TERRACE, B.C. — Travel restrictions around the world have brought the tourism industry to a halt and Indigenous-led businesses are predicted to be among the most vulnerable to collapse in COVID-19’s damaging path, according to the Canadian Council for Aboriginal Business.

The Nisga’a Nation in northwestern B.C. has been working for years to make the Nass Valley a travel destination, with hopes to make tourism a key economy driver. Instead, the Nisga’a have been met with an unexpected blow of cancelled bookings.

“COVID-19 has a huge impact already. I’ve had a few calls from entrepreneurs in our tourism industry asking if the [Nisga’a] Nation is going to help them out because of loss of bookings and clients,” says Bertram Mercer, manager of economic development for the Nisga’a Lisims Government.

Mercer works with Nisga’a businesses in the Nass Valley to incorporate them into tour packages and make them “market-ready” for tourists, with the help of Indigenous Tourism BC.

But with the Nass Valley now on lockdown, business owners are devastated and scrambling to survive.

Paula Amos, chief marketing and development officer of Indigenous Tourism BC, says First Nations businesses in the tourism sector are feeling the weight of this pandemic on their livelihoods, which are already vulnerable to other social pressures.

“We worked really hard over the last 20 years to to get Indigenous tourism on the map and have communities see tourism as a great economic driver [instead of industry],” Amos says.

As soon as tourism dried up, Amos says the organization scrambled to gather $300,000 to keep Indigenous-led businesses afloat. The organization pulled money from its budget for marketing and events to offer grants of up to $5,000. The organization also set up a virtual mentorship program to guide operators on how to bounce back.

“The biggest gap we’re seeing is the cash flow issues right now … especially if they’re in the rural areas,” she says. “Most of our communities are very remote.”

“This is not a huge amount of dollars but they can leverage that with any of the government programs for businesses.”

The Indigenous Tourism Association of Canada also announced funds of up to $25,000 in the Indigenous tourism sector. Part of the Government of Canada’s COVID-19 economic response plan for businesses include a 75 per cent wage subsidy, a tax deferral and interest-free loans of up to $40,000.

Amos predicts the effects of the pandemic this year may take up to three years to recover from. With much of the world’s economy under pressure, she says it’s unlikely international tourists will return for a while. She’s counting on “backyard tourism” to help bridge that gap.

The visitor centre at Nisga’a Memorial Lava Bed Provincial Park campground. Photo: Connie Azak / Flickr

Visitation drop of 50 to 70 per cent feared

Steve Johnson, owner and operator of Nass Valley Tours, is also worried about how long it will take to recover.

Nass Valley tours joined forces with BC Parks to establish trails and facilities to cater to guided hikes through the Nisga’a Memorial Lava Bed Provincial Park. They were fully booked and expecting to serve approximately 9,000 visitors this year, with school groups bringing in up to $400 a day per class.

Another big loss for Johnson is fishing tourists who come to hook the area’s famous steelhead trout. For decades, northwest B.C. has brought in millions of dollars through its rivers. High-end fishing tours can go up to $1,700 a day in the Nass Valley, Johnson says.

“Numbers have been going up every year, with last year as our best with visitors from all around the world,” Johnson explains.

“It’s just a matter of time before tourism is our main industry so when we lose one season like this, it takes a while to recover … our visitation will be down at least 50 to 70 per cent [when we reopen].”

Johnson and his skeleton crew are fortunate to be supported by BC Parks to continue maintaining the trails. Their main role is patrolling the sites to ensure no one sneaks into the parks or sets up camp. With no extra revenue, summer plans to build new trails and sites are on hold.

Popular Nass spots, such as the Hlgu Isgwit Hot Springs and Dragon Lake, are closed as well. In total, an estimated 12,000 visitors were expected to travel to the Nisga’a Nation this year.

A suspension bridge crosses the Nass River in the distance. Photo: Connie Azak / The Narwhal

‘It’s very quiet here’

At the southeastern Alaskan channel to the Pacific Ocean sits the nation’s fisherman village of Ging̱olx, home to approximately 400 residents. Bonnie Stanley, restaurant owner of U Sea Food U Eat It!, started her business in 2011 because she wanted to meet new people.

“I’m very emotional and it’s very quiet here since they closed down the road,” Stanley says. “For the month of March, I lost out on about $3,000 here,” she added, noting summer is her busiest time and she can see revenue of up to $19,000 a month before she shuts down in September for the winter.

Stanley says she closed her restaurant in the first week of March as she was nervous about COVID-19 because of her old age and the community Elders, thinking it would blow over in a few weeks. As the B.C. government continues to make its predictions, she’s worried she won’t reopen at all this year.

Bonnie Stanley and John Moore at their restaurant in Ging̱olx, which normally thrives in the summer, but has had to shut down due to COVID-19. Photo: Natalia Balcerzak

As she lays off her employees and cuts contracts with fishermen, Stanley keeps an eye on her dwindling bank account as she pays out overhead costs for rent, insurance and her own family expenses.

She says she’s asked the Nisga’a Lisims Government if any financial aid is available but hasn’t received a reply. Stanley is aware of federal grants available for small businesses but says she needs help navigating those applications online as she’s not tech-savvy.

“This year, I can really feel it. I can see [the fear],” she tells The Narwhal, noting that reading through her guest book keeps her optimistic that her business will resume.

Stuck in the middle

Kim Morrison, who is Mohawk from Ontario, first moved to the Nass Valley 12 years ago to work as the chief operating officer in tourism for Nisga’a Lisims Government and as a business mentor for the north.

In 2015, Morrison opened Nass Valley Bed & Breakfast after spending years excavating the 172-hectare lot and investing almost $2 million dollars of savings and loans into what she saw as her dream retirement plan. She used to advise entrepreneurs to have enough emergency funds in place for three months in case of a financial crisis but now she cringes at that advice as due dates for her unpaid bills pass by.

“Are they going to come in and foreclose on my place? I spent a lifetime working to get to this place and now I’m going to lose it,” Morrison says, her voice cracking. “This is all I have. I don’t have a husband, I don’t have somebody who takes care of me. It’s just me.”

Her property is one of 28 lots in the Nass Valley that were exempted from the Nisga’a Treaty, so although she’s surrounded by treaty land she is not the nation’s responsibility and cannot ask for their help. Other bed and breakfasts, such as Vetter Falls Lodge, are operated and financially supported by the Nisga’a Lisims Government.

Despite being considered a small Indigenous business, she’s worried the high value of her assets may be used against her and is unsure if she qualifies for federal help since she doesn’t have full-time employees. With the exception of two hopeful August bookings, everyone has cancelled and she’s left with freezers of food and more than $3,000 per month in mortgage and insurance payments.

Every day, she waits on hold on the phone in an attempt to navigate these financial stresses.

“I also need to be ready to rock and roll to start up again, I have to change my whole marketing strategy too … but a lot of that depends on the Nisga’a, on when they choose to reopen,” Morrison says.

“I have to remind myself daily that I’m not the only one in this position,” she says. “It’s definitely scaring the daylights out of me, the thought of losing my entire life’s savings like that.”

Keeping tourism afloat

Liz Smaha, executive director at Kermodei Tourism based in Terrace, the closest municipality to the Nass Valley, says all northern communities are feeling the pain and need to stay connected with one another to recover fully as a region. The Nisga’a Nation is part of Northern B.C. Tourism’s weekly conference calls to discuss strategies.

She says the key thing to focus on during this time is sharing through social media why they’re still worth the visit.

“Here in the north, we live in an area I think will be so sought after… and this [scare] is going to be on people’s minds for several years to come,” she says, suggesting that Canadians will be more eager to explore after being at home for months.

“By putting all those visuals out there, maybe we’ll be the first on their travel list.”

The Nisga’a Lisims Government did not respond to The Narwhal’s inquiries regarding financial aid to residents by publication time.

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British Columbians have been suffering through some of the worst wildfires in memory. These latest fires are turning out to be even more devastating than the horrible 2003 Kelowna fires that saw more than 27,000 residents displaced and the loss of 239 homes in B.C.’s lake country.

It’s hard to overstate the impacts of this latest wildfire disaster: as of last week, more than 45,000 people had been displaced or evacuated. While some of them have been able to return home, they’ll be returning to the tragic sight of burned down homes and a whopping 4,000-plus square kilometers of burned forest. The wildfires this summer have been so severe that the province declared a state of emergency for the first time since the Kelowna fires.

And now of course we have a blanket of smoke over most of the province. Flying into Vancouver airport last night, I couldn’t help but think about the impact this must be having on our tourism industry, both right now and in the long term.

Imagine saving for years to come to Vancouver and looking out as your plane lands at billowing smoke on mountaintops and a smoky haze dark enough to almost block out the sun?!

Now imagine that same tourist getting on a bus or another smaller plane to go up north to do some hiking and fishing into the heart of the Cariboo where entire areas remain under major wildfire threat.

Tourism is one of B.C.’s biggest industries — it generated $15.7 billion in revenue in 2015, making it a bigger part of the province’s economy than oil and gas, mining, forestry or fishing.

Tourism operators are already seeing the impact of the wildfires, sometimes from evacuations or billowing smoke, but also in in areas not directly affected — there’s talk of vacation plan cancellations across the province. That leads to a whole other set of challenges in B.C. As the owner of a rafting business put it to the Vancouver Sun, “I’ll probably be laying off most of my staff if (the situation) can’t turn around in the immediate future.”

It doesn’t stop there.

Even the process of fighting fires can have unintended consequences. B.C. is dropping a record amount of chemical fire retardant from planes to keep the flames under control. Those chemicals are generally safe, but they are potentially toxic to fish. We have to use them to protect people’s homes, but the more we do, the greater the risk to B.C.’s fish and water resources. Any damage to our freshwater systems is a not only an ecological risk, but further erodes our identity as an outdoor tourism destination.

The Puntzi Lake wildfire grew to over 8,000 hectares in 2015. Photo: B.C. Wildfire Service

Right now, the focus is rightly on immediate relief — keeping people out of harm’s way, controlling the flames, and getting everyone back into their homes. But in the long term our province will no doubt need economic support, like taxpayer relief programs for tourism operators and businesses.

When we get past the present emergency, B.C. needs to think long and hard about the next one. Because it’s coming, and probably sooner than we think.

When the #BCWildfires Are Over, What Comes Next? https://t.co/D6SmJumLMC #climate #bcfires @kgrandia #bcpoli @HelloBC

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) August 2, 2017

The world is experiencing more and more severe fires. This summer has also seen fires threaten one Spain’s most famous parks, and in the western U.S., climate change has doubled the amount of forest lost to wildfires over the last 30 years.

Canada isn’t immune.

As experts have pointed out, the three most catastrophic fires in modern Canadian history have all come in the past two decades and more communities will surely burn in the coming decade. The current wildfires may have taken B.C. by surprise, but the heat and dryness that cause them is becoming the new normal due to global warming (check out CBC’s excellent new podcast 2050: Degrees of Change for a visceral look at how B.C. will be changed by climate change in the next 30 years).

That means more communities at risk and more evacuations. Canada needs to be smarter about how we manage wildfires with better forest management.

We also need to recognize the links between forest management and climate policies. Hotter, drier summers are the reality we now find ourselves in. And it is a reality that scientists have been telling our elected officials to prepare for now for quite some time.

Image: Firefighter surveys a B.C. wildfire in 2015. Photo: B.C. Wildfire Service

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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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An ugly thread of misspent taxpayer dollars, environmental destruction and conflict-of-interest — backed by a government beholden to the mining industry — runs along the recently completed Northwest Transmission Line, charges acclaimed explorer and scholar Wade Davis.

The $716-million transmission line, budgeted in 2010 at $404-million, snakes 344 kilometres into B.C.’s wilderness, from north of Terrace to Bob Quinn Lake, and, to the alarm of downstream Southeast Alaska residents, the line is opening the area to mining in the headwaters of vital salmon-bearing rivers.

Those concerns have grown exponentially since the Mount Polley tailings dam collapsed in August 2014, sending 24-million cubic metres of toxic debris flowing into Hazeltine Creek and Quesnel Lake, and groups in B.C. and Alaska are warning that a Mount Polley-type disaster in the area known as the Sacred Headwaters, where acidity is likely to be high, would wipe out the multi-billion dollar fishing and tourism industries on both sides of the border.

Davis, a writer, former explorer-in-residence at the National Geographic Society, anthropology professor and B.C. Leadership Chair in Cultures and Ecosystems at Risk at the University of B.C., is appalled at the B.C. government’s decision to encourage mining in the ecologically rich northwest corner of the province and at the lack of government oversight as the pricey Northwest Transmission Line was carved through the wilderness.[view:in_this_series=block_1]

“It’s industrialization of the wilderness. It’s the story of politicians more concerned about the next election than the next generation,” he said.

Davis, who sometimes visits 30 countries a year, loves the wild beauty of B.C.’s northwest corner, which has the world’s largest population of stone sheep, grizzly bears, caribou and wolves.

“It’s not for nothing that it is called the Serengeti of Canada,” he said.

A Sweet Deal for Imperial Metals

All of which makes it inexplicable that the government would forego future high-end tourism opportunities by encouraging mining on a site such as Todagin Mountain where the Red Chris mine, owned by Imperial Metals — the same company that owns the Mount Polley mine— opened in February, he said.

An Energy and Mines Ministry spokesman, responding to questions by e-mail, said the province, Imperial Metals and Tahltan Nation — which approved a co-management agreement with the company in April — have been working to develop wildlife management strategies “to take care of this resource for future generations.”

That does not satisfy Davis, who owns the closest private property to the $650-million Red Chris copper and gold mine and believes the Liberal government has bulldozed ahead with the power line without a proper review and despite public concerns.

“The government was 100 per cent engaged in an effort to make this happen to the point of deceiving the Canadian people and certainly squandering their tax revenue,” he said, questioning the influence of party fundraisers.

Murray Edwards, controlling shareholder of Imperial Metals Corp. — a major donor to the B.C. Liberals — organized a $1-million fundraiser at the Calgary Petroleum Club for Premier Christy Clark shortly before the last election.

B.C. Government Committed to Mining Expansion

It is expected that mining companies will push for concessions, but it is also expected that the government will ask the important questions to minimize environmental damage, said Davis, who has frequently worked with industry and says he has no objection to responsible mining.

“But, here we have a government that is ideologically committed to making (Red Chris) go ahead,” said Davis, who speculates that Imperial Metals was given an easy ride to avoid the perception of a power line to nowhere.

Financial experts believe it was essential for Imperial Metals to get cash flow from Red Chris as soon as possible because Mount Polley remained closed for nearly one year and cleanup costs are estimated at between $67-million and $100-million. In May, the company reported a loss of $33.4 million during the first three months of the year.

The Northwest Transmission Line was billed by government as the engine that would drive economic development in the province’s northwest by powering up revenue-generating mining operations in the richly mineralized area.

So far, Red Chris is the only mine drawing power from the line. After a provincial review, the mine received provincial approval in June to operate the tailings storage pond, which has the same unlined earth and rock dam design as Mount Polley.

Red Chris is likely to be followed by Seabridge Gold’s Kerr-Sulpherets-Mitchell (KSM) mine, in the Unuk River headwaters, which will be one of the world’s largest open-pit copper and gold mines. KSM has received federal and provincial approval and is tying up funding for the $5.3-billion project while obtaining permits. The mine is expected to employ more than 1,000 people for 50 years.

The transmission line is also bringing power to the Tahltan community of Iskut, whose 350 residents previously relied on diesel, and to the $725-million, 195-megawatt AltaGas Forrest Kerr run-of-river independent power project.

AltaGas contributed $180-million of the cost and Imperial Metals contributed $69 million of the $209 million cost to build the Iskut extension. BC Hydro then purchased the extension for about $52 million.

Davis charges that the environmental insensitivities of Imperial Metals were revealed during the extension’s construction when the company clearcut to the edge of the scenic Stewart-Cassiar Highway, instead of leaving a buffer zone of trees as shown in the original plans.

Cutting trees adjacent to the highway is allowed and the company had all necessary permits, according to the ministry.

“As much as possible, the cutting is contained within the right-of-way of the highway to reduce impact to the visual quality of the surrounding landscape. In some instances, due to geotechnical and safety concerns (i.e. slope stability,) the power lines are located away from the highway,” said the ministry spokesman.

Taxpayers on the Hook?

The Iskut project enabled the province to obtain $130 million from the federal Green Infrastructure Fund. But, according to Davis, that is something that should make taxpayers uneasy when they look at the bill of almost $400,000 per resident and he questions labelling the project as green when, during construction, the equivalent of 14,000 logging truckloads of wood were burned.

BC Hydro has said the timber was burned because it was marginal and the long distance to roads and markets made selling it uneconomical.

 A Mining Association of B.C. study estimates the transmission line will attract $15-billion in mining investment, 10,000 jobs and $300 million in annual tax revenue.

However, energy economics expert Marvin Shaffer, adjunct professor at Simon Fraser University, would like British Columbians to look carefully at those figures, especially as the province decided to go ahead with the project without a B.C. Utilities Commission review.

“The rate policy in B.C. effectively subsidizes new mines and this was a line that was heavily subsidized,” he said.

Metal mines require large amounts of electricity. The standard industrial rate charged in B.C. is $40 to $50 per megawatt hour, but the draw on power means more power sources are needed and producing electricity from new sources, such as the Site C dam, will cost about $90 per megawatt hour, Shaffer said.

“An individual mine will consume up to 10 per cent of the output of Site C and the price doesn’t cover even half the cost of a new supply,” he said.

“The government argues that it is economic development, so then you have to ask: what are the benefits in subsidizing mining developments?”

Many of the jobs are likely to go to people living outside the province, Shaffer said.

“There might be some stimulus, but it’s not as if it’s going to be employing a lot of British Columbians who would otherwise be unemployed,” he said.

Image Credit: BC Hydro

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Long-held perceptions of Canada as a country with strict environmental standards and B.C. as a province that values natural beauty are taking a near-fatal beating in Southeast Alaska, where many now regard Canadians as bad neighbours who are unilaterally making decisions that could threaten the region’s two major economic drivers.

Fishing and tourism — each billion-dollar industries — are the lifeblood of Southeast Alaska, where glaciers sweep down into rivers home to five species of wild salmon and massive snow-covered peaks tower over fertile wetlands.

Tourism accounts for 10,900 jobs in the Alaska Panhandle and salmon fishing employs 7,300 people.

Air and water are the only ways into communities such as Juneau, the state capital, and almost seven million hectares, or three-quarters of Southeast Alaska, are within the Tongass National Forest, where industrial activity is limited.

But, upstream, in northwest B.C., there is a new-style gold rush with an unprecedented number of applications for open-pit gold and copper mines, some made viable by construction of the Northwest Transmission Line and all requiring road access.

Alaskan politicians, tribes, fishing organizations and environmental groups have come together in a rare show of unity to condemn B.C.’s push to approve mines close to major transboundary salmon rivers, such as the Stikine, Taku and Unuk, which run from B.C. into Alaska. Tensions are running so high the groups are asking the International Joint Commission, designed to resolve Canada/U.S. water problems, to step in.

Canada is increasingly viewed as a “bad actor,” whose record — most recently illustrated by the Mount Polley mine tailings dam collapse — shows that the province’s environmental regulations and oversight is not strong enough to protect downstream communities.

“It’s the new wild west,” said Heather Hardcastle, a commercial fisherman and co-ordinator of Salmon Beyond Borders, pointing out that, even though Alaska has nothing to gain and everything to lose, Alaskans are being denied meaningful input into mine decisions.

10 Advanced Mining Projects in Northwestern B.C.

The new mines include Imperial Metals’ Red Chris, a copper and gold mine operated by the same company that owns Mount Polley, and Seabridge Gold’s massive KSM (Kerr-Sulpherets-Mitchell) mine, 30 kilometres from the U.S border and Misty Fjords National Monument, which will open up mining of the largest undeveloped gold reserve in the world. KSM has provincial and federal environmental assessment approval and is waiting for permits.

According to B.C.’s Ministry of Energy and Mines there are 10 advanced projects in the northwest corner of B.C. and numerous others in exploration phases.

Graphic: Salmon Beyond Borders

They include Kitsault (under construction), Silvertip (provincial permit granted in June), Tulsequah Chief (construction started, but project delayed), Brucejack (Mines Act permit application under review), Kutcho and Schaft Creek (both in the environmental assessment pre-application stage).

In comparison, there are only five operating mines in Alaska, of which two are in Southeast Alaska and one of which uses dry stack tailings, the method of dealing with acid-generating mine waste favoured by the expert panel that investigated the Mount Polley dam collapse.

The Canadian system appears to aim “to get to yes fast,” without consideration of other values when it comes to resource extraction, said Jev Shelton, a commercial fisherman and former member of the Pacific Salmon Commission, the joint Canadian/U.S. regulatory body designed to protect salmon stocks.

“It is certainly triggering a fair bit of anger,” Shelton said.

B.C. Moving 'Full Speed Ahead'

The pace and scale of development is huge, said Chris Zimmer of Rivers Without Borders.

“B.C. is going full speed ahead without any brakes. It looks as if they’re trying to move as fast as they can before Alaska puts up hurdles.”

There is growing indignation that B.C. is not listening to Alaskan concerns and that additional input, promised in May after Energy and Mines Minister Bill Bennett met with Alaska’s Lieutenant Governor Byron Mallott, amounts to little more than window-dressing.

“We were a bit stunned by Bill Bennett giving us the table scraps and saying Alaska can come in at the final stages of permitting — they’re saying we will involve you when the final decision has been made to build the mine,” Zimmer said.

Alaskan Concerns Ignored

Gillnetter and fisheries consultant Lindsey Bloom agrees that Alaskan questions are being ignored.

“Since I started working on this issue, the disregard of Canadian officials towards us is concerning,” she said.

While Mallott and Bennett were meeting in B.C., a group of Alaskan tribal leaders, fishing industry representatives and environmental advocates met with high-level provincial government staff.

However, it was an exercise in frustration because of the lack of answers or acknowledgement of downstream concerns, according to several people who attended the meeting.

“We tried to explain we don’t want more say in the permitting process, we want something to put us on an equal footing with B.C.,” Hardcastle said.

B.C. government staff appeared to think their task was to explain the process instead of listening to concerns and suggestions, said several members of the Alaskan delegation.

Mallott, who is leading an Alaskan transboundary waters working group, said in an interview with DeSmog Canada, that, during their meeting, Bennett was amenable to the notion of more Alaskan involvement and he has been invited to Alaska to continue the conversation.

Staff who have looked at B.C.’s technical permitting and assessment of mines believe the rules in B.C. and Alaska are generally equivalent, said Mallott.

“But there are significant differences. Whether the entire range of environmental assessment and permitting is robust enough to protect both B.C. and U.S. and Alaskan interests is still something we all need to be made more comfortable with,” he said.

“We would want Alaskan officials at the table when decisions are made in such areas of permitting that it is possible that catastrophic events could take place.”

Mount Polley Tailings Dam Collapse Stokes Fears Downstream

The pace of development and the cumulative impacts of the mines in B.C. are alarming, but it is the failures that haunt Alaskans.

The image of 24-million cubic metres of mine tailings and waste water sweeping down from the Mount Polley tailings dam is etched into memories, but there are others such as the constant irritant of the ongoing acid drainage from the Tulsequah Chief mine.

“It underlines the Canadian government’s lack of commitment to what happens in the river,” said commercial fisherman Len (Pete) Peterson.

The copper and gold mine, near the confluence of the Tulsequah and Taku Rivers, has been leaking acid since Cominco stopped mining in 1957. Since 1989, there have been numerous remediation and pollution abatement orders from the B.C. government, but the leakage continues.

Earlier this year the province gave Chieftain Metals Corp., the latest owner, permission to re-open the mine and the company is currently trying to obtain financing. However, hurdles include opposition from the Taku River Tlingit First Nation. In an attempt to circumvent the problem, the company is proposing a barging system, instead of an access road, but that is likely to be a problem for Alaskan gillnetters.

At Johnny Mountain, close to the Iskut River, operations ceased in 1993 and the company attempted to burn and bury equipment. Although there has been some soil remediation, what threat remains of acid rock drainage from the underground operation is unclear.

“They shoved (the equipment) into the mountain and blew it up,” said miner Joe Bradley, who recently flew over the area.

The test of B.C.’s process is how it is carried out and the “real world” results, Zimmer said.

“Alaska understands the B.C. process. Where has it gotten us? Mount Polley disaster, Tulsequah Chief and five decades of acid mine drainage, renewed talk of Taku River barging, a total lack of involvement on the evaluation of the Red Chris mine, a denial of Alaska’s request for a KSM panel review,” Zimmer said.

Photo: Chris Zimmer

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