Promises of a closer relationship between B.C. and Alaska and more consultation on B.C. mine applications are a good start, but, so far, Southeast Alaska has no more guarantees that those mines will not pollute salmon-bearing rivers than before this week’s visit by B.C.’s Energy and Mines Minister Bill Bennett, say Alaskan fishing and conservation groups.

Bennett, accompanied by senior civil servants from the ministries of Energy and Mines and Environment, took a conciliatory tone as he met with state officials, policy-makers and critics of what is seen as an aggressive push by B.C. to develop mines in the transboundary area, close to vitally important salmon rivers such as the Unuk, Taku and Stikine.

“I understand why people feel so strongly about protecting what they have,” Bennett said in a Juneau news conference with Alaska Lt. Governor Byron Mallott.

“There’s a way of life here that has tremendous value and the people here don’t want to lose it. I get that,” he said.

But promises of a strengthened dialogue and more opportunities to comment on mine applications fall far short of a growing chorus of Alaskan demands that the issue be referred to the International Joint Commission, formed under the Boundary Waters Treaty, which forbids either country from polluting transboundary waters.

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It was a step forward to have such a high-level meeting, said Chris Zimmer of Rivers Without Borders, but it is an international issue that demands international attention.

“Increased involvement in the B.C permitting process is not a bad thing, but it is not a solution on its own. In other words, we stand firm for the need of an international solution under the Boundary Waters Treaty,” Zimmer said.

Both sides agreed the status quo cannot continue, but the question is how to move forward, Zimmer said.

“How do we move from words to real, concrete action to protect Alaska’s interests?”

Bennett did not rule out the possibility of going to the International Joint Commission, but felt it was premature and the commission should be brought in only if the province and state could not work it out between themselves, said Heather Hardcastle of Salmon Beyond Borders, a coalition of fishing, tribal, tourism and community organizations.

There was also no agreement on the question of how Alaskans would be compensated if there was an upstream spill.

“We are saying we are taking on the lion’s share of the risk and we are not receiving the benefits and there is nothing in place right now, Minister Bennett told us, to deal with liability,” Hardcastle said at a news conference following a meeting with Bennett.

“That’s just unacceptable to us that there’s nothing to compensate us for the lack of our livelihood.”

Financial assurances that Alaskans would be compensated if B.C. mining damages fisheries and water quality are needed prior to projects receiving permits, Hardcastle said.

Dale Kelley, Alaska Trollers Association executive director, said the universal theme was how to ensure no harm befalls Alaska’s fisheries.

“It was quite disturbing to hear the minister say there really is no remedy,” she said.

Both federal governments need to be involved in compensation discussions as a spill would mean a disaster on a scale that could not be handled by the state and provincial governments, Kelley said.

During the visit, Bennett agreed that B.C. should fix leakage from the Tulsequah Chief Mine, that, through a tributary, flows into the Taku River.

Decades of failed promises to fix the leakage have been a thorn in the side of many Alaskans, even though it is not known whether the mine drainage is hurting fish.

After touring the Taku River by helicopter Monday, Bennett told reporters it should be fixed.

“I think B.C is going to have to find a way to rectify it sooner than later and I think it is a most legitimate criticism of us by those folks in Alaska who don’t like it,” he said.

The Tulsequah Chief, now owned by Chieftain Metals Corp, was closed by Cominco in 1957 without acid mine drainage cleanup or site reclamation and despite numerous B.C orders, subsequent owners failed to clean up the mess. The mine was bought by Chieftain in 2010 when the company accepted the environmental liabilities and installed an interim water treatment plant.

“It’s clearly a black eye for Canada,” Zimmer said.

Solutions now, if Chieftain does not reopen the mine and get a grip on the drainage problems, are for B.C. to close down the mine properly — something likely to cost multi-millions of dollars — or to spend $4-million a year to treat the waste in perpetuity, Zimmer said.

“We are looking for very specific action to back these words up.”

Photo: Minister of Energy and Mines Bill Bennett. Credit: Province of British Columbia.

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No fish in the car, warned the rental car attendant at Juneau airport, with the weary tone of someone who had cleaned too many fish guts out of returned vehicles. It was a warning underlined by signs in hotels pleading with guests not to clean fish in the hotel bathrooms.

Fishing is in the DNA of Southeast Alaskans, not only as a sport and common way of filling the freezer, but also as a driver of the state economy. So it is not surprising that the perceived threat presented by a rush of mine applications on the B.C. side of the border has brought together diverse groups who want B.C. to give Alaska an equal seat at the decision-making table and to have the issue referred for review to the International Joint Commission.

“I can’t conceive of not being able to fish for salmon. The grief would be too much to fathom,” said Heather Hardcastle, co-owner of Taku River Reds who has been commercial fishing for most of her life.

“We share these waters and we share these fish. There has to be an international solution,” she said.

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Jill Weitz, Trout Unlimited outreach coordinator, wonders why Canadians are not taking the risk of pollution from the mines more seriously.

“This is one of the largest king salmon runs in Southeast Alaska. How is this not significant?” she asked, looking over the side of a boat into the waters of Taku Inlet.

It is a cruel joke that, for the second time in history, the richest minerals in the world have been found in the richest salmon habitat in the world, said Lindsey Bloom, as her gillnet dried in front of her Juneau home

Bloom was a commercial fisherman in Bristol Bay, Alaska, during a bitter fight against the proposed Pebble Mine, a project that is still wending its way through the courts, but which is unlikely to see the light of day in the face of widespread opposition and a report by the U.S Environmental Protection Agency saying the mine would threaten the $1.5-billion annual commercial fishery.

“This is an absolute parallel,” said Bloom.

It is similar because the upstream threat from up to a dozen mines, over a huge swathe of land, without any review of the cumulative impact, has brought people together in opposition, said Chris Zimmer of Rivers Without Borders.

“I have never seen Alaskans in the Southeast come together like this,” he said.

But the difference between Bristol Bay and the transboundary mines is that Alaskans are feeling powerless because all decisions are taken in B.C., although the rivers that support Southeast Alaska’s billion-dollar salmon industry flow from the B.C. headwaters into Alaska.

That is innately unfair, said Bloom, who hopes the international community will step in.

“In the past, the commercial fishermen overfished and we have had to evolve with a lot of policies that regulate how we fish, so it’s perfectly reasonable to ask the mining industry to stick to higher standards so there are not irreversible impacts,” she said, pointing to the aftereffects of the Mount Polley dam breach.

“They do what they have to do to get permits and then shit happens. It’s time for the mining industry to do it differently,” she said.

B.C. Energy and Mines Minister Bill Bennett is in Alaska this week responding to Alaskans’ criticisms of B.C.’s approval of new mines.  

Alaska’s policies have not been perfect, Zimmer conceded.

“But if these rivers flowed the other way, the question would be vastly different,” he said, imagining the outcry if there was a danger of Alaskan companies polluting the Fraser River or other iconic B.C. waterways.

The independent engineering panel report into the Mount Polley spill said business as usual could not continue in the B.C. mining industry and made recommendations ranging from using best practices and investigating more modern technologies for dealing with tailings to strengthening regulatory operations and improving dam safety guidelines.

The B.C government has said independent tailings dam review boards will be mandatory for operating mines and a review this summer of the Health, Safety and Reclamation Code for Mines will determine how to implement the panel’s recommendations.

Commercial fisherman Pete Peterson with daughter Heather Hardcastle, Kirsten Shelton and father Jev Shelton, a former member of the Pacific Salmon Commission. Photo: Judith Lavoie.

But that is not sufficient for Len (Pete) Peterson and Jev Shelton, a former member of the Pacific Salmon Commission, who have been commercial fishermen for decades and who do not like Canada’s attitude to either fishing or mine development.

Both have watched the lack of Canadian action on acid mine drainage from the Tulsequah Chief mine (which Bennett is now saying should be fixed) and the images of mine tailings and contaminated water rushing into rivers and lakes from the Mount Polley dam breach and they worry what could come their way from the mines on the other side of the Coast Mountains.

“There are enormous dangers from the earthen tailings pond dams,” Peterson said.

“The Canadian system should be more like the U.S system. There’s no way under the U.S system that you’re going to have five mines permitted in the headwaters of important salmon streams and resources. ”

“There’s no such thing as a benign tailings pond,” agreed Shelton.

There is also the fear that, as has happened before, when mining companies get into financial trouble, they walk away leaving the mess, he said.

It is a concern underlined by an analysis of Seabridge  Gold’s Kerr-Sulphurets-Mitchell project by Earthworks and Salmon Beyond Borders, which concluded that the KSM economic feasibility analysis is based on unrealistic metals prices.

At Alaska Fly Fishing Goods, owner Brad Elfers mulls over the damage to Southeast Alaska’s billion-dollar fishing industry that would result from a spill or acid leakage.

“My business is taking the risk and there’s no upside for us,” Elfers said.

“B.C. is making the decision and they don’t have a particularly great track record to begin with. These mines are being fast-tracked. There’s not a great deal of due diligence.”

Fishing guide Matt Lubov has difficulty understanding why the B.C. government is willing to put such a valuable resource at risk.

“This could spell the end of the last true, wild frontier,” he said.

Main image: Taku Inlet looking towards Taku Glacier, which draws thousands of visitors every year. Credit: Judith Lavoie.

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Smooth lumps of translucent blue ice float alongside rock-encrusted icebergs that have broken from Shakes Glacier before drifting into the Stikine River.

There is little trace of the heavy hand of human disturbance as tourists on the jet boat scramble on to a small scrub island and gaze at the expanse of ice, snowy peaks and dark cliffs sweeping down to the wild Stikine, the fastest free-flowing river in the U.S.

“You don’t have to go far to find a place where no human has set foot on it before,” said James Leslie, who has been navigating the river since he was nine years old and drives the jet boat for his family’s company.

“It would be a shame if anything happened to it.”

Leslie grew up in the nearby community of Wrangell and, like many in the area, uses the river for fishing, access to moose hunting, work and recreation.

The “anything” that Leslie fears is a spill or accident at nearby mines on the Canadian side of the border.

About 10 mining applications in the mineral-rich border area are either undergoing or have completed environmental assessments and numerous others are in the exploration stage. Among projects on the books are Schaft Creek, an open pit mine proposed for a previously untouched area close to one of the Stikine’s major tributaries, and the Galore Creek mine planned for an area between the Stikine and Iskut rivers.[view:in_this_series=block_1]

“This river is 360 miles (579 kilometres) in length and only 35 miles (56 kilometres) is in the U.S. The rest is on the Canadian side and it is protected, but not to the same level as here,” Leslie explained to the boatload of tourists.

The area around the Stikine on the U.S. side of the border is part of the Stikine-LeConte Wilderness, which means no development.

“If there was any kind of mining accident it would be completely devastating and it seems there is nothing we can do about it,” Leslie said facing the tangled underbrush, overlooked by a tall tree used for moose-spotting. One could only guess what the damage to this area would be if an upstream mine suffered a Mount Polley-style tailings spill.

Alaskan tourism and fishing organizations and some politicians are pushing for more input into B.C.’s decision-making and assessments of mine proposals and want the transboundary mining issue referred to the International Joint Commission, the body designed to deal with water and air problems between the U.S. and Canada.

In small Alaskan communities, where there is a fierce independence and a history of mining, concerns about Canadian activities were slow to take root.

“But now people are getting worried because of the salmon and the tourists,” Leslie said.

Tourism is a billion-dollar industry for Southeast Alaska with seven million hectares, or almost three-quarters of the area, included in the Tongass National Forest.

On the B.C. side of the border, provincial parks are more fragmented with the Spatsizi Wilderness, Mount Edziza and Stikine River provincial parks adding up to about one million hectares.

One of the reasons why so much of Alaska has remained relatively pristine is the unique State Constitution, which spells out an expectation that natural resources should be developed in a responsible way, said Kyle Moselle, project manager for Alaska Department of Natural Resources.

“It presents a balancing act,” he said.

That translates into the state wanting to attract more mining activity, but always having to consider the public’s best interest, which means developing a mine can be a three- to 10-year process, Moselle said.

Only five mines are in operation in Alaska while in B.C., there are 10 large copper, gold and zinc mines and 10 coal mines.

Laurie Cooper, tourism relations director for Trout Unlimited, knows the wilderness is the major draw for Alaska tourists.

“I think it’s the mystique of Alaska. The big, wild landscapes and the big, wild animals. People want to see whales and bears and glaciers and, in order to see bears, you need fish. It’s the largest intact coastal rainforest in the world and that’s what draws people,” she said.

However, in an area where communities popped up around mining and logging, it has taken a shift in mindsets to make people realize the value of sustainability and now, with ongoing campaigns to raise awareness about Canadian mining, they are worried about the threat to tourism, Cooper said.

“No one wants to do sightseeing over a tailings flow. If it was tagged as somewhere that had an environmental disaster, people wouldn’t want to come here,” she said.

“We need to encourage our government to weigh in and do what they can to stop the impacts from upstream.”

It is not only those involved in wilderness tourism who are worried. In downtown Juneau, cruise ships loom over the city, sometimes doubling the population of 32,000. Cruising is big business, with an estimated 975,000 cruise ship passengers visiting Southeast Alaska last year, spending about $595-million.

As passengers stream off the ships looking for entertainment many head to the Mount Roberts Tramway and, inside the cable car, which zips up the mountain behind Juneau, John Perkins is playing his drum and regaling passengers with Tlingit stories and legends.

Canadian mining is not a topic that comes up frequently among the visitors, but for many like Perkins, who rely on the tourist industry, it is frequently on his mind.

“Of course I worry about it,” he said.

Image Credit: Summit Charters

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A powerful alliance of B.C. First Nations and Southeast Alaska natives has been forged in the aftermath of the Mount Polley dam collapse and tribes, who have not worked together for generations, are aiming to put the brakes on B.C.’s border mining boom.

Tears flowed after a May meeting in Vancouver when Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs (UBCIC) president Grand Chief Stewart Phillip and vice-president Bob Chamberlin agreed to support the newly formed United Tribal Transboundary Mining Work Group in its bid for Alaskan — and particularly tribal — input into B.C.’s decision-making process on mines along the Southeast Alaska border.

“We are bringing together the tribes from both sides of the border and building a relationship. We can make more noise together than when we are separated by a border that has not been part of our tradition,” said Mike Hoyt, leader of the Teeyhittaan clan from the Stikine River.

It was a historic meeting that could be a catalyst for change, according to Phillip. [view:in_this_series=block_1]

“It was very significant, coming together with our brothers and sisters in Alaska. I think it was a long time coming,” he said.

The Transboundary Work Group, made up of federally recognized tribes, conservation groups, fishing advocates and community leaders, will collaborate with B.C. First Nations to let the provincial government, mining companies and investors know their concerns about mines being approved near the headwaters of Southeast Alaska’s most important salmon rivers, said Jennifer Hanlon, environmental specialist with the Central Council Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska.

“We want them to know (the mines) are a concern for indigenous people. We’re talking about our salmon, our health and our lands. Hunting and fishing are still the backbone of our economy,” Hanlon said.

The group wants the issue sent to the International Joint Commission, the body designed to resolve U.S./Canada water and air disputes. The commission operates under the Boundary Waters Treaty that forbids either nation from polluting waters flowing across the boundary.

“Alaska needs a seat at the table when it comes to deciding whether mining projects in B.C., with the potential to pollute our waters, should go forward and, if they do, how these mines should deal with their waste, which has a high likelihood of flowing downstream into transboundary rivers,” says one of the group’s briefing notes.

Phillip said when the U.S. and Canadian groups got together there was a “robust discussion” about B.C.’s deregulation and lack of environmental oversight.

The Canadian contingent offered little comfort as they described federal and provincial legislative changes that Phillip believes have gutted the environmental assessment process and removed protections for the vast majority of lakes and rivers.

“Clearly the Harper government is squarely in the corner of big business, big corporations and big oil. They facilitate and fast-track major resource projects at the expense of the environment, wild salmon and marine life,” Phillip said.

However, there are differences of opinion among bands about the extent of mining that is acceptable in northwest B.C. and some First Nations have signed agreements with companies opening mines near the Alaska border.

Among the more controversial is a co-management agreement between the Tahltan Nation and Imperial Metals, owners of the Red Chris mine and Mount Polley. Tahltan decided to ratify the agreement even though only 12.9 per cent of members voted and elders had previously set up a blockade.

Differences of opinion are inevitable, Phillip said.

“If we were to wait for a unified front, the only ones to benefit would be the mining industry, corporations and government. It doesn’t happen anywhere in the world,” he said.

After the Mount Polley dam breach the B.C. First Nations Energy and Mining Council, like UBCIC, called for major mining and mineral exploration reforms and a larger role for First Nations in environmental assessment and permitting, dam monitoring and water testing.

The council also wants companies to put forward security bonds that represent the true cost of cleaning up a disaster.

“Performance bonds that are required to mitigate and monitor projects in perpetuity are insufficient in major breaches such as the Mount Polley disaster,” said council CEO Dave Porter.

“Mining companies that bring these projects forward should bear the financial burden of mitigation of these potential damages.”

A report on tailings facility failures, released by the council in June, pointed out that mining usually takes place on traditional lands and, if there are dam failures, First Nations are disproportionately affected.

“The principle of free, prior and informed consent must be applied in advance of mining operations, from exploration through all phases of development, including post-closure,” says the report.

Energy and Mines Ministry spokesman David Haslam said the report provides government and industry with a greater understanding of First Nations perspectives on mining and tailings storage and will help inform the upcoming review of the Health, Safety and Reclamation Code for Mines.

Mines Minister Bill Bennett told the Globe and Mail that First Nations will have an equal seat at that table with industry and organized labour.

The review is part of  government’s response to the report from the expert panel looking into the Mount Polley dam collapse. The panel emphasized the need for change and said that business as usual was not an option.

For Alaskan natives, the bottom line is forcing companies to put in all the safeguards needed to avoid another Mount Polley-type disaster, even if that means no mines beside salmon-bearing rivers or their tributaries.

The relationship with the rivers runs deep, said 84-year-old Ethel Lund, who was born in Wrangell and remembers trading up and down the Stikine River with Canadian First Nations when the king salmon were running or when the eulachon — a small oily fish colloquially known as hooligans in Southeast Alaska — filled the river.

“The Stikine River is very precious to us,” Lund said.

“I worry about the mines and the pollution and I think about the tremendous impact it could have on our communities and waterways. There really is a need for communication between Canada and Alaska to try and work it out, because we are going to be most impacted,” she said.

However, it is not easy to make tribal voices heard, even in Alaska, Hanlon said.

“We have 13 tribes working together to try and protect our ancestral lands and we’ve not been consulted by the B.C. government or the mining companies or even the state of Alaska,” Hanlon said.

But some are optimistic the relationship with the Alaskan government will improve as Lt. Governor Byron Mallott, a member of the Tlingit Nation, becomes increasingly involved.

Mallott, who visited B.C. to see the Mount Polley spill firsthand and to meet with Energy and Mines Minister Bill Bennett, said in an interview with DeSmog Canada that he hopes to add tribal interests to the government-level task force.

Richard Peterson, president of the Central Council of Tlingit and Haida Tribes of Alaska, said the relationship with the tribes has been on a better footing since Mallott’s election late last year and he is optimistic that, with the help of Canadian First Nations, a game plan can be developed to protect the rivers and a way of life that dates back thousands of years.

“I think this is one of the most serious things we face right now,” Peterson said.

“I know we have an uphill battle, but, when we are arm-in-arm as indigenous people, we can do it.”

Image Credit: Rivers Without Borders

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