prevent the rubber from cracking as a result of ozone in the air.

Anti-ozonants like 6PPD came into widespread use in the 1960s so the rubber of car tires wouldn’t crack and wear down so fast. These days, each time a car is driven, its tires shed tiny amounts of 6PPD-infused rubber onto the roads. When it rains, the particles wash into nearby fish habitat, where UV exposure causes it to break down into 6PPD-Q, which can be lethal even in tiny amounts.

Kulchyski had started to hear “murmurs” in the scientific community about a compound that was killing coho salmon just as COVID-19 restrictions began to spread across the world.

Now, after years of research and testing in the area, he has no doubt this was what killed the salmon in Fish Gut Alley. And he’s on a mission to help the world understand the colossal problem 6PPD-Q presents, and how First Nations are on the front lines of dealing with it.

The salmon mystery solved

To understand how 6PPD-Q was discovered, one needs to travel back to the central California coast during the 1990s, when a host of different challenges meant coho salmon were driven nearly to extinction. By 2005, they had been classified as an endangered species in the United States. 

This led to an influx of resources aimed at habitat restoration in urban streams throughout the Pacific Northwest. And more boots on the ground meant more scrutiny, according to aquatic toxicologist Jenifer McIntyre. She’s an associate professor at Washington State University and researches Seattle-area streams in the Puget Sound. 

As researchers tromped around in streams, squinting into turbid waters watching, waiting, McIntyre and others began to notice something odd: large numbers of dead coho piled up along the sides of creeks that were still filled with eggs. This meant they had died before getting a chance to spawn.

“If you’re used to salmon and salmon fisheries, then you’re not surprised by dead fish in the fall, but the fact that they haven’t spawned is like … ‘Oh,’ ” McIntyre said.

Across seven years of field studies, a pattern emerged. The dead salmon were primarily coho, in the most urbanized areas of the Puget Sound. The deaths typically happened during or just after heavy rains, and as they died the fish exhibited a strange, specific behaviour: swimming in circles at the surface of the water, mouths gaping, spiralling and gasping. And the phenomenon was widespread: about 40 per cent of the Puget Sound area was affected and between 40 to 90 per cent of those salmon were dying before they spawned, within hours of being exposed. 

The weight of the evidence at this time suggested their deaths were somehow being caused by stormwater runoff, McIntyre said.

At first, researchers faced a long list of potential causes. Was it pesticides from a nearby golf course, or low oxygen? Could it be parasites? As they dug in and began to eliminate each of these factors, they slowly narrowed in on a possible cause. 

Cars. 

But there were so many chemicals associated with cars. The first year they began running tests on salmon, in 2016, McIntyre figured they only had the capacity to run tests on two things, and decided to look into car tires and exhaust particles. But it eventually proved to be too much to do two things, so they decided to focus on car tires.

When her team passed water through a mulch of worn tire particles to make a solution, it killed all of the coho salmon tested in their lab. That’s when they knew they were onto something, she said, though at first they didn’t know exactly what.

“Something about stormwater — okay. Something about roadway runoff — all right. Something about tires,” McIntyre recalled. “That’s when Ed joined the picture.”

Ed Kolodziej, a water and ecosystem health researcher and professor at the University of Washington, brought in critical chemistry expertise and a dream team of biologists and chemists. Assembled from government departments and universities from across the Pacific Northwest, they set to work trying to figure out what it was in the tires that was killing the fish.

“Out of the hundreds to thousands of chemicals that we were detecting in these samples, there were 57 chemicals that were always present when the coho salmon died, so we started to identify them,” Kolodziej said.

Over time, the list of chemicals got smaller and smaller until they managed to identify the composition of what they thought was the culprit, but there was one problem: it didn’t correspond to any known tire ingredients, McIntyre said.

An environmental chemist on the team named Zhenyu Tian noticed that the carbon and nitrogen in the molecule of their mystery chemical matched some of those on the tire list, though it differed in other ways.

Then Tian had a lightbulb moment: what if they were searching for a chemical that transformed into something else once it entered into the environment and broke down?

In the mountains of research materials, Tian found an old industrial rubber paper from 1983 that talked about a chemical added to tires called 6PPD. When it was ozonated — exposed to air and sunlight — the paper stated that it changed into the exact chemical formula they were searching for: 6PPD-quinone.

To confirm their theory, the scientists bought some 6PPD and tested it on the salmon in their lab. They died, showing the same characteristic twisting and gasping behaviours that had been seen in wild salmon.

The group’s evidence was compiled into a groundbreaking paper published in the journal Science at the end of 2020. It was a sensation in the scientific community, in part because it finally offered an explanation for a phenomenon that wasn’t new, and in part because it sounded an alarm over how toxic and widespread 6PPD-Q is.

One of its most remarkable — and alarming — features is just how little it takes to kill coho salmon. As one researcher put it, the equivalent of a grain of rice in an Olympic-sized swimming pool is enough to make the water lethal.

And it’s not just fish that have been exposed. A recent study out of China shows that 6PPD-Q has been detected in human urine and breast milk, though it’s not yet clear what effect, if any, it has on humans or other mammals. Researchers are also finding it not just in water but in air, dust and snow — basically everywhere there are tires.

“It is among the most toxic chemicals that we know of for aquatic life,” McIntyre said. “We reasoned that you would expect to find this chemical anywhere where tire particles were getting into the water.”

But the researchers still had questions to answer. Why were certain fish species, such as coho and coastal cutthroat trout, so uniquely sensitive to 6PPD-Q? How does it kill them? And, perhaps most important, how can its risks be contained? 

Finding 6PPD-Q hotspots

In February 2026, about 165 people attended the third and final Protecting Salmon From Tire Wear Toxicants workshop in downtown Nanaimo. 

Workshop presentations ranged from practical to dizzyingly technical, and represented an unusual cross-collaboration across disciplines, all focused on solving the same problem.

“If everyone’s a silo, we’re all probably trying to look for the same answers to the same questions, and you’ll get it from many different places, but it’ll happen a lot faster if you’re talking to people,” said Angelina Jaeger, a researcher with Vancouver Island University’s Centre for Health & Environmental Mass Spectrometry (CHEMS), one of the groups that organized the workshop series. “That’s what science should be.”

Like many researchers at the workshop, Jaeger is focused on finding solutions. One problem her team decided to focus on was implementing widespread 6PPD-Q testing in local streams and creeks.

It all started with that seminal 2020 Science paper, said Erik Krogh, a chemistry professor and co-director of Vancouver Island University’s CHEMS lab. Though he read it with a sense of dread, Krogh immediately saw a use for the technology his team had been working on for more than a decade, which would make it “faster, better and cheaper” to test water samples.

Already developed as a way to test for carcinogens in oilsands process water, the test dips a membrane into a water sample and, using a repurposed 3D printer to mix it around, it pulls out the chemical and sends it to be measured. Within a few months, they had repurposed this technology to mass-test for 6PPD-Q. 

Soon, researchers were able to process up to 100 samples a day and get results within minutes.

With hundreds of volunteers taking samples in waterways across Vancouver Island, over the last three years their lab has gathered what Krogh believes is the single largest dataset of 6PPD-Q samples in the world.

When Kulchyski heard about the team’s goal of finding 6PPD-Q “hotspots” on Vancouver Island, he put Fish Gut Alley onto their radar.

Kulchyski and the researchers wanted to understand what was going on in the area, past and present. Since their bleak early-morning discovery in June 2007, Kulchyski, Elliott and Aquino had witnessed other, similar fish kills in the area. At times, researchers say they can recognize urban stormwater that likely contains 6PPD-Q, visible as a cloudy sediment or sometimes an oily sheen. 

“To us it’s like a horror film, because you just see this big dark cloud, and then six or seven or eight thousand fish are dead,” said Kulchyski. 

Initially, everyone involved in the original Fish Gut Alley incident thought low oxygen levels must have been the culprit, and Elliott said he is still convinced that’s the case.

In this case, stormwater sits in a reservoir before being pumped out into the environment and bacteria end up growing in there and consuming the oxygen, and then when it is released it can kill the juvenile salmon, Elliott said.

But Aquino ran on-site tests at the time, and though oxygen levels were low, she said in her estimation they weren’t low enough to kill the fish. She also took a gasping, dying fish out to the Pacific Biological Station in Nanaimo to run tests, but nothing came of it.

“We could never really figure it out,” she said. “There was no real smoking gun.”

But in March of 2024, the researchers at Vancouver Island University finally found a clue that connected everything. 

After several days of rain, a stormwater sample taken in the morning at Fish Gut Alley measured levels of 6PPD-Q at hundreds of nanograms per litre, far beyond the concentration that had killed coho in the lab.

“That concentration is certainly higher than most,” Jaeger said. And it’s not the only sample in the area that has tested well above what is safe. As a result, the team designated Fish Gut Alley a priority site and installed an automated collector there last summer to take samples every hour during rain events.

“It’s a great example where we’ve identified a hotspot, and so now we can work to solve it,” Krogh said. Urban streams can have dozens of storm drain outfalls, which means measuring stormwater for 6PPD-Q levels can be a huge task, he said. “Where do you start? Can we fix them all? I mean, that’s overwhelming. Let’s find which ones are problematic, and let’s address them.”

Can it be stopped?

Because 6PPD-Q is hydrophobic, like oil, it tends to stick not only to the test membranes used by the university researchers, but also to soil. And it turns out this is an important part of how the chemical might be mitigated.

Tests being run by researchers at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver show an approximate 90 per cent removal of 6PPD-Q from stormwater when they run it through “rain gardens.” These are green areas near roads that filter runoff through soil and plant roots before re-entering the environment. Krogh is currently working with his research partners on three rain gardens planned for various locations around Vancouver Island, and a fourth is already under construction in Langford, just outside of Victoria.

Promising results have also come from using filters made from coconut husks and biochar — a carbon-rich, charcoal-like substance made from dried plant waste.

At Washington State University, when roadway runoff went through a bioretention system made from 18 inches of sand and compost, it prevented salmon deaths for the entire 13 years the study ran, McIntyre said.

The upside of the whole thing is that researchers already know so much more about the problem now than they did even two or three years ago, Krogh said. For example, their team recently found that even when fresh water is repeatedly run through collected tire sediment samples, it doesn’t seem to dilute the concentration of 6PPD-Q. This means that when tire particles are sitting at the side of a creek, they remain a long-term contamination source despite repeated rains.

“It’s not just one and done. So we really have to deal with the particles and make sure that we handle those carefully, so that we’re not putting them somewhere else in the ecosystem or in the watershed and then they become a source somewhere else.”  

Krogh maintains a cautious sense of optimism that the problem is “solvable.” However, hurdles still exist. Regulating the high volume of 6PPD-Q in the environment is difficult, and finding an alternative chemical with the same properties, but less harmful, is also tricky.

The Canadian government included 6PPD and 6PPD-Q on a priority list for assessment starting in the winter of 2025. This is a step towards the chemical’s possible regulation, under the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act.

However, the Tire and Rubber Association of Canada (TRAC) tried to delay a potential assessment in 2024 to see what regulation happened in the U.S. first, according to documents obtained by The Narwhal through a freedom of information request.   

Governments should not prematurely restrict the use of 6PPD as it could “have enormous public safety and economic consequences,” wrote association president Carol Hochu to then-environment and climate change minister Steven Guilbeault, in an April 1, 2024 letter.

The association believes a deferral of regulation is still the best approach, given the “extensive regulatory activity” underway in the U.S., which includes a search for safe alternatives to 6PPD, communications manager Michal Majernik told The Narwhal by email.

Potential alternatives to 6PPD are being explored by the U.S. Tire Manufacturers Association, which releases a yearly analysis on its findings.

In response to the hurdles, researchers also published a paper in the scientific journal Environmental Science & Technology Letters in the summer of 2025, outlining what an international regulatory framework for 6PPD-Q might look like. It also highlighted some of the broader political issues at play.

For example, vehicle pollution disproportionately impacts “under-resourced and underserved communities, who tend to live closer to traffic.” The paper notes it also affects food sources for Indigenous Peoples, and describes this higher level of tire chemical exposure as an act of “environmental injustice.”

A warning for salmon

Kulchyski caught his first fish at eight years old — a coho salmon, with a spear he made himself. He gave it to his Elders, because that’s what you do when you catch your first fish, he said. It’s a cultural practice and a full-circle philosophy of generational caretaking.

“If you look after your family, when you become an Elder, then your family will look after you,” he said. “If we don’t look after them, it’s a sign that we’re not looking after ourselves. And so if we look after salmon, not only are they healthy and happy, they return and nourish us. It’s a pretty simple system.” 

He caught the coho in Fish Gut Alley, when historical runs of salmon were once so abundant the area was named after the mounds of decaying salmon that died there after spawning. That’s how it was when he was a kid, Kulchyski remembers. But in the decades since, things have changed.

In the broader Cowichan River system, coho numbers have shown a steady decline of more than 90 per cent since the 1970s, though they’ve rebounded somewhat in the last five years. 

“How we’ve treated the landscape, how we’ve treated the land, the dyking and all these other issues, have really pushed almost every pressure that there is that you can exert on fish and fish habitat on this one little stretch,” he said.

A verdant gem hidden in plain sight, Fish Gut Alley is nestled into a suburban neighbourhood in Duncan, and most of the dog walkers and joggers that use its wide gravel trails nearby are likely unaware they’re only steps away from crucial juvenile salmon rearing and spawning habitat.

Though unremarkable to the untrained eye, the area’s shallow protected pools, fallen logs and slow-moving streams are ideal for juvenile coho to hang out in and get strong before heading out to the ocean, Kulchyski said.

It’s hard to get around the negative mindset that things are hopeless, that everything could crash and salmon could just stop existing, Kulchyski said. But for him, giving up is simply not an option.

“That doesn’t exist in our mental scenario of the world. It’s kind of like saying, ‘Hey, you know what? You’re gonna lose one of your children,’ ” he said. “I don’t think so.”

Though 6PPD-Q is not the only problem facing salmon in the area, he views it as something that could  change the way people think about environmental protections, “sort of a stepping stone to introducing us into a new thought process and a new methodology that allows us to do things differently, treat these systems differently, think of fish differently,” he said.

At present, Kulchyski is working with university researchers and the City of Duncan to look at mitigating 6PPD-Q at source, by targeting the stormwater gathered from nearby streets that is held in reservoirs before flowing into salmon habitat.

“We are treating our water so poorly, and not looking after all the issues we bring forward. On all of the bridges and all of the highways, there’s 6PPD-Q coming in everywhere,” he said.

“I certainly don’t know all of the solutions, but I know if we actually start incorporating these concerns and these issues in building new bridges and building new treatment systems, it will immediately make a huge difference.”

On-the-ground reporting for this story was made possible with support from Carleton University’s Leonard Shifrin and Louise Dulude Canadian Social Policy Emerging Reporter Fund. As per The Narwhal’s editorial independence policy, no foundation or outside organization has editorial input into our stories.

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Sherry McIntyre lives an hour’s drive away from the nearest grocery store. Between gas prices, vehicle maintenance and rising grocery costs, the bills add up quickly. 

“Bringing all that food back is also a challenge. You need coolers,” McIntyre told The Narwhal. 

She’s an elected councillor from the Skuppah Indian Band, located two kilometres south of Lytton, B.C.

Forgetting your standard grocery bag will cost you a few dollars, while purchasing a cooler or thermal storage bag to properly store cold foods during long drives will cost you at least $20 during the summer months.

It’s one small way her remote community and others in the southern Interior experience inequities accessing food, while larger disasters have cut the community off from grocery store access completely.

But long before grocery stores existed in B.C., First Nations harvested and preserved salmon during summer fish camps, creating food security throughout the winter months.

Today, accessing wild salmon is more challenging, contributing to food insecurity and an overall disconnect from traditional food. But it’s also more important than ever.

McIntyre grew up fishing the country’s largest salmon run with her father and says that for younger generations today, including her children, “fishing has become so scarce.”

“When your harvest is not as big, you don’t get to fully process all of the salmon that you need. If you only end up with 20 fish a year, you’re just going to freeze it,” she said.

As of August 25th and according to the Pacific Salmon Commission, this year’s sockeye salmon run came in at 2.8 million. The organization estimated 7.7 million last winter.

As salmon are declining across the province, communities are stepping up to keep their access to traditional food strong.

A place to gather, process and store food

In August, Skuppah Indian Band members taught specialized fish preparations, including wind-dried fish, smoked fish and canned fish — all at the community’s food security centre.

The nation decided to build a food security centre back in 2019. Food access and affordability were already challenging at the time. 

During the global COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, food became even harder to access amid lockdowns, staffing shortages and supply chain disruptions. Indigenous and remote communities were hit the hardest by food insecurity linked to the pandemic. Then came a year full of climate disasters in British Columbia. 

“In 2021, the Lytton fire took out all of the services in town and cut us off from travelling to get groceries,” McIntyre said. It was only the first record-breaking disaster of the year.

“The atmospheric river came in November and decimated any hope we had of feeding ourselves, because it blocked grocery trucks from coming.”

Those disasters informed the final stages of the Skuppah food security centre including adding private food storage for community members, with a generator installed in the event of a power outage.

“We really honed in on what the needs were for emergency response and climate change, building on the original concept of providing a place for community to gather and prepare food,” McIntyre said.

The space is equipped with a commercial kitchen, high-end pressure canners, freeze dryers to create shelf-stable food that lasts years and more, all designed to make community gatherings and food distributions as easy as possible. 

Since opening in 2022, the food security centre has served as a place for the Skuppah Indian Band to process and store food, including huckleberries and salmon.

The centre has a stockpile of food, a disaster precaution learned in 2021 when roads were flooded out or closed due to fire.

“We’ve had so much positive feedback from our members. Having a space like this does something special when you can come and gather, because it’s a space for loving one another and for supporting one another,” McIntyre said.

At Nlaka’pamux fish camp, traditional fishing techniques are passed on to the next generation

Raymond Phillips, a member of Lytton First Nation, facilitated dip net tying at this year’s community fish camp in Incluckcheen. He says that fish camps are a place for the community to exchange knowledge and create food security within the nation. 

“People leave the fish camp with food. This is survival food, but it’s also really good food. It’s high quality and very nutritious … it has sustained us for thousands of years,” he said. 

Phillips grew up fishing the Fraser and Thompson rivers, learning how to tie dip nets back in the 1980s. Dip nets are a traditional way of harvesting salmon in B.C., only allowed for First Nations in the province.

Tying the dip net and making the hoop and pole requires technique, patience and practice, all of which Phillips has spent decades accumulating.

“There’s a complexity to it,” he said, but once people get the hang of tying a certain knot, it becomes repetitive and easier to teach others.

His station at fish camp had people of all ages in attendance, wanting to learn about traditional fishing tools and harvesting techniques. In the Interior, dip nets are passed down in families for generations, but handmade nets are harder to come by these days.

“It’s becoming a lost art, so many people are buying commercially made aluminum or nylon nets,” he said. 

Traditionally, fir saplings were used to make the pole and hoop, with Spatsin used to make the net. Phillips and other Nlaka’pamux dip net makers hope to pass those skills on by sharing their knowledge at fish camps.  

Phillips is a provincial judge based out of Kamloops. Before that, he worked as a lawyer and represented Indigenous people charged by the Department of Fisheries and Oceans Canada.

“As a lawyer I ended up helping quite a few people who were being charged with fishing at closed times, so it became a real challenge for the community to feed themselves in times of scarcity. That’s the cycle we’re in now, the salmon resources are becoming scarce,” he said.

When he was younger, salmon were abundant, but as time went on fishery closures became more common.

“The salmon, it’s one of the largest migrations in the world. They go from the Pacific, go into the Fraser and travel all the way to their spawning grounds. Every community along the way waits for that salmon to get there. It’s disheartening to wait and be told you can’t fish. The populations are dwindling, so it is concerning,” Phillips said. 

Despite those challenges, Indigenous communities work together each run to provide Elders, families and those experiencing food insecurity with salmon. 

That holds true for Cheam First Nation, located near Chilliwack, which hosts an annual community canning day.

Cheam community canning day

Every year, Cheam members look forward to gathering at the local gymnasium, ready to gut, fillet and preserve the year’s salmon. It’s a tradition Stó:lō nations in the Fraser Valley have fought to continue for decades. 

“The whole community is coming together on an assembly line to get our fish canned and vacuum packed,” Justin Pike said.

“We get the community together to help try and get fish out to everybody, not everybody knows how to do it, so it really helps,” he said. 

Pike is an elected councillor in Cheam, and one of many who harvested this year’s sockeye salmon haul to distribute among the community.

He was hands-on at the fish gutting station, with youth and community members watching closely, eager to learn and participate. Reflecting on the number of young people engaged, Pike is confident that his nation will continue its tradition of caring for salmon and harvesting and preserving salmon as a food source for the winter.

“We’re always super grateful to get some fish,” said Pike. 

While cultural knowledge remains strong in Cheam, wild salmon is becoming harder to access. Along with the dwindling salmon numbers and costly fishing gear, Cheam also has a history of facing off against the Department of Fisheries and Oceans Canada for their right to fish. 

“Cheam is known for defending our right to be on that river, our inherent right to these fish,” Wendy Kelly, a salmon processing facilitator, told The Narwhal.

“Years and years ago, they were one of the only bands that battled to go out fishing when the Department of Fisheries and Oceans Canada said ‘no, you can’t go fishing,’” she said. The nation had numerous stand-offs with the department in the late 1990s and early 2000s over access to salmon in their traditional waters, led by the late Chief Siōliya June Quipp. 

Cheam is located an hour-and-a-half from downtown Vancouver, home to some of the most lucrative seafood ports in the province and country. Communities located closer to the city are heavily monitored on the water, and with fisheries opening for a few days at a time, the struggle to access wild salmon persists. 

It makes Cheam’s annual canning day a powerful assertion of Indigenous Rights, following the footsteps of their ancestors.

Those rights are inherent to Cheam, but also affirmed in Section 35 of the Canadian Constitution, and by the renowned Sparrow and Marshall decisions made in the 1990s, which affirmed the rights of First Nations to fish, hunt and harvest without unjustified government interference. 

“It’s really medicine when you’re handling those fish,” Kelly said. 

In the Pacific Northwest, salmon is a sacred part of the culture, and has been a main food source for millennia. It’s a connection the Vancouver Aboriginal Health Society works to keep strong.

Urban access to culture and salmon

This month, the Vancouver Aboriginal Health Society is hosting salmon processing and jarring workshops, servicing cultural food and knowledge in the heart of the Downtown Eastside.

“This run came from Boston Bar, right from the river to the centre and processed within hours from the time it came out of the water,” Ruby Harry told The Narwhal.

They have access to salmon all year now,” she said, referring to workshop participants, who had the opportunity to clean, process and learn how to can salmon. 

Harry is from Tl’etinqox t’in, located near Williams Lake, but like many Indigenous people, now resides in an urban setting. She grew up eating traditional foods, and after moving to the city, wanted to help create that access for others.

And with Vancouver being one of the most expensive cities in North America, access to nutritious food can be a challenge. Salmon distributions help to fill that gap.

“Vancouver Aboriginal Health Society is one of the only organizations I know that has given the Downtown Eastside this opportunity to process cultural food,” Harry said. 

Harvesting traditional food must be done within your own territory, so for Indigenous people living away from theirs, wild salmon becomes harder to access. 

Salmon workshops create that opportunity for urban Indigenous people, and support food security with rising grocery costs. The workshops hosted by Harry have no cost for participants and create openings for cultural knowledge to be shared.

“Salmon brings lots of good medicine,” said Harry.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

The smell of decomposing garbage hits before the building comes into view — a sour, earthy odour that stings your teeth. Hidden by a curving driveway, large bright green trees and a set of lawn chairs, the entrance almost makes you forget that beyond it lies a waste-burning facility that is set to become one of North America’s largest incinerators.

The Emerald Energy from Waste incinerator sits on roughly six hectares of industrial land, tucked between Bramalea Road and Highway 407 in Brampton, Ont. Behind its rusting metal walls and towering smokestacks, transport trucks arrive throughout the day carrying loads of non-hazardous waste from across Ontario. Inside, garbage is unloaded, sorted and fed into combustion units, where the waste is burned to generate electricity for neighbouring businesses and homes.

The facility began operating in spring 1992, on former agricultural land that had become home to a rapidly developing industrial sector. Today, warehouses, manufacturing plants and trucking dominate the area immediately around the incinerator. But beyond this industrial zone are neighbourhoods that have expanded alongside one of Canada’s fastest-growing cities. Just a few kilometres southwest of the plant, cricket and soccer matches fill Emancipation Park on summer evenings. Minutes away, homes, recreation centres and places of worship serve a population transformed by decades of immigration, particularly from South Asia. What was once a facility close to the edge of Brampton now sits near communities where tens of thousands of people live, work and raise families.

Last year, the province approved the Environmental Assessment Screening Report which clears the path to a major expansion of the Emerald incinerator. The facility would process up to 900,000 tonnes of waste annually — roughly six-fold what it’s processing today, bringing even more garbage from various Ontario municipalities to Brampton. The Ministry of the Environment, Conservation and Parks has not responded to The Local’s request for comment.

Emerald Energy from Waste argues that the expansion is needed to address Ontario’s looming landfill capacity crisis. According to Waste to Resource Ontario, an environmental services association, Ontario generated approximately 16.88 million tonnes of waste in 2024, with 12.75 million tonnes disposed in landfills; the province is projected to run out of landfill space by 2037.

“Ontario has a crisis in that we don’t have enough waste management capacity infrastructure in the province,” Joe Lyng, president of Emerald Energy from Waste, says. An expansion in Brampton, he argues, is the answer to multiple problems — diverting more garbage from landfills while also increasing the incinerator’s energy recovery rate, creating more power for an energy-starved province.

While that argument may be convincing for the province, locals feel differently. The incinerator expansion — which Emerald anticipates will begin in 2027 — has become one of Brampton’s most contentious environmental issues. Many residents question the province’s approval process. They worry about the potential health effects on nearby communities. And they wonder if anyone is looking out for the good of the people of Brampton, a city of racialized immigrants at the edge of Canada’s biggest metropolis.

“It’s a sacrifice zone,” Linda Gasser, co-founder of the advocacy group Zero Waste 4 Zero Burning, says. That’s the term for an area in which low-income and minority groups shoulder the environmental harms of clustered polluting industrial sites. For locals, the placement of the largest incinerator in Canada right in their community sends a message: that somewhere like Brampton won’t, or can’t, object to housing the region’s industry and waste. “One more polluting facility, what’s the big deal, right?” Gasser says. It’s a mindset that some residents are committed to fighting.

Incinerator’s English-only consultations create barriers in largely Punjabi-speaking neighbourhoods

There’s a misconception that Bramptonians don’t care about the environment. Once proudly known as The Flower City, Brampton is now grappling with a new online reputation as a “garbage city.” It’s a stereotype that has frustrated many residents — including those working to prove the opposite.

Born and raised in Brampton, Rajbalinder Ghatoura is an environmental activist dedicated to improving life in his community. When he was 12 years old, Ghatoura won an international environmental photography competition for a photo of a Tim Horton’s cup seemingly dissolving into its surroundings. It sparked a lifelong commitment to protecting the environment. Today, at 25, that commitment still shapes his activism. Environmental problems, Ghatoura says, often become hardest to confront when people can’t see them, which he believes goes beyond roadside litter.

In 2023, Ghatoura co-founded Kudrat Di Rakhia, a community organization based in Brampton. They’re members of the Brampton Environmental Alliance, and focus on advocacy and education.

To reach the South Asian population in Brampton, Ghatoura works with local gurdwaras. Raising awareness about environmental sustainability, starting with places of worship, Kudrat Di Rakhia has engaged with the Sikh community to participate in initiatives like tree planting and city cleanups.

Communicating directly with Punjabi-speaking residents is one of Kudrat Di Rakhia’s greatest strengths. By bridging the language barrier, the organization is able to connect with a broader diaspora of Brampton’s South Asian community that can be overlooked in environmental advocacy efforts. According to the 2021 census, Punjabi is the second most spoken language after English in Brampton. “It’s important for this information to be shared with the population, the demographics, and to be shared in a language that they understand,” says Ghatoura.

He says this wasn’t the case with the incinerator expansion. In 2022, the company took out a half-page ad in the Brampton Guardian, an English–only newspaper, to inform the public of their proposed expansion project. Informing the public of an undertaking like the proposed expansion is required under the Environmental Assessment Act. But despite the surrounding area being home to many immigrants and residents whose first language is not English, no information was provided in Punjabi or any other language.

Lyng says he looked into the demographics in Brampton and found that approximately 95 to 97 per cent were English-speaking residents. (While census data shows that approximately 95 per cent of Brampton residents have “knowledge” of English, it’s the mother tongue for roughly 42 per cent of the population.)

“We’re not going to reach out to, you know, the two or three per cent. It’s at our discretion and we didn’t see that as something that was necessary,” Lyng says.

Ghatoura himself only came to know of the proposed expansion a year ago, reading about it online, after much of the screening process had already been completed.

What he learned alarmed him.

Company president says incinerator expansion is safe, but won’t commit to publicly sharing real-time emission data

Energy-from-waste facilities, like the one in Brampton, are incinerators that recover energy during combustion. Heat is used to generate steam, powering a turbine to produce electricity. Although incinerators reduce the volume of garbage, they don’t completely eliminate it. After the waste is burned, the ash that remains in the stacks is typically disposed of in a landfill.

Expansion at the proposed scale would typically require a full environmental assessment. Because Emerald Energy from Waste has been a long-term operation, however, the project went through a streamlined environmental screening process. Lyng says that the process they conducted included technical studies as well as public consultations such as open houses and public liaison meetings. “We went above and beyond,” Lyng says.

For many — including anti-incineration activists, health officials, the region of Peel and concerned residents like Ghatoura — these assurances aren’t nearly enough. They insist that the incinerator do an individual environmental assessment, which would enable a public review of emission data and determine risks to the environment and public health.

Brampton resident Stacey Wilson has noticed an unsettling odour in the air for more than two decades. “When it’s a nice day, and I step out the door to go for a walk, and the first thing I notice is the smell of burning tires or burning plastic, that’s really upsetting to me,” she says. She’s filed multiple reports with the Ministry of the Environment, Conservation and Parks.

Wilson’s worried about the increased traffic that will come with the expansion. According to the incinerator’s website, the facility is currently licensed to process 500 metric tonnes of garbage per day, which Lyng says is unloaded by 30 to 35 trucks. The expanded incinerator, the website says, will process 2,500 tonnes a day, roughly five times the current amount. This could mean many more vehicles. But Wilson’s biggest concern is the uncertainty about what pollutants are being released: “How do we know what we’re breathing in now?” If there are any damaging health effects, she says, they won’t become apparent until years from now.

Lyng says that the incinerator’s emissions are carefully monitored. The facility’s annual stack tests, which measure air quality directly from the its exhaust stacks, show that every pollutant tested by the company remained within Ontario’s regulatory limits between 2020 to 2025. However, known pollutants, such as nitrogen oxide, sulphur dioxide and hydrogen chloride, have at times spiked to the edge of allowable limits.

“We have real-time emission monitoring,” Lyng says, referring to the meters that continuously monitor certain pollutants. If there are any issues with operations or emissions, they report it to the ministry and follow up with an action report.

Linda Gasser, of Zero Waste 4 Zero Burning, and Wendy Bracken, of the Durham Environment Watch, say that these monitoring efforts aren’t enough. Bracken says that while incinerator operators emphasize their continuous monitoring — with the implication being that if something is wrong they can shut things down — many pollutants are in fact only tested once a year.

Lyng confirms that the Emerald incinerator does not have a meter to continuously monitor all pollutants; instead, the facility conducts annual testing to measure their levels. He says the expansion will include a meter to conduct continuous monitoring for sulphur dioxide, unlike the current facility.

Since the emissions are self-monitored, the results cannot be viewed by residents remotely. Opponents of the incinerator contrast that with the monitoring done at the Durham York Energy Centre, an incinerator on the other side of the GTA owned by the Regions of Durham and York. There, emissions data is made public, through a real-time portal on their website. In addition to their continuous monitoring, the Durham York Energy Centre undergoes stack testing twice a year.

Lyng says that Emerald will not be publishing its emissions data online. “The public can come in and see the data at the plant,” Lyng says. “We can come and bring you up to the control room, show you this is what we do. It’s not some mystical process.”

It’s difficult to imagine members of the public taking Lyng up on his offer. The control room sits on the second floor of the facility, accessible by a narrow metal staircase. Operating data is displayed across multiple monitors running the facility’s original 1992 control system. During a recent tour, the room’s temperature exceeded 40 C.

Incinerator’s neighbourhood is populated by vulnerable communities, health unit says

Beyond data from the incinerator’s stacks, opponents of the expansion have another concern: how burning five times the waste it does today will affect a community that already grapples with pollution.

Last spring, Peel Public Health officials submitted a report to the regional council outlining their concerns about the incinerator project. Additional emissions from the expansion, they wrote, “results in an overall increase in cumulative exposure to air pollutants and can result in an increased risk of negative health effects to the surrounding community.”

The health unit found that some pollutants already exceed provincial and federal air quality limits, even before the expansion. In an email to The Local, Peel Public Health said they’d found that local background levels of benzo(a)pyrene — a toxic chemical that’s often the result of incomplete combustion of organic material — currently exceeds the air quality limits for both short and long-term exposures. Modeling under worst-case emission conditions, the health unit found that with the expansion, benzo(a)pyrene and nitrogen dioxide are estimated to exceed the short-term exposure limits set by the province by 115 per cent.

The proposed expansion is also predicated on collecting enough waste to generate profitable energy from incineration. That’s an approach that Peel Public Health’s report says is “counter to the promotion and sustainability of robust circular economy markets, which are crucial for minimizing waste, pollution and resource consumption.”

To fully understand the emissions and their impact on air quality in the surrounding community, Peel Public Health told The Local they need to know more about the pollution control technology at the expanded facility — information that will come in the next step of the approval process. Emerald Energy from Waste is required to include this information in their Environmental Compliance Approval application to the Ministry of Environment, Conservation and Parks.

What’s clear is that the expanded incinerator will be surrounded by existing vulnerable communities. Peel Region health status data shows that roughly 70 per cent of the people in the data zone containing the incinerator are racialized individuals. According to the Peel Public Health report, compared to Peel as a whole, residents in the communities living closest to the facility have more one-parent families, and a higher percentage of residents who didn’t complete high-school and are unemployed. They also have “higher rates of certain health conditions … that may be worsened by exposure to increased air pollution.”

Peel Public Health noted in its report that it hasn’t heard directly from residents about the proposed expansion. But the lack of inquiry doesn’t necessarily mean a lack of concern. The socio-economic realities flagged in the report are the very same ones that make it unlikely for community members to step forward. In order to oppose the expansion, residents first need to know about it.

Municipal councillors call for more scrutiny of incinerator proposal

For long-time Brampton resident Susan Colbert Wright, the fight over the incinerator is about more than the impact of a single industrial project. She raises larger questions about who gets to shape the future of Brampton and who bears the costs of development decisions. As plans move ahead to create Canada’s largest waste incinerator, Wright keeps returning to the most basic question: “How is more pollution okay?”

Wright has lived in Brampton since the 1960s. She’s witnessed Brampton become Canada’s fastest growing, multicultural municipality — one she and her family call home. She’s also watched Brampton become home to a disproportionate share of the region’s industrial footprint, with power plants, warehouses and trucking hubs, among other facilities that are reshaping the city’s environmental future.

One of the major barriers to public engagement, as Wright sees it, is a lack of easily accessible information, with reports and correspondence scattered across government websites. To address this gap, she’s building a website that will consolidate all records and resources. “It’s the one place where you can go to get the history, the information, rather than having to search all over the place,” Wright says.

Her primary goal is for the website to act as a conduit between residents and elected officials, making it easier for concerned residents to directly email MPs, submit public feedback and participate in opposition action.

Although Emerald aimed to start construction this fall, Lyng told The Local that because they haven’t finalized the design of the project, they won’t be able to begin until spring or summer of 2027. In the meantime, the planned expansion has become a political issue for local councillors.

Wards nine and 10 councillor Gurpartap Singh Toor, who sits on Brampton’s Environment Advisory Committee, says he received an influx of calls after provincial approval was announced.

Those calls, Toor says, are almost entirely from people strongly opposing the incinerator expansion and voicing their concerns for public health. “Our communities here in the City of Brampton are heavily racialized communities that are typically more prone to heart and lung diseases,” Toor says. “A lot of them live in very close proximity to where this project is getting built, and those are the communities that will face the more immediate effect.”

In a recent regional council meeting, wards seven and eight councillor Pat Fortini and councillor Toor passed a motion to submit new technological research presented by a local resident to MPs, to emphasize that there needs to be further environmental compliance ahead of the construction of the expansion.

“I definitely don’t want the Region of Peel or the City of Brampton to be the garbage burning capital of Canada,” Toor said during that meeting. He requested the region submit the motion to both the Ministry of the Environment, Conservation and Parks and Health in order to push them to review the expansion proposal once again.

‘This is our home’: Bamptonians love their city, and say they’ll fight to keep it clean and healthy

As the incinerator expansion moves forward, Ghatoura is still dedicating himself to making sure his community isn’t seen as a “sacrifice zone.”

This April, he says his organization brought their message directly to residents, setting up booths at Earth Month and Sikh Heritage Month events across the city, to lead discussions about various environmental issues, including the proposed expansion of the incinerator. “It’s surprising that when we talk to people, they have no idea that a waste incinerator exists there, and that they have plans for expansion,” says Ghatoura. “That is very concerning, because this is going to impact them every single day.”

As Ghatoura and other organizers spark those conversations in Brampton, he’s been heartened to see different age groups advocating for their communities. “Especially this issue with the waste incinerator, we’re getting a lot more youth involvement, which is amazing, we haven’t really seen that before,” he says.

On a summer evening this July, Ghatoura led a group of senior citizens — all South Asian men over 70 — to participate in a community cleanup, picking up empty coffee cups, plastic wrappers and old weathered flyers. They met at Luongo Park in western Brampton, and walked through the neighbourhood with trash picks, garbage bags and latex gloves, picking up garbage from people’s driveways, lawns and the street.

“This is our home,” says Sri Bansilal Singh, a 70-year-old man who rode his bicycle for two kilometres to join his friends for the cleanup. “Brampton is very beautiful, and because we’re grateful to live here, we’re happy to contribute to the community and want to help maintain its beauty.”

As they went about the cleanup, residents came out to pay their respects to the seniors. “People really love these guys, and have great respect for what they’re doing,” Ghatoura says. It’s one of the many reasons he questions why the incinerator is being built in Brampton. Historically, he says, environmental racism has meant that the burden of development often falls on the shoulders of the marginalized. But this only motivates him more — to educate and mobilize his community, to prove that Brampton deserves better.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

When the fire came to the Okanagan Indian Band on Aug. 1, Sienna Belanger’s first instinct was to catch her horses.

Winds reached 115 kilometres per hour, with sustained speeds of 80 kilometres per hour, according to the BC Wildfire Service. Six-foot-tall flames ripped through the grassland, prompting evacuation orders for thousands of people.

“I only managed to get one of my horses,” she said. “Then we just opened up the gate and ran with them down to our bottom field. They got loose. All I could do was hope and pray.”

Sienna did not know the syilx word qwilmiʔst when the Bradley Creek wildfire came, but she lived it. The teaching describes a person who pulls together their physical skills, their sharpest thinking, their deepest intuition and their spiritual awareness and acts without hesitation. 

It is what the Old People call on when facing anything serious. To hold back part of yourself is to risk everything. To give your whole self is how you meet the unknown.

As the fire grew closer, the flames were everywhere. Sienna ran through the smoke, through the flames, to turn on the water at her mother’s barn. 

She started dousing the flames. She does not remember making the decision, but she remembers her body moving.

“It was just like that adrenaline moment where you do something or you freeze, and my loved ones froze, and I just couldn’t in that moment myself not do anything,” she said. 

“I just felt like a different switch turned on, and I was like, ‘Okay, there are things to do, things I need to organize.’ ”

She was not thinking or hesitating, she was qwilmiʔst. All of herself was in motion.

A land worker, a horsewoman, a dreamer

Sienna has remained at home on the Okanagan Indian Band since the fire came over the hill on Aug. 1. She and her neighbours at Abel Cove were under evacuation order, but with such a short time to leave, they chose to stay.

Her papa had always been intentional about who lived in this community.

“My papa did really good in picking his people for his community,” Sienna says. “He chose people that would be helpful, that would be a good contribution to his family and an extension. And so all of these families who have stayed have been people who I’ve known my whole life.”

Even though he’s gone, she says, his efforts are still here. The people he chose knew how to fight fire. They knew how to hold their ground.

So, with no time to flee, or to pack, it was just Sienna, the fire, the wind and her horses.

The Bradley Creek wildfire has destroyed or damaged an estimated 245 structures on Okanagan Indian Band land, according to a formal assessment by Canada Task Force 1, a specialized search and rescue team deployed in urban environments. The team examined 513 structures over three days. As of Aug. 19, the fire was classified as “being held,” with more than 100 firefighters and six helicopters still working the perimeter.

For at least two weeks, there was a constant presence of blades chopping, of shadows of helicopters crossing the sky, of the distant rumble of bombers dropping fire retardant on the hillside above Sienna’s mother’s place and her grandmother’s house at the beach.

Sienna, 25, is a syilx sqilx’w youth born and raised at the Okanagan Indian Band. Her nsyilxcen name is xixʷutm, a name she carries from her great-granny Mary.

Sienna and her mother, Mariel Belanger, own and operate Studio Síspl̓k on the Okanagan Indian Band reserve, welcoming community organizations, schools and wellness programs for workshops that bring together storytelling, visual arts, land-based learning, food forest knowledge sharing and n’syilxcen language. It’s the kind of work she’s been doing for years: creek rehabilitation, forest restoration, plant identification, seed harvesting — work that has always been about connection. 

That work is rooted in the nsisúlaʔxʷ Food Forest Project, a living, land-based classroom and gathering place where Sienna’s food plants, medicines and community are able to grow in kinship with one another. She’s also been on a language revitalization journey for six years, learning to speak the words her ancestors spoke.

She has been building a food forest on 10 acres of her family’s property, dreaming of a space where her people could harvest berries and medicines.

The fire took Sienna’s food forest. More than 100 plants, berries, medicines — the careful work of years— reduced to ash. It took her prospector tent and a platform she had built for outdoor education. It took her plans for a creative space.

Coyote is destroyed. Fox gathers the bits. Coyote comes back to life.

In the captikʷɬ, the syilx law story system, there is a pattern that repeats again and again. Coyote is destroyed through his own foolishness, through greed, through ignorance. And Fox always comes along to gather the bits, the hair, the bone, the fragments of what remains, and breathes them back to life. Something is lost. Something is gathered. Something is brought back. These stories are how knowledge is renewed. These stories are how people survive.

Sienna does not talk about the loss of her food forest with self-pity. She talks about it with survivor’s guilt.

“Even though my work burned, we survived compared to the rest of the community, who’ve totally lost everything,” she says.

And yet, just two weeks after the fire, she says, “There are some parts of my food forest coming back. I’ve been checking on it every day and am seeing new life already, little green shoots are starting to come up.”

Sienna is Fox. She is gathering the bits. She is watching for the green shoots. She is breathing new life into what remains.

Sienna’s grandmother has been staying with her through all of this, offering emotional support. She has watched Sienna work herself to exhaustion, caring for the horses, checking on the food forest, organizing supplies, making sure everyone else was okay before she ever stopped to breathe.

One day, she sat Sienna down and told her something Sienna is still trying to hold onto.

“My grandma recognized what I was going through and told me, you are allowed to accept kindness right now.”

Sienna’s grandmother has seen fire take what her people built. She has seen them rebuild. She knows survivor’s guilt is heavy, and that accepting help is part of the ceremony of healing.

Grief needs a witness

On the morning after the fire passed by her house, a chestnut stallion appeared at Sienna’s fence. She recognized him.

Her cousin Devyn McMillan runs Rewild Ranch, which provides equine-assisted therapy — workshops and events where people can connect with horses. 

“I sent my cousin a message,” Sienna says. “I was like, ‘Hey, your red stallion’s here. He’s okay. I hope you guys are okay.’ I had no idea at that time that her house was gone until my grandma told me that her family barely escaped.”

It was then that Sienna and her grandmother decided it was time to go look for her cousin Devyn’s horses and to finally go and acknowledge themselves what happened to her family’s homestead. 

As they passed what had been the family homestead, there was nothing left but chimneys standing against the sky. Her grandmother started crying.

“We wanted to look away, we didn’t want to see what happened,” Sienna says, tearing up.

But they looked together. That is what you do. In syilx teachings, you do not turn from grief. You face it and let it be witnessed.

Sienna cried too. She let the tears come down, but she did not stop; she knew she had work to do.

She drove to her cousin’s property and saw the horses standing there. 

“I got there and started counting, one, two, three, four, there were 12 of them, and I had one of the stallions at my house, it was 13, I was so happy, it was all of them,” she said.

Sienna grabbed a bucket and a lead rope and walked into the field. She caught one horse and led it into the sand arena. Then she went back for the rest.

“At that time, my heart just totally broke for my cousin because it’s such a hard thing to go through, to lose everything,” Sienna says. “She had built her hopes and dreams on those horses, and I understand because we both love horses in the same way.”

Sienna doesn’t see herself as the hero of this story. She didn’t know a convoy was already on its way; she just knew what needed to be done. She also noticed something that said everything about Devyn’s horses: they were still together, still standing in the place they knew. Scattered horses run. “That’s how you know they are well-trained horses,” Sienna says. “They know to stay together. They know home.”

Friends and family came together anyway. Neighbours organized a supply run with 16 bags of horse feed and a box of groceries. It was the Old Way. The people came together, and what one could not carry, many could.

“It was truly that moment when a village came together to help,” Sienna says. “I just felt so blessed and touched.”

Sienna is also quick to acknowledge the community that surrounded her. Mary’s Emerald Bay, she says, is where people stuck to the teachings her papa passed down about fire safety. They came together in their time of need, saving themselves, saving their neighbours and saving the animals. They even rescued a burnt kitty.

Of the 21 homes at Mary’s Emerald Bay, only one has minimal fire damage. The rest survived because of the people who knew what to do and did it together.

‘If I can fight flames, I can get on the back of a horse again’

As of mid-August, helicopters were still flying. Evacuation orders are slowly being lifted, but Sienna and her community are still under an evacuation order zone. They’ve been actively trying to get permits to leave, but technically, they’re still stuck, unable to leave for two weeks now. The waiting is the hardest part.

“Since being stuck here and being isolated, it’s been a little hard on our mental health,” Sienna says. “The land work was a way for me to keep busy and keep all my mental health issues at bay. Fire really has done a number on that.”

And yet, being isolated has also given her time to return to something she thought she had lost: horse training. Years ago, her horse Lily kicked her in the head, fracturing her skull and leaving her deaf in one ear. The accident left her with lingering brain damage, with issues that still follow her today. She has not been able to fully get back on Lily since.

But she says something changed in her after she walked through the flames.

“In my mind, if I can fight flames, I can get on the back of a horse again,” she says.

She has started slowly, partially sitting on Lily for brief moments. She has not been able to do that since the accident.

She is learning to trust her body again. To trust the horse, and to trust that she can survive what has already happened to her. The fire taught her that if she could face the flames, she could face her fear. She could get back on. “It’s been so rewarding,” she says. 

She is still planning: packaging seeds she harvested from the food forest, traditional sunflowers and vegetable garden varieties for a seed sale. A concert with music collective Kinfolk Nation that she is hoping will still happen in September. Black, Indigenous and queer artists, coming together on the land. Food harvested from the land, cooked on the land.

“My dream was to create a space that was organic for plant material, for berries, for harvesting, for all of our people’s traditional uses,” she says.

She has been sketching a new design for her food forest. Since her tractor survived, she has the ability to move soil, to transform her place again.

“I’ve been trying to step out of that guilt so I can get back to what I was doing,” Sienna says.

The fire could not take her, or her horses. It could not take the green shoots pushing through the ash of her food forest, and it could not take the teachings her grandmothers and papa passed down. It could not take the courage she found in the smoke, and it could not take her dream.

So she is still here, moving, and gathering the bits and breathing them back to life. And now, she is sitting on Lily’s back again, learning to trust herself and the horse, because if she could fight flames, she could get back on, so she did.

That is qwilmiʔst. That is Fox. And Sienna will still be here — breathing new life into what remains.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.