The Dominion - Environment

SWN rebuffed in New Brunswick back woods

Miles — Mon, 24 Jun 2013 13:42:41 +0000

Local families chase off ATV, security truck hit and run, UN observers arrive

BROWNS YARD, NEW BRUNSWICK – By Sunday, June 23rd, SWN Resource Canada’s highly contested and protested seismic testing along highway 126, in Kent County, New Brunswick, had almost wrapped up.

But the seismic test along the highway is only one of several planned testing lines, and the company’s attempts to begin another line of seismic testing - this time along the back roads of Kent County - was yesterday halted in its tracks by community members living in the vicinity of Browns Yard.

SWN’s seismic testing of the back roads areas of Kent County – conducted with All-Terrain Vehicles known as ‘Bombadiers’, and dynamite charges – is slated to be extensive, with approximately 150kms of testing expected to take place.

Yesterday’s resistance, conducted firstly by local families and the action group known as ‘Upriver Environment Watch’, suggest that SWN’s task in the woods of New Brunswick, where there is local knowledge, deep forests and intense opposition to the testing, will be a tough slog indeed.

At about 2pm, an SWN-contracted truck with a trailer parked itself along highway 490. The truck was abandoned by the SWN-contracted workers, but it was an announcement of their presence to the vigilant community.

A small group of local familities - about 15 people in all, including young children - then gathered. A Bombadier, two geophones, a surveyor's tripod and a SWN antenna, were spotted. Whoever had positioned the equipment had done so on a private piece of land adjacent to the dirt highway.

The driver of the Bombadier approached the surveying equipment, potentially to recover it from the gathering crowd, only to be chased away from the equipment by the crowd. The driver sped south along a dirt road and did not return to the scene.

An SWN-contracted security truck appeared on the scene about ten minutes later. The driver of the truck did not speak to the gathered crowd, but as he was driving away he struck local resident Dave Morang hard enough with his driver’s side mirror to bend the mirror backwards. The driver did not stop.

Morang, injured, requested that an ambulance needed to be called. An Emergency Response team later took Morang to hospital on a spinal board and a stretcher. His condition is currently unknown.

“I can’t believe they didn’t stop,” Morang told the Halifax Media Co-op before the ambulance arrived. “They hit me hard enough with his mirror that it bent it. He would have known that. How many laws can they break?”

About 20 minutes later, RCMP appeared in force, with 26 officers and 14 cars and paddy wagons stationing themselves along the dirt road. The call through social media, however, had beaten them to the punch, and by the time they arrived the gathered crowd had swelled to about 100 non-Indigenous and Indigenous people.

RCMP consulted for about twenty more minutes, before apparently deciding that the best course of action would be to pick up SWN’s antenna and geophones. Photographs indicate that SWN's equipment appears to have been somehow bent and otherwise broken.

With nothing left to do, and with a gathered crowd which now included Chief Aaren Sock of Elsipogtog First Nation, the police packed up and retreated down the dirt road from which they had appeared.

Chief Sock, whose band council late Saturday night issued a Band Council Resolution inviting United Nations Observers to Elsipogtog, was not impressed with SWN’s unwanted incursions into Kent County, or the arrests of his people while in ceremony.

“Message for SWN: You’re not welcome in my territory,” Sock told the Halifax Media Co-op. “Nothing personal.”

After the RCMP departed with SWN’s equipment, those gathered continued to cheer and drum. They then began to slowly trickle back to their respective communities.

It was later discovered that SWN’s abandoned truck - the original sign of their presence - had had its windows smashed, doors dented and bumpers knocked off. As of press time, it is not known how this damage might have happened.

A packed community hall meeting in Elsipogtog, open to the general public, took place later in the evening. The topic of the meeting was not only how to stop SWN, but how to get shale gas out of New Brunswick, and all of the Maritimes. With UN observers now in place, representatives from various Warrior societies from across the Maritimes have been welcomed to Elsipogtog. They were greeted at the meeting with a standing ovation.

SWN ATV driver flees from an angry crowd

Local man Dave Morang was injured by an SWN-contracted security truck, who failed to stop after hitting him

Police removing SWN equipment, which seems to have been bent somehow

RCMP moving SWN equipment

Backroads are tough on trucks

Anti-Fracking Protest in Nova Scotia Draws Hundreds, Shuts Down Highway

Tim McSorley — Mon, 24 Sep 2012 15:04:41 +0000

Protesters want province to halt gas exploration at Nova Scotia's largest lake

AULD'S COVE, NS—Upwards of 200 people, coming from all corners of Nova Scotia, responded to the imminent threat of exploratory oil and gas drilling on the shores of Lake Ainslie, and on September 22 staged an information picket outside the town of Auld's Cove.

Protestors, in this case assisted by the RCMP, created a colourful gauntlet of signs, strings of prayer flags, song and dance, through which passing motorists were directed. The action auspiciously took place on Global Anti-Fracking Day.

Despite the slow-down, motorists responded in an overwhelmingly positive manner to the action; thousands of pamphlets were distributed, and the afternoon resonated with the emphatic staccato of fists pumped to passing car horns. During the third hour of the action, in deference to a Mi'kmaq water ceremony to which all those in attendance were invited, the RCMP fully blockaded the highway—the only roadway on or off the island of Cape Breton—for about 20 minutes.

“I thought this was just going to be a bunch of raggedy-assed Indians,” said Elizabeth Marshall of the Treaty Beneficiary Association, conjuring the memory of Anna Mae Pictou-Aquash. “And you showed us that the raggedy-assed Indians have a bunch of raggedy-assed residents backing us up. We're not going to give up, because we love our ancestors, we love our future generations, and we love our children and grandchildren. And we know that water is sacred. Nothing, nothing can change that. So I'd like [Nova Scotia Premier] Darrell Dexter to tell me how much I should charge for a sacred spirit.”

The focus of the day's action, in a specific sense, was to protect Lake Ainslie, Nova Scotia's largest freshwater lake, from any and all fossil fuel drilling on her shores. Currently, the provincial government has only issued one exploratory well permit to Toronto-based company PetroWorth Resources Inc.; the company has promised no “fracing” [sic] will occur at the drill site.

Most likely the word “fracing” is referring to the technique of hydraulic fracturing, the water-intensive and often environmentally damaging technique of drilling for fossil fuels. “Fracking,” the commonly accepted slang term for the technique, has left a path of chemical pollution, sunken water tables, earthquakes and displaced residents across North America.

It is difficult to take PetroWorth, a company that has made its name fracking Western Canada and Nova Scotia's neighbouring province of New Brunswick, at its word, especially when that word appears to be knowingly misspelled. To Robert Parkins, closest neighbour to the potential drill site on the shores of Lake Ainslie, the question is one of semantics.

“There are three other terms that I've come across—well stimulation, well cleaning and well completion—which all fall under the heading of well alteration, which hydraulic fracturing also falls under,” Parkins told the Halifax Media Co-op. “They all use the same processes and the same chemicals.”

Parkins views the positioning of the site, which has been selected by PetroWorth due to various 19th-century finds of oil and gas in the area, as an attempt by the province and the corporation to force a "worst case" scenario situation. Essentially, claims Parkins, if a drill site can be established on the shores of relatively pristine Lake Ainslie, the province's largest freshwater lake, at the head of the Margaree River Watershed and with some of the last remaining viable Atlantic salmon spawning grounds in the province, then it can be done anywhere.

“It's one of the worst possible locations that you could ever put a drill site. So if they can get away with putting a drill site there, it's going to set a precedent in Nova Scotia that they can place them anywhere,” says Parkins.

It would appear that protest actions, which have included a partial blockade of the same stretch of highway on September 14 and 15, are beginning to have an effect on local Mi'kmaq chiefs.

Initially the chiefs appeared to sign off on PetroWorth's exploratory well permit, after being consulted by the provincial government. But the recent unrest, coupled with the effort of a group of local Mi'kmaq organizers who forced their way into a meeting of the Assembly of Nova Scotia Mi'kmaq Chiefs (ANSMC) on September 20, has caused the chiefs to do something of a public about-face.

A press release, issued on September 21, notes that the ANSMC are “in support of the community's concerns on hydraulic fracturing in the Lake Ainslie area of Cape Breton.” The press release, while cause for some degree of hope, does not demand that PetroWorth's exploratory well permit be rescinded. Nor is it certain that the ANSMC would have to ability, without entering into the legal sphere, to literally change its stance mid-stream on the permit issuance.

Wilbert Marshall, chief of Chapel Island, was the only Mi'kmaq chief to attend the September 22 action. Judging from his response and the escalating public display of Mi'kmaq disapproval, it would appear that the ANSMC may soon be faced with that exact dilemma.

“From day one, we were totally against it,” Marshall told the Halifax Media Co-op. “It's just fighting against the government and all that, it's just kind of back door deals, and we're trying our best to fight it. I remember them coming down the first time, we were totally against it. We are totally against [all oil and gas exploration on Lake Ainslie]. We have to be, because it's going to ruin the water. It's just kind of hard to fight these people. They're always taking the back door, like we said. If it's not one thing, it's the other. It's kind of hard to keep track, but we've got the people behind us, so hopefully we'll fight it at the end of it. We're not going to give up.”

Ginny Marshall, one of the main forces behind the recent Mi'kmaq actions against the potential drill site, appeared willing to ensure that the chiefs don't “give up.”

“[The chiefs] don't have the last say,” said Ginny Marshall. “They work for us, so they better behave.”

Despite the presence of concerned citizens from all walks of life, noticeably absent from the day's action was the mainstream media.

“I'm really kind of disappointed that the mainstream media is not here,” said Emmett Peters, local sweat lodge keeper. “We had, at the peak, probably over 200 people here. And there's nobody to show the rest of Nova Scotia that there's a lot of support for protecting the water. We told them, so they know. They know we're having an event, they just chose to stay away.”

“The one thing I notice that is not standing here with us is the mainstream media,” said Parkins to the gathered crowd. “Why? Because they don't want people to know that there are over 200 of us protesting the fracking that's about to go on in Cape Breton. They want to keep people in the dark. Ladies and gentlemen, we are tired of being mushrooms. No longer can they feed us horse shit and keep us in the dark...This is enough and this is what we're here for today. We have to tell them, even though they say that there is no fracking going on in Lake Ainslie, we know that there's well stimulation, well completion and well cleaning. And we all know it's the same thing...So ladies and gentlemen, from today on when anybody says to you that there is no fracking in Lake Ainslie, you say, 'Of course there isn't, because we're not going to let it happen.'”

It would appear that perhaps PetroWorth, and the provincial NDP government, may well have bitten off more than they can chew in attempting to drill for oil and gas in Cape Breton. Since being taken to court earlier in the year, albeit unsuccessfully, by the Margaree Environmental Association, PetroWorth has seen its stock value nosedive from a November 2011 high of eight cents per share down to a current value as of press time of two cents per share. Resistance to oil and gas drilling in Cape Breton, if the weekend's demonstration are any indication, is riding a surge of energy, and organizers are already talking of following Quebec's recent provincial moratorium on fracking.

“Whatever it takes,” Ginny Marshall told the Halifax Media Co-op. “I'll die. And that's very, very—that's the wrong thing to say to stop an oil company. But if my children are going to get a benefit out of it, then I'm willing to put my life on the line in order to protect them. I'm a mother bear. It's born in me, and I will be doing what I have to do in order to get this done.”

Miles Howe is an editor with The Dominion and a member of the Halifax Media Co-op, where this article was originally published.

Lake Ainslie Fracking II

Lake Ainslie Fracking

"Green Bitumen?!"

Sandra — Mon, 27 Aug 2012 12:39:24 +0000

Nuclear reactors in the tar sands

SASKATOON—What do you get when you cross a nuclear reactor with a hydraulic shovel-full of tar sands? The answer, according to the Canadian Energy Research Institute, is "Green Bitumen."

The brainchild of the nuclear industry, this novel concept of deploying small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs) to replace natural gas is being sold as a solution to the tar sands' reputation for producing the largest carbon footprint on the planet. Nuclear is being touted as an environmentally friendly, "clean" energy source for the extraction process. But in order to make that claim, one must overlook the substantial carbon emissions in the nuclear "fuel cycle," from mining to ultimate disposal; the risks of weapons proliferation; the toxic radioactive footprint; and the legacy of highly radioactive waste left behind for many generations to come.

Several key players have expressed interest in deploying nuclear reactors in the tar sands, including: Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. (AECL), a federal Crown corporation; SNC Lavalin Nuclear and its subsidiary Candu Energy Inc.; Bruce Power, one of Ontario's largest nuclear power generators and its parent company Cameco, the world's largest supplier of uranium; Toshiba, builder of the Fukushima Daiichi 3 power plant; Westinghouse; Aitel; Gen 4 (formerly Hyperion); and General Atomics. The governments of Canada, Alberta and Saskatchewan have at times all actively promoted this agenda. Also involved is the Idaho National Laboratory (INL), a major US Department of Energy nuclear research facility.

The nuclear industry, government and academia are pitching "Green Bitumen" to the tar sands industry and anyone else who will listen. Dr. Warren Bell, founding president of the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment, sees wide and grave implications for the environment and public health should this message resonate with its target audience.

"The federal and provincial governments are intent on tying the tar sands to nuclear power. Their forlorn hope is that the putative 'greenness' of the latter will counteract the overwhelming 'blackness' of the former," Dr. Bell told The Dominion.

Nuclear reactors have been proposed for three different functions in the tar sands. They could produce high-pressure steam to heat up the underground deposits, inducing bitumen flow from Steam Assisted Gravity Drainage (SAGD) mines. They could supply electricity to the mines. And they could generate electricity to produce hydrogen from water. The hydrogen is used to "upgrade" bitumen into a product similar to conventional crude oil.

But attention is currently focused principally on high pressure steam production. Single-mine electricity requirements are too small to justify reactor purchase, and current hydrogen production methods—from natural gas—are much cheaper. Since the high reactor temperatures required for high pressure steam production exclude conventional designs, the nuclear industry will look to universities for taxpayer-subsidized research and development based on as-yet unproven, "fourth generation" SMR designs.

A reactor would serve one tar sands mining complex, producing at most 30,000 barrels/day; a 375MW-thermal reactor would provide sufficient steam. The same size of reactor would be rated at about 150MW if used to generate electricity, with the other 225MW lost to the atmosphere. For comparison, modern full-size reactors generate 1000 to 1500MW.

The first sign of a concerted effort towards nuclear reactors in the tar sands came in 2006, when the Alberta Energy Research Institute, the energy-technology arm of the provincial government, announced plans to participate in a study with the industry to define nuclear options for the tar sands. This was followed by a private presentation by AECL and Energy Alberta Corporation—a company later linked to Ontario's Bruce Power—to the provincial Conservative caucus in 2007. Two days later, the Alberta Conservative convention passed a resolution to explore using nuclear power plants to assist oil sands development.

In 2008, the provincial government established the Alberta Nuclear Power Expert Panel to study the proposals. Three of its four members were drawn from the oil and nuclear industries. In 2007, with support from their federal counterparts, provincial government officials had already entered into discussions with the Idaho National Laboratory and had reached an agreement to study ways to use nuclear energy in Alberta's oil and gas industry.

The Peace River Environmental Society and other concerned citizens began an intensive public campaign to resist Bruce Power’s application to build a large-scale nuclear reactor in Peace River country, in north-western Alberta. They argued that the application and review process was riddled with a lack of transparency and integrity, undermining its credibility.

"It's a sad commentary on our society when government institutions meant to protect and inform us become puppets of the industries that harm us. Their obstruction of the truth compromised the best interests of Albertans for the benefit of an industry that has created massive debt and contamination for Canadians for the past forty years," Peace River anti-nuclear activist Pat McNamara told The Dominion in an interview.

Faced with effective public opposition, Bruce Power finally withdrew its application in December 2011. But by then the focus had already moved on to Saskatchewan.

Even before the election of his Saskatchewan Party government in 2007, Brad Wall had decided to embrace a nuclear future. "Small reactor technology is coming on fast and may present an opportunity for our province to develop our oil sands in an environmentally responsible way as the new technology produces much-needed steam as well as energy," Wall said in May 2007, six months before his election as Premier, according to a Saskatchewan Party Caucus news release. In 2008, Bruce Power made a pitch to SaskPower, a provincial Crown corporation, extolling the benefits of a large-scale nuclear reactor in Saskatchewan, with the potential to export electricity to the Alberta tar sands and beyond.

The Uranium Development Partnership, a Saskatchewan review panel comprising university and industry representatives, was keen on moving the nuclear agenda forward. Its report with 20 recommendations to "revitalize and capture growth opportunities across the uranium value chain" was released in April 2009 and followed by a public consultation process over the summer months. Just as had happened in Alberta, the Saskatchewan government had already signed an agreement with the Idaho National Laboratory, in March 2009. According to a Saskatchewan government news release, the Memorandum of Understanding would provide "a mechanism for the government and INL to consider research and demonstration projects on a variety of energy sources and resources, including uranium, nuclear energy, heavy oil, oil shale and oil sands."

Public reaction and opposition to the nuclear proposals was swift. The Saskatchewan government ultimately had to retreat from the Bruce Power proposal, but then pursued a different strategy from Alberta. Public funds were made available for nuclear research and development at the University of Saskatchewan. Largely outside public purview, and in close collaboration with the University administration, the Canadian Centre for Nuclear Innovation (CCNI) was established in 2011 with $30 million of government seed money, as was reported in Briarpatch earlier this year. In the CCNI Business Framework, the government establishes that CCNI must meet expectations for nuclear industry enhancement over the next seven years. In a linked move, the Hitachi business group was also funded to conduct "research into the design and feasibility of small reactor technologies," according to a 2011 Saskatchewan government news release.

In the short-term, nuclear reactors cannot compete with natural gas in the tar sands, but there is much dispute over the extent of gas reserves, adding uncertainty to plans for rapid gas-fuelled tar sands expansion. Industry experts worry that by 2030 there might not be sufficient natural gas to fulfil requirements, according to a 2006 Oil Sands Experts Group Workshop report by Len Flint. Studies continue to explore just when nuclear might become a viable option.

Irrespective of the economics, environmental journalist Andrew Nikiforuk told The Dominion that using nuclear power to produce bitumen is an absurd plan. "It's an insult to basic energetics and thermodynamics," he said.

This is not the nuclear industry's only target. In Saskatchewan, rapid, minimally regulated expansion of the oil, gas and potash industries will massively increase electricity consumption. SaskPower forecasts an 83 per cent increase in heavy industry's consumption by 2019, with 3750MW of new generating capacity required by 2033, citing nuclear as a long-term option, post-2023. SaskPower's grid management methodology would favour smaller (200 to 300MW), modular applications of existing reactor types. Hitachi has proposed to adapt a small conventional reactor design under the Saskatchewan agreement.

It is also important to recognize that the conventional power industry—nuclear, fossil fuels, pipelines and electricity—is becoming increasingly integrated. Along with Cameco and BPC Generation Infrastructure Trust, TransCanada Corporation is a one-third owner of Bruce Power. Its proposed Keystone XL pipeline represents an important synchronicity of investment between oil and nuclear expansion. SNC Lavalin is already active in the tar sands, and dovetailing that business with their Candu nuclear interests could be a next step. SNC Lavalin now also owns AltaLink, the private electrical company operating most of Alberta’s electrical grid. Planned and existing tie lines into Saskatchewan, British Columbia and Montana will enhance that export capacity.

Some argue that the Western Energy Corridor proposal, designed to export electricity across the border into the United States, is an even bigger opportunity for nuclear expansion in Alberta and Saskatchewan. This explains the keen interest of the Idaho National Laboratory in collaborating with government and industry in Canada. INL sees potential for nuclear reactors in western Canada to fulfil future U.S. energy demand. It is not, however, clear how any nuclear reactor could be built without public subsidy.

But the tar sands, perched atop the federal agenda, remain a much-desired prize. SMRs constitute one of very few technologies that tar sands corporations can use to misleadingly promise a smaller future carbon footprint. Even if ultimately non-viable, the argument serves to promote continued rapid expansion of tar sands extraction.

While European countries such as Denmark and Germany are increasingly moving to a renewables-based future, few North American utility and grid management companies are working to overcome the technical challenges involved in making that transition. Unless this changes, many regions are left with a choice between coal, gas and nuclear. The high greenhouse gas emissions of fossil fuels provide the nuclear industry with an opportunity to promote itself and revive its flagging fortunes despite its prohibitively high price tags.

David Geary, an anti-nuclear activist in Saskatchewan, says there can be no "Green Bitumen" in an environmentally sustainable future.

"Nuclear energy is not clean or green – it uses up huge amounts of fresh water, routinely spews out numerous pollutants and carcinogens into the air and water, and leaves behind a legacy of highly toxic, long-lived wastes," he told The Dominion.

Time will tell whether the organized struggles against well-funded vested interests in western Canada will overcome the proposed publicly-subsidized proliferation of small nuclear reactors in the tar sands or anywhere else. The battle between truly sustainable energy options and the "Green Bitumen" of the conventional energy industry continues.

D'Arcy Hande is a retired archivist and historian, living in Saskatoon. Dr Mark Bigland-Pritchard is a Saskatoon-based applied physicist working as a sustainable energy and green building consultant.

Green Bitumen?!

Funding Evaporates for Freshwater Science Research

Miles — Mon, 13 Aug 2012 11:06:44 +0000

Proposed closure of experimental lakes threatens important, ongoing research

WINNIPEG—Freshwater science researchers in Canada could soon find themselves without a world renowned, one-of-a-kind facility in Northwestern Ontario to conduct their studies. If the federal government goes through with plans to cut the $2 million in annual funding to the Experimental Lakes Area (ELA), the research station will close its doors on April 1, 2013, leaving many graduate students stranded mid-project.

The decision has been lambasted in the media by scientists, who see the move to cut $2 million in annual expenditures as shortsighted, to say the least. Researcher David Schindler of the University of Alberta, a freshwater science expert who has done extensive work researching the effects of tar sands developments downstream on the Athabasca River system, considers the funding cut to be symptomatic of a larger issue. “The real problem is we have a bunch of people running science in this country who don’t even know what science is,” he told reporters at a June 15 press conference.

Researchers at Trent University are currently in the early stages of a project that monitors the effects of nanosilver on a whole lake system level. One of the fastest growing substances in the marketplace today, nanosilver is a minute particle that is added to hundreds of consumer products including clothing, bandages and bug spray. As these products enter the environment, the products breakdown and particles are released into freshwater systems. Early lab studies discovered negative impacts on marine life.

Just last year, the project, which is under the direction of Chris Metcalfe at the Institute for Freshwater Science at Trent, received a $750,000 grant from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) to conclude the three-year study. Metcalfe told the Winnipeg Free Press that with the NSERC grant, he and his team of graduate students would have been able to test the whole ecosystem effects of these particles at the ELA—tests that cannot be conducted in a laboratory setting. The results of the research are now in jeopardy.

At the University of Manitoba, a study on the behavioural and physiological differences between escaped farmed and wild rainbow trout had just been completed when news of the impending closure came out in the federal budget.

“I was probably one of the few lucky ones that had actually completed the field component of my research at the time of the closure announcement,” Master’s student Matthew Martens recently told the Gradzette, the University of Manitoba’s graduate student newspaper. “A number of Master’s, PhD students and postdoctoral fellows were in the process of designing and implementing experiments at the ELA. Since fieldwork is an huge component to ecology and life sciences in general, closing the ELA in the midst of active student research, leaves students with little options to salvage invested time and data that went into their research.”

Jason Venkiteswaran is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Waterloo, where he also did his graduate work studying the effects of flooding due to hydroelectric development. His current research is on eutrophication, a hydrologic process where high nutrient levels, often from agricultural runoff, lead to excessive plant growth, causing detrimental effects on the natural ecosystem.

“This work is on Lake 227,” he told The Dominion in an interview. “It’s the longest running experiment at the ELA. It’s been eutrophied since 1969 or 1970. [The research] would end. So the lake with the greatest amount of eutrophication data, probably the most studied lake in the world with regard to eutrophication, would simply stop being the place where everybody would want to come to study eutrophication.”

Venkitsewaran is concerned that losing the ELA as a place to conduct research will have a detrimental effect not only on Canadian universities attracting top students, researchers and faculty, but also on freshwater science in Canada itself.

“The results from the ELA are useful across the country,” says Venkitsewaran. “It is a kind of national program that every place in the country has a stake in—the acid-sensitive lakes in Nova Scotia, acid-sensitive lakes across Northern Quebec and Newfoundland and Labrador. It’s the same with lakes in the northern Prairies, in the boreal forest. All these places face similar issues like eutrophication, mercury deposition, acid deposition. A place like ELA can handle research that covers all those places.”

Without the current funding from the federal government, that research will become increasingly difficult to conduct, if not cease altogether.

Frank Stanek, a spokesperson for Fisheries and Oceans Canada, told The Dominion in an email that other facilities are better aligned with the research mandate of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO).

“We understand that science is the backbone of Fisheries and Oceans Canada and we recognize that important work has been done at the facility, but we are now focussing on work being conducted at other freshwater research facilities across the country, which will more than adequately meet the research needs of DFO,” wrote Stanek.

According to the DFO, the “work being conducted at the ELA is not directly aligned with the Department's core mandate of research that supports decision-making on habitat and fisheries management.” Stanek suggested that other sectors, such as universities or private interests, are better suited to run the facility, “as they are better positioned to undertake the type of studies requiring a whole-ecosystem manipulation.”

However, Venkitsewaran does not believe that universities will be able to fund the facility, citing the manner in which universities fund studies.

“The way that university granting systems [work] is you’re only looking at three or four years at a time,” says Venkitsewaran. “You can’t run a long term facility that way. It means every two or three years you go into panic mode trying to find money to keep going.”

With no clear alternative to the current federally funded model in place, it is possible that graduate students and researchers currently working out of the ELA across the country will find themselves high and dry come April 2013. However, it is Canadians, as beneficiaries of that research, who will truly be the ones who are losing out.

Sheldon Birnie is a writer, editor, and song & dance man living in Winnipeg, MB.

Experimental lakes

Who Pays When Your Well is Sucked Dry and Your Home is Contaminated?

Tim McSorley — Wed, 20 Jun 2012 11:25:10 +0000

Supreme Court denies Port Colborne class action victory, squashes hopes for communities affected by industry across Canada for compensation in the courts

PENOBSQUIS, NB—Wilf Pearson was a jovial but straight-shooting retired truck driver who painted Christmas murals on downtown business windows in the small city of Port Colborne, ON, on Lake Erie. Pearson, like many others who lived on Rodney Street in the shadow of a nickel refinery, felt the city's largest employer, the refinery, was responsible for contamination and sickness in his working-class neighbourhood and surrounding farmlands. He didn’t live, though, to see the day that the Supreme Court of Canada denied his community a hearing on the matter.

Pearson, the original claimant on a historic class action lawsuit filed over 10 years ago, died in March of this year at the age of 80. Pearson and the other claimants on the suit made the difficult decision of going after Inco for only the devaluation of their properties—and not a list of other impacts they connected to the refinery (such as sickness) because of legal advice on how the courts work. In their class action suit, Port Colborne residents claimed that their property values were diminished by the nickel emitted from Inco's refinery over a 66-year period prior to 1985.

On July 6, 2010, Ontario Supreme Court Justice JR Henderson sided with the residents and awarded $36 million to 7,000 Port Colborne households, including Pearson's, in what was Canada's largest environmental class action lawsuit award. Households in the Rodney Street area, the location of the refinery, were each awarded $23,000. In their appeal, Vale, formerly Inco, questioned whether the trial judge had erred on different accounts, including whether the nickel discharge by Inco onto the property of the claimants had actually constituted an actionable nuisance. In April, the Supreme Court of Canada sided with Vale and ruled that the claimants had failed to establish Vale’s liability.

Diana Wiggins, a mother who pulled her son out of a Port Colborne elementary school in 2001 because she suspected that it was making her son sick, says she is not surprised by the court ruling given that three of the judges on the case had recently been appointed by the Harper government. "Harper won't be happy until this country has third-world standards," says Wiggins.

Beth Norrad argues that her farming community of Penobsquis, New Brunswick, has been living under similar standards for years. Norrad's house was one of the first to lose its artesian spring water in 1999. Hers and her neighbours’ wells went completely dry in 2004. Their homes are situated directly above the potash mine workings. Norrad and others in Penobsquis have been watching the Port Colborne lawsuit closely and thinking about what it could mean for their community's pursuit for compensation for devalued property.

Beth Nixon, spokesperson for the Concerned Citizens of Penobsquis and mother of four children under the age of 12, says that 60 wells in Penobsquis were lost at the same time that PotashCorp and Corridor Resources Inc were conducting rounds of seismic testing. Penobsquis residents reported hearing and seeing the seismic blasts, noticing dirty water or total loss of water not long afterwards. Seismic testing is occurring in different places in New Brunswick in the hunt for shale gas.

Penobsquis residents have expressed their frustrations of feeling abandoned by the provincial government. Chris Bell, a Penobsquis woman who lost her well water in 2006, attended an open house on natural gas in nearby Sussex in January 2011 to voice her opposition to shale gas and fracking to then Environment Minister Margaret-Ann Blaney.

"Blaney said to me: 'You people in Penobsquis are just so angry.'" Bell says she was shocked by the comment. "I responded with: ‘Don't you think I have the right to be angry? I have lived here for years without water. I have been manipulated, lied to and no one seems to care—especially the government.’" In May, Blaney, then Energy Minister, resigned from politics to accept an appointment as the Chief Executive Officer of Efficiency New Brunswick, a position that many including opposition parties say is a patronage appointment.

The Concerned Citizens of Penobsquis are taking their case to the Mining Commissioner, a public mechanism set up to deal with grievances related to mining in New Brunswick. They are asking for compensation for a long list of impacts they say are caused by potash mining including the loss of 60 water wells, plunging property values, the sinking of land that is damaging their homes, dust, noise and light pollution, and stress. The hearings before the Mining Commissioner, which started in the spring of 2011, are ongoing in Sussex. Regularly found at the hearings are supporters of Penobsquis from across the province. Rallies are occasionally organized outside the hearings to draw attention to the problems in Penobsquis and to protest against shale gas development and fracking, which has also occurred in the rural community. The Alward government has rejected calls for a moratorium or a ban on shale gas. The anti-shale gas alliance in New Brunswick includes more than 40 organizations, most of them community-based.

Natural Resources Minister Bruce Northrup, who represents Penobsquis and Sussex in the provincial legislative assembly, said in May during the release of a discussion paper on regulating shale gas that there have been no issues with seismic testing in the province in the past year. Heather Whalen, an organizer against shale gas from Durham Bridge, near Fredericton, disagrees with Northrup's claim.

"We ended up with dirty water after seismic testing for shale gas. We had to remediate the water ourselves by shocking it and then they tested again and it was clean. There was no proof it was from seismic testing but our water was fine when we bought the house a few weeks before," says Whalen. Whalen says that seismic testing in her neighbourhood has brought truck traffic, noise and dust to her back-country roads. "We moved here for peace and quiet. I had many sleepless nights due to stress of feeling like we were under attack, watching for them everywhere, having security parked at the end of our road, just a few metres up from my driveway."

New Brunswick was recently ranked as the top jurisdiction to mine anywhere in the world by mining companies in an annual survey published by the Fraser Institute. But mining has left Beth Norrad and other residents of Penobsquis, about a two hour drive from Fredericton, wanting to pack up and leave their communities forever.

“Residents of Penobsquis and of New Brunswick deserve better. We deserve a government that looks out for our communities. Instead, the burden of proof and the costs to prove anything rests on us,” says Nixon. Nixon says it is emotionally draining to watch her neighbours testify—many of them elderly, some in tears, their voices trembling.

The shale gas industry took a hit in May when the Royal Planning District Commission reported that New Brunswick's groundwater from the Bay of Fundy to Grand Lake is vulnerable to contamination. "This study is the only case of mapping of aquifers done in recent memory in the province of New Brunswick. We need groundwater mapping in order to assess future developments. They did this study not only for planning, but also because of the Penobsquis situation and the threats from the proposed Salt Springs gas storage, fracking and the proposed Millstream mine. We should be insisting that all planning commissions undertake studies like this around the province. This is one government body that is actually standing up and working for its residents," says Nixon.

For standing up to big industry in their communities, Diana Wiggins, Beth Nixon, Beth Norrad and many others have been labelled and are the object of looks and comments that make them feel uneasy. But they've also been recognized and celebrated for their efforts by different organizations and their neighbours, some who quietly support them but are afraid to do so publicly out of fear of losing their jobs, among other reasons.

"I know I will not stop until justice has been served," said Wiggins, contemplating the next course of action to take in the wake of the disappointing Supreme Court ruling. Wiggins, who originally called the Canadian Environmental Law Association, setting the lawsuit in motion, says her fight is not over. She says Port Colborne residents are contemplating filing individual lawsuits that will extend beyond asking for compensation for devalued properties, and will include health, environmental and other impacts.

"In Canada, one can appreciate the importance of jobs in the resource sector. If health and environmental issues in particular are not addressed by government, and legal processes don't allow for compensation, then there is no deterrent for companies. And communities like Penobsquis and Port Colborne will suffer the consequences," says Nixon.

A civil disobedience workshop was held on Saint Mary's First Nation on May 26. Many people who actively oppose shale gas are new to activism. They are quickly learning that the government and the courts are not there to protect them and that they need to take bold and decisive action that defies the current legislative and court frameworks to protect their families, communities and the entire planet from the devastating impacts of fossil fuel extraction.

Heather Whalen says that the prospects of shale gas development in New Brunswick has had one positive side-effect. "It has made some people who never fought anything in their life stand up and fight for what they believe in."

Tracy Glynn is an environmental activist in New Brunswick and a contributor to the New Brunswick Media Co-op.

PotashCorp

Beth Nixon

Flawed Process, Flawed Project

dawn — Mon, 11 Jun 2012 16:17:31 +0000

Controversy flows on the Northern Gateway pipeline and Canada’s oil economy

VANCOUVER—Since January, the federal Joint Review Panel (JRP) has been touring Alberta and BC, accepting public statements on the proposed Enbridge Northern Gateway project. The controversial pipeline would carry tar sands bitumen and chemical condensate from Alberta to the BC coast.

Although some observers are encouraged by the JRP and opportunity for open dialogue on the pipeline, many First Nations, legal experts and environmentalists say the review process and the project itself are deeply flawed.

"We think there's significant problems with the way the federal government has carried out its consultation," said Josh Paterson, legal counsel with West Coast Environmental Law.

"The JRP process itself has no authority to look at the impacts on First Nations rights and title that would be caused by this project. The federal government still has the duty to consult with First Nations regardless of what this panel does, and so far they haven’t shown that they're willing to have very serious discussions about the Enbridge issue or the impacts on rights and title."

If the pipeline is approved, Paterson predicts there will be legal challenges from multiple First Nations, who have already stated they would contest the federal government's failure to carry out constitutionally-required consultations. Paterson also said that those cases will likely go to the Supreme Court of Canada, although it's hard to predict how the court would rule.

There has been a record number of registrants to give oral statements to the JRP, more than 4,000, and a strong negative response against the pipeline in many communities. Nevertheless, the Canadian government has openly, and some say undemocratically, favoured the project during the regulatory process, calling it "in the national interest."

Paterson notes that the Harper government is attempting to give the federal Cabinet the final say on all future pipeline projects, instead of the National Energy Board (NEB). Currently, the JRP is considered an independent body and offers a recommendation to the NEB, which then rules on whether or not the project is in the public interest. The NEB is an independent federal agency; its funding comes from government, but 90% of costs recovered from industry.

Canada's regulatory process is already heavily influenced by industry, critics say, and giving Cabinet members the final say on projects rejected by the NEB puts more power into the hands of industry-friendly politicians, rather than an independent third party.

The proposed pipeline and resulting increase in oil tanker traffic on the west coast, along with a "streamlined" environmental review process, has experts declaring that a broad new discussion is needed on industry's relationship with government.

"Environmental Law is really being gutted and environmental protections... are just being erased in order to accelerate approvals of pipeline projects like Enbridge and we think that's really problematic," said Paterson. "We think that’s going to result in a legacy of poor decisions being made and that's going to affect Canadians well into the future."

Resource exploitation by large corporations on Canadian soil is nothing new and has been around since the country was founded, including the operations of the Hudson's Bay and North West companies. Environmental groups are saying the fight is more important than ever, with politicians pandering to Asian and other markets to sell Canada’s resources, while failing to deal with a number of fundamental issues.

"Obviously this is a pretty large-scale fight," said Ben West, campaigner for the Western Canada Wilderness Committee. "We're talking about some of the wealthiest corporations in the history of industrial civilization. Increasingly we've seen our leaders from Canada... going to Asia and trying to make the case that this is a safe place to invest [in the pipeline and other resource industries] and to a certain extent I really think that's the nature of this conversation."

West says recent attacks from Conservatives against environmental organizations and the labeling of concerned citizens as "radicals" shows the current government feels threatened by those beginning to think beyond the oil economy.

"To me it’s a sign of desperation and a clinging to maintain the status quo," said West. "The big question that I think we're all going to need to deal with is: what does a different type of economy look like? Canada's economy is very much based around oil at the moment but that can't last forever."

West notes that while the Canadian government appears unconcerned about voices against the project, support is growing. Recently, several First Nations participated in theYinka Dene Alliance (YDA) train journey that ended at the Enbridge AGM in Toronto. The trip raised awareness and protested against the pipeline in a number of cities.

The JRP was slated to hear oral statements until March 2013 and make their recommendation in the fall, but the timeline and review process may soon be changed by aspects of the parliamentary budget bill, C-38.

Trevor Kehoe is a journalist from Calgary, now based in Vancouver.

The Yinka Dene Alliance

Sloughs of Despond

Tim McSorley — Fri, 11 May 2012 10:29:53 +0000

Fracking wastewater ponds languish in Hants County

HALIFAX—Hydraulic fracturing wastewater shown to contain high levels of radioactive contaminants has been sitting in two open containment pits in Hants County, Nova Scotia, since 2007, the Media Co-op has learned.

A Freedom of Information request has also revealed that the water likely contains a slew of other chemicals, including known carcinogens and endocrine disruptors.

Triangle Petroleum Corporation, the Denver-based company responsible for creating the ponds, announced on April 16, after having stalled on remediating the wastewater for over four years, that it was “contemplating a total exit” from its operations in Nova Scotia. The company’s announcement coincided with the provincial NDP’s announcement that its review of the environmental impacts of hydraulic fracturing, initially slated for a Spring 2012 release, would be extended into 2014.

The first company to explore Nova Scotia’s shale formations for natural gas using the contentious horizontal-drilling method known as hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, Triangle had been threatening for some time to renounce its 10 year exploration lease on 475,000 gross acres—known as The Windsor Block—spanning Kings and Hants Counties along the Minas Basin.

In an email to Nova Scotia Environment (NSE) dated August 29, 2011—obtained through a NS Freedom of Information request—Dr. Peter Hill, at the time Triangle’s CEO, threatened his company’s withdrawal from the province.

Should the [fracking] Review fail to support deep re-injectivity [sic] of formation waters back to their formation of origin, or ban, restrict or delay shale gas activity for a long period, then we will drain the ponds by the then best method available, remediate all sites, return our licenses back to the Nova Scotia Department of Energy and cease any further investment in the Province of Nova Scotia.

The wastewater comprising the ponds was generated in 2007 when Triangle drilled and fracked two wells in the Kennetcook area of Hants County.

NSE and Triangle have since been at loggerheads concerning the best method of remediation for the 15 million litres of wastewater—the former insisting on trucking the wastewater to appropriate treatment facilities, the latter on injecting the “formation waters back to their formation of origin,” or, namely, drilling an on-site disposal well and injecting it into the earth.

While the deep-well reinjection of fracking wastewater is common industry practice, it runs counter to NSE’s best practices guide.

And for good reason, according to Jennifer West, groundwater coordinator at the Ecology Action Centre (EAC).

“When you punch a hole through the overlying rock formations, which act as seals, and then dump millions of litres of wastewater into that hole, there’s no way you can guarantee that it’s not going to change the quality of the drinking water,” she says. “The practice is appalling given the number of chemicals and anthropogenic contaminants in wastewater.”

Families of chemicals that Triangle used in its fracking slurry for the Kennetcook wells (among others):

Diethylene glycols: An endocrine disruptor known to adversely affect development, the reproductive, cardiovascular, gastrointestinal, respiratory and nervous systems, and to impair function of the kidneys, liver, skin, and eyes.

Isopropanols: Known to have adverse effects on the sensory organs, the liver, kidneys, brain, and blood, and the immune system.

Methanols: A mutagen known to have the preceding effects.

Sodium persulphates: Causes skin, eye, sensory organ, and respiratory, gastrointestinal, nervous and immune system damage.

Trisodium nitrilotriacetate monohydrates: Known to cause cancer, and gastrointestinal, cardiovascular, kidney and ecological damage.

In December 2011, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released a draft report on the effects of hydraulic fracturing on groundwater in Pavilion, Wyoming. “Using a lines of reasoning approach,” the study found that “inorganic and organic constituents associated with hydraulic fracturing ha[d] contaminated ground water at and below the depth used for domestic water supply.”

Reinjection has been linked to a marked increase in seismic activity in the American Midwest over the past ten years. According to the US Geological Survey, “the injection of [fracking] wastewater into the subsurface can cause earthquakes that are large enough to be felt…and cause damage.”

Earlier this year, Ohio’s Natural Resources Department introduced stringent new regulations for oil and gas drilling companies after several earthquakes in the state had been linked to fracking-wastewater reinjection.

Although its development plan application, submitted to the NS Department of Energy in 2008, states that Triangle would commit “to safeguarding the environment…through the application of best practices,” the company has been stalwart in its opposition to NSE’s insistence on draining the ponds and treating, rather than reinjecting, the wastewater. The company has stated that trucking the wastewater to treatment facilities would be too expensive and would undermine road safety.

Ken Summers is a member of the Nova Scotia Fracking Resource and Action Coalition (NOFRAC) who lives near the Kennetcook ponds. He believes the lengthy impasse highlights the slapdash nature by which shale gas exploration activity in Nova Scotia has emerged.

“Up until they launched their review [of hydraulic fracturing in April 2011], the provincial government was relying on regulations designed to cover conventional drilling, which are insufficient mechanisms when applied to the so-called unconventional method of hydraulic fracturing,” says Summers.

Summers contends that the Kennetcook ponds are the direct result of an absence of fracking-specific provincial wastewater remediation regulations, and are exemplary of a savvy company taking advantage of the tenderfoot provincial government.

“The industry is so new and has developed so fast that provincial and state jurisdictions are way behind the industry players in terms of knowledge and expertise,” he explains.

According to the Kennetcook drill-site plan Triangle submitted to the province, the pits were dug to hold freshwater to be used during the fracking process.

“NSE notes in its documentation that it didn’t give approval for waste ponds, that no permits were issued,” explains Summers.

In 2008, when NSE realized the ponds were holding wastewater, it issued Triangle a two-year temporary storage permit during which time Triangle was to have the water transported to treatment facilities in Dartmouth and Debert, 20 kilometres west of Truro. When the temporary permit expired in June 2010, with no remedial action having taken place, NSE issued a one-year extension with the proviso that by the end of the one-year term they expected definitive plans for draining the ponds and reclaiming the sites.

In August, 2011, two months beyond the extension deadline, with Triangle still pressuring for reinjection, and proposing they “wait for the decisions and recommendations of the Review Committee on Hydraulic Fracturing that [were] expected later [that] year,” NSE demanded that the ponds be drained before winter freeze, or November 1, which Triangle claimed unfeasible, suggesting instead “the gradual use of the brines as a de-icing/wetting agent on Nova Scotia roads.”

Months later, Triangle agreed to drain one of the ponds before winter freeze, which they began to do on November 21. Shortly thereafter, on December 2, NSE received test results showing the wastewater contained high levels of radionuclides, and consequently, owing to the fact that there is no facility in Atlantic Canada capable of treating radioactively contaminated wastewater, suspended all drainage activity.

Radionuclides are unstable forms of nuclides, a generic term for the atomic form of an element. The most common radionuclides in groundwater are radon, radium, thorium and uranium. Radon and uranium occur most commonly in shale and granite formations, which comprise a significant portion of Nova Scotia’s geology. The EPA states that although “most drinking water sources have very low levels of [naturally occurring] radioactive contaminants,” human activity can incite drinking water contamination “through accidental releases of radioactivity or through improper disposal practices.”

Exposure to high levels of radon and uranium has been linked to bone and internal organ cancers in humans.

“They were trucking water out for less than two weeks in five or six trucks a day to Debert, and part of it is sitting in a pond in Debert, but most of it is still sitting in the pond in Kennetcook,” says Summers.

Compounding the matter, the water that was already drained and trucked to the Atlantic Industrial Services facility in Debert before NSE suspended drainage activity now has to be removed from that location because it cannot be treated at that facility.

“Who’s to say where they’re going to go from here, because now we’re talking about a much more expensive process for the company, so it’s back into limbo,” says Summers.

Meanwhile, one of the Kennetcook ponds is leaking and has spilled over in heavy rain, augmenting concerns within the community over groundwater contamination.

The EPA draft report on groundwater in Pavilion, Wyoming, found that “high concentrations of benzene, xylenes, gasoline range organics, diesel range organics, and total purgeable hydrocarbons in ground water samples from shallow monitoring wells near [wastewater] pits indicates that pits are a source of shallow ground water contamination in the area of investigation” representing “potential source terms for localized groundwater plumes of unknown extent.”

Oil and gas companies are not lawfully compelled to disclose the chemicals they use in their slickwater, the proprietary nature of which can make it notoriously difficult when it comes to delineating which toxic elements have been introduced by industry and which are naturally occurring.

A recent EAC Freedom of Information request has disclosed the group of industrial chemicals that were used in the fracking fluid for the Kennetcook wells (See sidebar).

“Chemicals associated with fracking are just the tip of the iceberg,” says West. “We found dozens of dangerous substances which were used for fracking in Hants, but also for drilling and site preparation. We found these through a Freedom of Information request—they weren’t handing out this information at an Open House in Kennetcook.”

The potential for the contamination of our drinking water is multifold, yet the result is singular, according to West.

“It doesn’t matter if it’s the methane, or wastewater, the natural contaminants, or the chemicals that get into our drinking water, it’s just that something [toxic] can get into our drinking water and that’s not acceptable.”

Despite numerous delays and Triangle’s departure announcement, NSE remains firm that the company will clean up its mess. “They are required to meet the terms and conditions of their approval, which includes draining the ponds, treating the wastewater at an approved facility, and returning the site to its natural state before the end of this year,” says Karen White, NSE Director of Communications.

White further emphasizes that “any materials that meet federal legislation requirements under the Nuclear Substances Act and/or the Transportation of Dangerous Goods Act must be shipped to an appropriate facility out of province.”

West maintains reservations, given that the government, to no avail, has been asking the company for almost five years to comply with regulations. She says more decisive action needs to be taken. "[Triangle] should be forced to immediately clean up the ponds in Kennetcook before drinking water is impacted by these chemicals, and be held accountable if contamination has occurred."

Steven Wendland is a graduate student and contributing member of the Halifax Media Co-op.

This article was originally published by the Halifax Media Co-op.

Tailings in Hants

Chilean Supreme Court Red Lights Goldcorp Mine

Tim McSorley — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 11:50:58 +0000

Indigenous community leader celebrates ruling, promises continued opposition

MEXICO—On Friday, the Chilean Supreme Court ratified a lower court ruling that rendered Goldcorp's environmental assessment for the El Morro mine null, due to irregularities including the company's failure to properly consult with the Diaguita Huascoaltinos Indigenous and Agricultural Community, whose lands would be destroyed if the mine is built.

Following the lower court ruling, Goldcorp stated that they would not stop working until they received an order declaring the Resolution of Environmental Quality, a kind of environmental permit, to be without effect. "This is the order, and there is no appeal," said Sergio Campusano Villches, President of the Diaguita Huascualtino community.

The Chilean press is reporting that the Supreme Court decision was unanimous, and that the company must respond to the ruling before taking further steps towards opening the mine.

The judgement in their favour was a surprise, according to Campusano, who was already preparing to take the legal battle international.

"We were afraid because three of the five judges in the Chilean Supreme Court have been accused of being bought off," Campusano told the Vancouver Media Co-op. "We were actually even preparing to go to the Inter American Commission, since we know there's a lot of money at play here."

The decision has raised the question of whether Goldcorp actually would prefer to deal with this case inside of Chile rather than in international courts, says Campusano. But, he says, his people will continue to oppose proposed copper mine, which requires an almost $4 billion investment by co-owners Goldcorp (70 per cent) and New Gold (30 per cent). Both companies are based in Vancouver.

"These days the ideas of 'consultation' and 'consent' have been manipulated by consulting and human resources firms that work for the government, local governments also stick their noses in there without knowing what they're doing," said Campusano. "All we did was play the game that they want us to play, and 'the illusion' has ended."

The Diaguita Huascoaltinos Indigenous and Agricultural Community have already taken a case against Barrick Gold to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. Campusano will be in Vancouver in early June to speak at the Shout Out Against Mining Injustice event, organized by the Council of Canadians.

Dawn Paley is a freelance journalist and co-founder of the Vancouver Media Co-op. This piece was originally published by the Vancouver Media Co-op.

Diaguita Huascoaltinos Indigenous and Agricultural Community

Goldcorp Base Camp El Morro

"What They Call Development, We Call Destruction"

Dalia Merhi — Fri, 23 Mar 2012 09:18:20 +0000

Grassy Narrows resistance to corporate logging continues

WINNIPEG—In December 2011, Ontario’s Ministry of Natural Resources (MNR) released its “Long Term Management Direction,” a ten-year “development plan” for the Whiskey Jack Forest. Located in Treaty #3 territory of northwestern Ontario, this forest is critical to the economic and cultural survival of Asubpeeschoseewagong Netum Anishinabek, also known as Grassy Narrows First Nation.

“This document was developed without our participation or consent and is entirely outside the good faith negotiations we have undertaken with MNR since the 2008 Process Agreement,” said Grassy Narrows Chief Simon Fobister in a release. “It sets the stage for more clearcutting throughout our traditional lands, contrary to our Treaty and inherent rights. And we have not given our consent.”

The 2008 Process Agreement was created to guide forest management discussions between MNR and Grassy Narrows after the previous license-holder, Abitibi-Bowater, withdrew in 2008 due to community resistance and public pressure.

Grassy Narrows has struggled for decades with the destruction of the Whiskey Jack Forest from logging, while facing the legacy of residential schools and mercury poisoning in the English-Wabigoon river system.

In 2002, Grassy Narrows’ residents established a blockade of a logging road into the Whiskey Jack Forest. Initiated after years of protest and petitions, the blockade became the longest standing in North American history and an inspiring site of learning, empowerment, and self-determination.

In the Rainforest Action Network’s report, American Dream, Native Nightmare, Roberta Keesick, a blockader, trapper and grandmother, explained the necessity of the blockade: "The destruction of the forest is an attack on our people…The land is the basis of who we are. Our culture is a land-based culture, and the destruction of the land is the destruction of our culture; we know that…they want us out of the way so they can take the resources. We can't allow them to carry on with this cultural genocide."

Before the blockade began, a group of trappers—Andrew Keewatin, Joe Bill Fobister, and the late Willie Keewatin—sought a judicial review against the paper giant, Abitibi-Bowater, and MNR. They argued that their treaty rights to hunt and trap were being infringed by decreased animal habitat and population. Eleven years after the trappers first presented their case, JB Fobister summarizes the 2011 court ruling: “[The Province] could not interfere with [their] right to hunt and trap.”

Abitibi-Consolidated Inc., MNR, and the Attorney General of Canada have since appealed this ruling. Pending the outcome, the Ontario Court of Appeal recently ordered that MNR not authorize the harvesting of wood in the Whiskey Jack Forest north of English River without the consent of Grassy Narrows.

Fobister illustrates the conflict between the interests of industry, the provincial government, and Grassy Narrows: “We are in the way of what they call development. What they call development, we call destruction,” he said. “Whatever happens on the land,” he added, "Grassy should get all the benefits.”

In July 2011, KBM Forestry Consultants Inc. released an audit they conducted of forestry management in the 964,000 hectare Whiskey Jack. Validating concerns of forest mismanagement, the report produced 21 recommendations based on “observations of material non-conformances” to a law and policy as well as ineffective planning and execution.

Some forest product manufacturers, such as Boise Inc. and Domtar, have publicly agreed not to harvest or purchase wood from Grassy Narrows' territory until the MNR obtains community consent. In 2009, Calvert Investments removed Weyerhaeuser from its social index of sustainable and responsible companies due to Weyerhaeuser’s failure to respect the rights of Indigenous peoples.

With only 30 per cent of the forest remaining intact, the Weyerhaeuser mill in Kenora, ON, continues to create a demand for wood harvested from the Whiskey Jack; since 2002, the forest has supplied at least 40 per cent of the mill’s wood, accounting for 42 per cent of the total timber harvest from the forest. The mill produces Trustjoist Timberstrand product, an engineered lumber used for home building.

In 2010, Weyerhaeuser pressured the MNR to approve “contingency” logging areas in the Whiskey Jack Forest without the consent of Grassy Narrows. Chief Simon Fobister issued an open letter to logging companies, retailers, contractors, and investors at the time, calling “for the boycott and divestment of Weyerhaeuser Corporation due to their violation of our human rights as Indigenous Peoples.” With approximately 70 per cent of the mill's product being sold in the United States, a successful boycott would require increased support.

Since the beginning of the blockade, local organizations, such as Winnipeg Indigenous Peoples Solidarity Movement (WIPSM, formerly Friends of Grassy Narrows) and Boreal Forest Network, have stood in support of the blockaders to stop logging in their territory. Together with other allies, they are petitioning Weyerhaeuser and approaching home builders and retailers for a boycott “until they cease all logging and sourcing in the contested traditional territories of Grassy Narrows First Nation.”

“A 'no' from Grassy means, no, stay off their traditional territory—no logging and no resource extraction," said Thor Aikenhead, member of WIPSM.

Damage to the community by corporations and the provincial and federal governments over the decades has taken a great toll, but the determination of Grassy Narrows and its allies could force this corporate giant out. “Grassy's demands must be respected," he adds.

News items and suggestions for supporting Grassy Narrows can be found at freegrassy.org. To sign the petition for Weyerhaeuser to stop sourcing wood from Grassy Narrows First Nation territory, visit: borealforestnetwork.com.

Chuck Wright was a Christian Peacemaker Team delegate to Grassy Narrows in the fall of 2011. He lives in Winnipeg, MB, where he teaches literacy and studies radical adult education. He may be contacted at polepole_w@yahoo.ca.

The Trusjoist Timberstrand plant in Kenora, ON

Wiebo’s Final Battle

Tim McSorley — Fri, 16 Mar 2012 14:33:18 +0000

HYTHE, AB—It’s not if, but when. Eco-warrior Wiebo Ludwig is preparing for death. With his weight now under 150 pounds, he predicts he’ll be gone in just weeks, a victim of cancer of the esophagus. Ludwig has battled the disease for the past year.

The Dutch-born patriarch of a Christian clan “living off the land” in Alberta’s Peace River country is in palliative care.

Ludwig, who turned 70 in December, takes pain medication to get through the night. “I’m trying to stay off pain killers as much as possible,” he reveals. To reduce their father’s pain, Charity, Salome and Mamie ‘Junior’ apply medical herbs wrapped in heated cloths to his chest and legs, now noticeably thin.

Ludwig’s sons recently built him a sauna. Their hope is that the wet heat will help him.

In January, surgeons in Grande Prairie placed a stent in Ludwig’s throat so he could swallow. Two weeks ago, Ludwig was rushed to hospital to have the stent lengthened after food became lodged in his throat.

For decades, Ludwig has stood as an outspoken, implacable, media-savvy foe of the oil and gas industry,as evidenced by Toronto filmmaker David York’s 2011 National Film Board documentary, Wiebo’s War.

Instead of battling energy companies, Ludwig plans to spend his final days with his family. “I feel there’s a time when you have to sign off,” he says, “you have to stop at some point.”

Ludwig’s eyes still penetrate, but he sounds exhausted.

Reverend Ludwig says he’s looking forward to ‘crossing over.’ “[Death] doesn’t bother me,” he says. “It is apparent to everyone there is an afterlife, even though we repress that in our anxieties. I am eager for redemption, eager to see what’s there. I just hope I die without too much pain …”

“I’m quite grateful about my life, in many ways a concentrated series of battles. I enjoyed the battles. They were difficult times, but meaningful. I was seldom bored, put it that way.”

Ludwig, described by his many foes as an eco-terrorist, says, “I have been somewhat persistent. I guess that’s been my one quality that’s been admired, not to give in and compromise with the BS … not to complain all day long either but to work at something that is commendable, a solution to some of our problems, hopefully.”

A carpenter and drywaller by trade, last month Ludwig completed his final project: his coffin. The simple wooden casket now rests on two metal stands in one of the modern chalet-type homes, part of a sprawling complex of industrial shops and barns known as Trickle Creek Farm.

His casket will be placed in a concrete crypt, above ground, in woods close by.

The outspoken critic of the oil and gas industry initially joked the government may go after him if he goes underground, then rationalizes why the crypt should be above ground: “in case we have to move again.”

“It’s not normal for people to build their own coffin,” I offered. Ludwig shot back, “What is normal out there, tell me?”

According to family members, their leader’s funeral will be a private affair, not open to the public or reporters. Ludwig says he wants his people to ‘retreat’ for a while after his death and “not engage much with the public.” “Not so much to mourn my dying,” he says, “but to give them some time to work their way through it.”

“I’m glad this is a bit of a process,” he offers. “I can spend time saying goodbye to the family and give them some direction on different issues. Everybody has a chance to face it…rather than ‘boom, he’s gone.’ We’ve had some beautiful conversations about the reality of us having to give up mortality,” he adds.

Ludwig spends a lot of time resting. He’s either in bed, lying on the couch or sitting in a recliner chair near a wood-burning stove. He says he’ll die at his log cabin, not in a hospital.

When he’s up to it, Ludwig and his wife of 43-years, Mamie, walk arm-in-arm on paths in the forest.

Ludwig reflected on his move to northwestern Alberta in the mid-1980s. “Many people thought I was nuts taking a family out here in the boondocks,” he says. “It wasn’t easy, but I sensed it was worth it. The alternatives looked disastrous … tasted them myself as a young man.”

“I found in the gospel a sense of realism,” he says, steering the topic to religion.

“I know people fuss with that, but I found the gospel more realistic than anything else. Today it’s almost frightening to say you’re a Christian because there’s so much bulls–t attached to it, in the public’s mind. Fortunately, I’ve had some very beautiful insights into the Word of God.”

The Trickle Creek Farm, home to nearly 60 people, many of them children and teenagers, is centerpiece of a 324-hectare parcel of land northwest of Hythe.

“I’ve seen men and women here really taking hold of this vision. They’ve come through. Many talks, many plans … they’ve come to see the beauty of withdrawing from all the riff-raff the world wants you to chase. They’ve pursued something quite steadily that has some character; has some sense again when it comes to practical issues, like raising your own food. That is almost critical.”

Son Josh Ludwig estimates they’re nearly 80 percent self-sufficient. With the addition of a windmill and solar panels, residents can now generate their own power. A large computer-controlled boiler creates heat for the houses.

As it turned out, the farm was smack in the middle of a large oil and gas field.

The people of Trickle Creek discovered that more than water trickled through their property. Sour gas leaks were followed by allegations of poisoned water, stillbirths and dead animals. “We didn’t want to be known for being environmentalists,” Ludwig says.

“We didn’t want to piss around with all their games. We wanted a place to live where they wouldn’t be puking on us … just let us be and allow us to live our lives.”

The Ludwigs complained to the authorities about the toxic leaks. After police did nothing, they say, they took matters into their own hands. Wiebo Ludwig ended up eating prison food for a year-and-a-half after an Edmonton judge found him guilty of using explosives to destroy and vandalize oilfield equipment.

“This started with the industry ‘fumigating‘ us,” Ludwig says of the conflict that vaulted him to national media attention. “How can you vilify people who object to that, and holler to authorities who don’t do anything to help them?”

It’s surprising perhaps, but Wiebo Ludwig does not blame his terminal disease on sour gas emissions. “It’s often hard to trace,” he says of his esophageal cancer, “because it’s everywhere — polluting waters, dirt and food. The oil and gas industry certainly caused a lot of trouble — including cancerous troubles — but who’s to know where we got cancer from?”

The public remains angry about the death of 16-year-old Karman Willis, a local shot in June 1999 while a passenger in a pick-up truck tearing around Trickle Creek in the middle of the night. According to police, the bullet that struck the teen ricocheted off the frame of the truck. Officers couldn’t find the shooter or his or her weapon.

People at Trickle Creek say the intruders sped around, doing doughnuts and throwing empty beer cans out the window. They point out that one of the trucks came to within a meter of running down four girls sleeping in a tent. One described it as “sheer terror” as a pick-up roared by them in the dark.

No one was charged with the shooting. Neither was anyone charged with trespassing at night, causing a disturbance or impaired or dangerous driving.

In January 2010, the RCMP swooped down on Trickle Creek, telling reporters that Wiebo Ludwig was responsible for pipeline bombings in the Tom’s Lake, BC area. Ludwig was held for a day but never charged.

Ludwig shared his thoughts about the news media. “I see the media as much the same shape as the public is in,” he offers. “Despite all of their writings and their efforts to tell us the truth, they can’t do it … they’re caught in a net of all kinds of pressures. The media is about making money and they’re scrambling to keep some clout, sacrificing all kinds of principles.”

In what may be his final advice to the oil and gas industry, Ludwig says, “get rid of this stuff and replace it as soon as possible with alternatives, and stop being so stubborn and stupid about it. My advice is, why don’t you just go for it? — do the right thing.”

“You can tell the oil and gas industry,” Ludwig says, “we knew we were right all along,” adding, “but I’ve come to see they also knew that.”

“In the end,” the reverend predicts, “good will win out over evil.”

Who takes over after Wiebo Ludwig is gone? Ludwig reveals that one of his younger sons—he refused to provide a name—has already been chosen to take the reins. “He has a good rapport with the next generation,” Ludwig says. “He has shown wonderful qualities and an excellent commitment.”

On his hope for society, Ludwig doesn’t pull any punches. “I hope it ends very soon,” he says. “I yearn for the age to come … I have for many years. I think society is definitely on a suicidal trip.” “It’s been prophesied,” he says, “the end of times are clearly with us today. Just when it all ends, is another question …”

“It’s gone that wild out there. Our social life is in shambles … family, marital … all these things are just busted up. Individualism has wrecked us terribly, made us lonely and isolated.”

Richard Boonstra, Ludwig’s right-hand man, says he’s inspired by how his old friend is handling death. “We’ve made death such a terrible thing in our society,” he says. “We’re scared to death of it, so to speak,” adding, “death has lost its sting, but that doesn’t mean there’s not a sadness around it.”

The last word goes to the dying eco-activist: “I feel very reconciled,” Ludwig says.

“My life has had some sordid chapters, especially my youthful life. But I feel a peace with the Lord and with man in terms of having dealt with those things in my soul, my spirit.”

“I’m not a person who has had small prayers,” Ludwig concludes. “I’ve asked for major things to change my life and the lives of those I’m with. I’m not disappointed.”

This article was originally published by the Vegreville Observer.

Journalist Byron Christopher, best known for his award-winning investigative journalism with CBC, is one of the only journalist Ludwig would speak to in his final days. Christopher is completing a book on Richard Lee McNair based on personal interviews and letters from the US fugitive who escaped several prisons over a period of years before being captured in Canada.

Wiebo Ludwig and Maime

Wiebo's coffin

Peace Region Boom

Miles — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 09:22:50 +0000

Growth in northern town leaves residents feeling the pinch

WINNIPEG—Home to 12,000 permanent residents, Dawson Creek, BC, is surrounded by productive agricultural land and is known as the place where the Alaska Highway begins. Located 600 kilometres northwest of Edmonton, Dawson Creek has seen many cycles of “boom and bust” since the Second World War. During the war, this town was home to a US Army base that built a highway from Dawson Creek to Delta Junction, Alaska—a distance of 2,700 kilometres through the bush—over the span of only eight months.

But this small town, located in the South Peace region of northern BC, has become a stage for controversy, as natural gas development continues to pump millions of dollars into the local economy, despite concerns that some people feel left behind. Currently, the community is experiencing likely the largest “boom” period in the town’s history.

“The development in our area has helped add stability to our economy,” says Mayor Mike Bernier in an email. Bernier has professional history in the natural gas industry, having moved to Dawson Creek in 1993 to work for Pacific Northern Gas. He has been mayor of Dawson Creek since 2008.

“We have seen many companies choose to move to Dawson Creek to capitalize on the opportunities," he says. "Our developers are building as fast as they can to keep up with the demand.”

But in the town, which has been recognized provincially for its progressive municipal planning, opinions remain divided regarding the pace of development, especially when the economic driver is the controversial practice of hydraulic fracturing, also known as “fracking,” to get at shale gas reserves.

The area was put on high alert in 2008 and 2009 when several EnCana gas wells were bombed in protest. While RCMP conducted a massive investigation, including an intensive search of convicted oil and gas “saboteur” Wiebo Ludwig’s nearby property, so far no charges have been laid in the case. A $1 million reward has been offered.

Ludwig has been an outspoken critic of oil and gas development in the area since the 1990s, when his family, and his livestock, began to experience negative health impacts. Ludwig claimed these impacts—which included rashes, headaches, nausea and still-births—were a result of living in close proximity to a natural gas flare. He was convicted in 2000 of five charges related to industrial sabotage of oil and gas wells in the area surrounding Hythe, Alberta, a 30 minute drive from Dawson Creek. Ludwig served two-thirds of his 28-month sentence before being released in 2001. In 2011, Ludwig was diagnosed with cancer of the esophagus.

“For people living in outlying areas with gas batteries in their backyards and stuff, they don’t like it one bit,” says Andrew Triebel, a local tattoo artist. “But at the same time, these [companies] are paying for our public programs. We just have to face the fact that this world is reliant on fossil fuel and this part of the country is rich in it, but there’s got to be a happy medium between corporate profits and ruining our resources forever.”

Marilyn Belak, a former city councilor from 2002 to 2011, and resident of Dawson Creek since the 1970s, says the city’s “greatest challenge is the ‘hurry-hurry’ traditional character of the oil and gas industry.” During Belak’s time on council, Dawson Creek was recognized as a provincial leader in developing and implementing municipal sustainability policy.

“The general industry ethos is to hurry in,” says Belak. “Everything is hurry up and drill and stockpile and pipe. The Oil and Gas Commission services the industry needs above all and the environment and public interests are not addressed in any meaningful and coordinated way.”

Despite opposition from some residents, natural gas development shows no signs of cooling anytime soon. Recently, PetroChina made a billion-dollar investment in Royal Dutch Shell’s massive Groundbirch shale gas project just north of Dawson Creek, making PetroChina a 20 per cent shareholder in the project. And in a recently released report, BC’s Ministry of Energy and Mines detailed how natural gas production—the bulk of which is produced in northeastern BC—could almost triple over the next decade, going from 1.1 trillion cubic feet annually to three trillion cubic feet by 2020.

“With demand growing quickly, prices in Asia are up to four times [what] they are in North America,” wrote Rich Coleman, Minister of Energy and Mines and Minister Responsible for Housing, in the introduction to the report. “BC is ideally positioned to compete for a share of that lucrative market.”

Even though the demand is growing, particularly from Asian countries, full exploitation of the resource is still dependent on variables that are not yet in place. Three major liquid natural gas (LNG) plants in Kitimat, BC, are in the proposal stage. These plants would prepare natural gas from northeastern BC for transport via tanker to markets in Asia. These LNG plants, and any pipeline network needed to transport gas from the Peace Region to the northwest coast, have yet to pass environmental review.

Committing long-term to Asian markets is dangerous for Canada’s long-term energy security, argues veteran geoscientist David Hughes.

“Canada has had no energy strategy since the demise of the National Energy Program (NEP) in the mid-1980s other than ‘let the markets rule,’” Hughes wrote in a recent paper on the subject. “As a result, short-term corporate needs for profit and growth rule the day, often at the expense of the longer-term energy and environmental needs of Canadians.”

Blair Lekstrom, MLA for the South Peace region and former mayor of Dawson Creek from 1996 to 2001, believes that the pace of development in the Peace region is sustainable over the long term. While Lekstrom has had his ups and downs with the provincial Liberal party—at one point he resigned his cabinet position over opposition to the provincial HST—he is currently the minister for transportation and infrastructure.

“The natural gas industry is extremely important to the northeast part of British Columbia, as well as the entire province,” he told The Dominion via email. “It is the single largest contributor to the economy of BC and creates thousands of jobs for families of our region.”

But not every worker coming to the region is necessarily bringing a family in tow, and a migrant workforce has created problems of its own.

The influx of hundreds of workers has created a surge in demand for the hospitality industry in Dawson Creek, and has subsequently driven the cost of housing for permanent residents skyward. For a standard, three-bedroom, 1000-square-foot, 30-year-old house, Blaine Nicholson, a real estate agent in Dawson Creek since 1978, estimates prices to be between $200,000 and $250,000, prices comparable to urban centres like Edmonton.

“That’s kind of your starter home,” Nicholson says. “If you wanted to get into something nicer you could get into a brand new home, in a new subdivision, three-bedroom, 1200 square feet, full basement, unfinished...they’re starting at $360,000.”

Despite the negative effect of increased housing prices, Bernier and others continue to argue that these developments are good for the town.

“There have been five new hotels built, new apartment buildings, and lots of residential development,” says Bernier. “The past three years have been the best in our city’s history for private investment.”

Nicholson confirms Bernier’s position.

“It’s never been this busy before,” he told The Dominion. “Most of the hotels in town are operating at 95 per cent occupancy right now, and the only reason they’re not 100 per cent is because of turn-over. Oil patch guys are getting their ‘living out’ allowances, so they’re living out of hotels, paying between $100 a night and $175 a night, and they’re staying in for weeks or months at a time.”

According to a recent article in the Vancouver Province, the increased demands on the hospitality industry has led to a shortage of kitchen and cleaning staff for some hotels and restaurants. The same article says hotels have applied to employ temporary foreign workers through the federal government. If their applications are approved, it would allow them to access temporary labour at lower wages than they would have to pay for local labour. The minimum wage in BC is $9.50 per hour.

With production from gas wells expected to continue increasing over the next ten years, many long-term residents are beginning to feel as though they are lost within their home community.

“It used to be you could go out and anyone you saw, you either knew them or you knew their face, had seen them somewhere before,” reflects Jason Reinitz, a lifelong area resident. “Now it’s just becoming faceless...People appreciate the money it’s bringing in and all. But, and I’ve heard this from a lot of people, it’s not the same place anymore.”

Sheldon Birnie is a writer, editor and song & dance man living in Winnipeg.

Dawson Creek

Canadian-owned Mine Fuels Violence in Mexico

stephlaw — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 09:29:17 +0000

Residents of San José del Progreso are deeply divided over the mine

SAN JOSE DEL PROGRESO, MEXICO—It's been almost three years since hundreds of people took direct action to temporarily shut down Vancouver-based Fortuna Silver's gold and silver mine near Oaxaca City, Mexico. Since then, the neighbouring community of San Jose del Progreso has been deeply divided and residents have faced a series of difficult and sometimes deadly confrontations.

Three people have been killed so far, most recently, Bernardo Mendez Vasquez, who was shot seven times on January 18, 2012 by a municipal police officer. Locals say municipal authorities ordered the police to attack residents who were refusing to allow a new water system to be installed on their land because they feared it would be used to supply the mine with water.

Mine operation came to a two-month halt in 2009 when Zapotec community members from San Jose del Progreso and surrounding villages held it for nearly two months. The blockade ended with a massive police raid, during which demonstrators were beaten and 23 people were jailed, some for up to three months.

Fortuna has thus far avoided being linked to the violence by playing up the fact that people in San Jose are fighting with each other. CEO Jorge Ganoza has repeatedly referred to it as “senseless” violence.

"It is in no way related to our activities or involves company personnel, and we really hope that the people of San Jose, with the assistance of the state authorities, will find a long-term solution to this senseless violence,” Ganoza told the National Post regarding the recent killing.

The mine, known locally by the name of its subsidiary, Minera Cuzcatlan, went into production in late September 2011. Its opponents maintain that Fortuna Silver’s mine is the root of social problems that plague the once peaceful region.

In a press conference following the police shooting of Vasquez, mine opponents made it clear that they see a direct link between Fortuna Silver and the violence.

“The social and political conflicts that have ended the lives of three people are due to the appearance of the mining company, without the consent of the people, and not [due] to the control and power over the municipality as expressed by various authorities in the state government,” reads a statement signed by over a dozen Oaxacan organizations.

The existence of the mining project is something that residents of San Jose del Progreso cannot ignore. The main access road into the town passes directly in front of Fortuna’s massive operations, complete with the company's own power station, offices and a huge stockpile of ore, all surrounded by high chain link fence.

“In one year [the company] managed to cut the town in half, to divide the people, and the dispute became present in all spaces: in the primary school, in the secondary school, in the kindergarten, in the health centre, in city hall, in all of these situations,” said Bernardo Vasquez Sanchez, who lives in San Jose and works with the Co-ordinating Committee of the United Villages of the Ocotlan Valley.

In the centre of the village, which is home to about 1,200 people, Sanchez pointed out that there are two different taxi stands, one used by people in favour of the mine, and another by those who are opposed.

City hall has effectively been shut down since January, when municipal authorities and municipal police fled after the murder of Vasquez.

“Basically the entire town is divided in two parts, one part that has a mayor, and another part that does not have a mayor,” said Sanchez, who has worked with other community members to formally requested the dissolution of powers of the municipal government.

Sanchez and others are worried the project might eventually become an open pit mine, further threatening the region’s already fragile water system. Given Fortuna’s track record, there is reason to be worried: Simon Ridgway, chair of Fortuna’s board of directors, was subject to two arrest warrants in Honduras because of environmental contamination from an open pit mine now owned by Goldcorp Inc.

Father Martin Garcia Ortiz, a priest in San Jose del Progreso, was beaten and kidnapped by people in favour of the project in 2010. He was later jailed and then released without charge and subsequently decided to leave the parish.

According to sources in Oaxaca City and San Jose del Progreso, a group started by the mining company, called “San Jose in Defense of our Rights,” has taken on a paramilitary role in the community, intimidating opponents of the project.

“Things are so broken that there’s no other way out, the only way, I think, is that the company leaves,” said Father Ortiz.

Dawn Paley is a journalist and co-founder of the Vancouver Media Co-op.

A longer version of this story was originally published by the Vancouver Media Co-op.

Questions? Comments? Drop us a line: info@mediacoop.ca.

Fortuna Silver's mine

Bernardo Vasquez Sanchez

Stern Warning

Tim McSorley — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 10:55:29 +0000

Nova Scotia environmentalists say government must revise lease of public lands to private corporations

HALIFAX—“In 1961 we leveraged a tremendous amount of Crown Land to get a company to come to Nova Scotia,” says Matt Miller, Forestry Program Coordinator at the Ecology Action Centre (EAC) in Halifax. “The focus was only on jobs and wood supply, and we gave them complete and utter control of 40 per cent of the Crown Land in the province, one in nine acres.”

The company in question, Finland-based Stora Enso, has been gone from Nova Scotia for five years, though, having sold its key asset, the Point Tupper pulp and paper mill near Port Hawkesbury, in Cape Breton, to Ohio-based Newpage in 2007. At the time, Newpage inherited the Crown Land along with the mill purchase. Amidst slumping sales and escalating power bills, the mill went into receivership in 2011.

Enter Vancouver-based Stern Partners. Headed by multimillionaire paper mogul Ron Stern, the company is the buyer of choice for the shuttered mill. Details of the purchase are yet to emerge, but Stern has let it be known that the workforce, which at the time of Newpage's demise stood at about 600, stands to be halved. Stern will enter into negotiations with the province to hammer out the purchase, and one of the key items on the table will be the 1961 Crown Land lease, which actually expired in 2011. Many independent woodlot owners, including Miller (who is also an award-winning independent woodlot owner), would like to see the deal revisited in order to better reflect 2012 conditions.

“We are expecting this government to negotiate a new agreement that doesn't sell the whole farm,” says Miller. “That means that one company doesn't have full control over [the crown land].” It would also mean that the company takes on more responsibilities than simply managing wood supplies and creating jobs, he says. Rather, the company would need to uphold the spirit of the Natural Resources Strategy by managing Crown lands to the highest standards possible, and consulting the public on how the land is managed, argues Miller.

Phase 1 of the Natural Resource Strategy (NRS), in 2009, was the last example of public consultation, and the only one ever undertaken by the Dexter government. Many blame this recoil from a decades-old tradition of government-public interaction on the fact that when the Nova Scotia public spoke up—which they did in the thousands in the case of the NRS—they demanded something the Dexter government didn't want to hear: stewardship and accountability of the province's forests, and public involvement in the process. If there were a time to make amends with the original intent of the NRS, Dexter might seize the day and revisit the land lease that now needs their attention.

“The logic of ever-shrinking workforce, ever-expanding, ever-increasing harvesting [suggests that] the government should tear up that old lease, and develop one that's modern and based on current conditions,” including the public's expectations that Crown Land should be managed to the highest level, says Miller's co-worker, EAC Wilderness Coordinator Ray Plourde. “We should not have to compensate any new owner that's going to scoop up that mill for pennies on the dollar in a bankruptcy fire sale.”

Fire sale aside, the provincial government has committed to earmarking 12 per cent of Nova Scotia land, by 2015, as protected areas, under the provincial Environmental Goals and Sustainable Prosperity Act of 2007. This puts the government in a difficult position: if the lease is not revised, the push to protect 12 per cent of the land could end up in direct conflict with Stern's stake, meaning the government would need to compensate the company for the property it would lose. Miller and Plourde agree that protected areas need to be exempted from the land lease before the deal with Stern is finalized.

As well, with the current state of Nova Scotia's “big three” pulp mills, one being in receivership (Newpage), one being responsible for one of Canada's worst environmental disasters (Northern Pulp and Boat Harbour), and one having just seen workers forced to give up many concessions, while CEOs walked away with 8 million in payoffs and the company given tens of millions in taxpayer bailout money (Bowater), it may well be time to give the smaller players in the forestry business a chance at bidding for Crown Land, according to Miller.

“There's already some existing manufacturing infrastructure in Eastern Nova Scotia. There's a series of value-added hardwood mills,” he says. “They've traditionally been shut out of any allocation of wood from Crown Land. This is a perfect opportunity for them to have access to that wood.”

“Smaller lease arrangements could be made for those local industry players that already exist,” says Plourde. “Hardwood mills that are making things like fine flooring, door and wall moldings, wainscoting, trim, and so on and so forth. They employ more people per unit of wood harvested, and they make a value-added product, so it's economically much better for the province. It would also allow for new enterprises to emerge, because they'd have some wood to access.”

Dexter actions have made it clear that the "big three" won't fail. The future of forestry in Nova Scotia suggests that now is the time to set the conditions for "small successes" that don't involve either extreme environmental degradation or a steady, continuous, flow of taxpayer bailouts.

Miles Howe is an editor with the Media Co-op and a member of the Halifax Media Co-op. This article was originally published by the HMC.

NS Jack Pine

African Activists Blast Unconventional Extraction

Tim McSorley — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 11:28:32 +0000

Tar sands highlighted in lead up to UN climate summit in South Africa

DURBAN, SOUTH AFRICA—In Durban this week, you're blinded by green. From billboards to uniforms, it's impossible to miss that this South African city is hosting the 17th Conference of the Parties (COP17) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

One would think you could not get any further from the northern hinterlands of the Alberta's Athabasca watershed. But in a city filled with palm trees and tens of thousands of delegates engaging in another round of high-level climate negotiations, environmental and community organizers from across Africa, the Middle East and North America came together over northern Alberta's tar sands and similar projects around the world.

“There's a lot of development right now globally around tar sands, oil shale, and other extraction projects,” said Oliver Meth, a Durban environmental activist and one of the organizers of Everyone's Downstream 5 (EDS).

Held for the past four years in Edmonton, Alberta, the annual conference was established to explicitly focus on the Alberta tar sands, both its impact on downstream communities directly affected by the project and its broader ramifications. It has gradually grown, and this year made the leap to a new location in order to build broader links with international communities, especially many African communities which are now seeing tar sands and other unconventional extraction projects beginning in their regions.

Presenters from areas including Congo-Brazzaville, Madgascar, Israel, Uganda and South Africa were all present to share the struggles they are facing against growing threats to human health and the environment, including wildlife, plant life and potable water.

While the diversity of participants pointed to the degree to which people are growing concerned, tar sands and unconventional oil extraction, and the specific issues they present, are relatively new to Africa and to environmental activists across the country. “We need to build more awareness about these projects,” Meth said. “Not everybody talks to each other.”

Clearly there are major differences from community to community, but many people echoed concerns heard in Canada for nearly a decade, as the Alberta tar sands has grown and its environmental impact has become more clear.

“If the extraction of 40 tons of conventional oil has not led us to economic development, it's clear that tar sands, which have led to negative impacts in Canada, and which are our best and only example we can look to, won't do so either,” said Christian Mounzeo, president of Engagement for Peace and Human Rights from Brazzaville, Republic of the Congo.

Since 2008, Italian corporation ENI has been developing a massive energy production undertaking, including palm oil plantations, natural gas and a major tar sands extraction project. Two months ago, the company announced it would be proceeding from the exploratory to extraction phase. But even though not a drop of tar sands crude has been extracted yet, there are already growing concerns, Mounzeo said.

The company has not been forthright on how an environmental impact assessment will be carried out, he said, and communities haven't been provided even the most basic information about the project itself or been involved in public consultations.

“There is a problem of access to information and public participation,” he said.

Such concerns are similar to the concerns expressed by many Indigenous communities in Canada, who have long called for the right to free, prior and informed consent before such major extraction projects take place on their lands, regardless of whether the project focuses on tar sands, conventional oil or mining.

Other activists from across Africa echoed similar concerns. They also discussed questions around government corruption, political instability and how to make trans-national companies—which often benefit from low tax rates, government corruption and the ability to work through a revolving door of subsidiaries—accountable for their actions.

In Uganda, environmental activists have been trying since 2000 to hold oil extraction companies accountable for environmental devastation, human rights abuses and tax evasion along the shores of Lake Albert. It is part of the water system that feeds from Lake Victoria in central Africa into the southern head of the Nile, featuring one of the most environmentally diverse ecosystems in the world.

Bwengue Rajab Yusuf of Nape-Oil Watch Uganda spoke about how a constantly changing corporate presence—from the Toronto Stock Exchange-listed Heritage Oil to Tullow Oil (South Africa) to Total (France) to, most recently, Chinese oil firms—has made it nearly impossible to seek financial compensation for the destruction of agricultural land and wildlife conservation zones. “Who do you pursue?” he asked, pointing out that it becomes even more difficult when confronted with corrupt government officials who refuse to uphold environmental assessment laws or to enforce the protection of wildlife sanctuaries.

As Mouzeno explained it, residents of the Congo and across Africa are up against the “link between oil exploration, conflict, debt, corruption and under-development.”

But if the challenges are shared, so is the willingness to build new, community-based means of resistance. In Uganda, it has taken the form of Sustainability Schools, where they are focusing on building “community resilience” by offering action training and providing research and investigative skills, said Yusuf.

Two members of the Ogoni Solidarity Forum in the Niger Delta spoke of the longstanding community mobilizations against oil development on their land, highlighting the fact that November marks the anniversary of the hanging of Ken Saro-Wiwa. Wiwa was a renowned environmental and human rights activist put to death by the Nigerian government in 1995 for his outspoken stances and non-violent campaigns, particularly against Shell.

Sorbarikor Demua told of how Ogoni women often bear the brunt of the oil development of their area, since they harvest the land that is often the most devastated by oil spills and chemical contamination. They also face extreme repercussions at the hands of military and para-military forces sent to punish protesting communities and who use sexual assault and rape as punishment for their activism.

Recently, women protested the impacts of oil development and the lack of resources for the Ogoni people by going naked. As Demual's colleague Celestine Akpobari stated, it is actions by women such as this that show the desperation and the extent to which they must go to ensure compensation for the destruction of their land.

Taking place for two days and involving 200 delegates just before a major international conference, Meth believes that EDS is necessary as part of the counterbalance to the bureaucratic, government-focused negotiation happening at the opulent Durban International Conference Centre.

A conference like EDS, he said, “gives us a chance to speak in peoples' own language and terms, in a way they understand best.” The government delegates and representatives of major international non-governmental organizations on the inside at COP17 are often far removed from the realities on the ground, he said, meaning different venues are needed to make concrete, on-the-ground change.

“We shouldn't be concerned or be bothered about COP17, but [we need to] challenge it for excluding communities that are being most affected,” he said, citing the example that there are representatives of the major South African utilities company ESKOM at the table, but that Indigenous communities are not officially represented.

And while some may question the impact of smaller events like EDS over the next week, many major delegations have already stated that they do not foresee any agreement to follow up on the Kyoto Protocol until 2020. If the major delegations are so effective, then, as Meth asks, “They have met so many times; why are we not making more headway?”

Tim McSorley is an editor with the Media Co-op. He is part of a six-person media delegation covering COP17 and parallel community-led conferences. You can find more of the Media Co-op's COP17 coverage at http://mediacoop.ca/durban.

Christian Mounzeo

Celestine AkpoBari and Sorbarikor Demual

Environment Canada Terminates Funding to Environmental Networks

hillarybain — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 09:05:21 +0000

Biggest loser is government, say environmentalists

HALIFAX—Grassroots environmental groups and organizers were hit hard by the federal government's announcement on October 13 that the half-million dollars that funds Canada's environmental networks will be terminated. For people like Katherine Gagne of Gays River, NS, this means the opportunities she has had to engage with the province of Nova Scotia about the lead and zinc mine in her village have disappeared. But speaking at a press conference in Halifax on October 19, Gagne argued that the biggest loser in this deal is government.

"For this tiny amount of money, Environment Canada is shooting itself in the foot," she said, explaining that paid bureaucrats are obligated to use taxpayers' resources to respond to all citizens' correspondence and concerns. "NSEN [Nova Scotia Environmental Network] has shown us how to approach government and community in an intelligent way."

Gagne said that with support from NSEN, she and her neighbours formed the Gay's River Valley Environmental Protection Association, and have been working to ensure a nearby lead and zinc mine operates strictly within regulations of the Departments of Natural Resources and the Environment.

"A lot of people like me want to get involved, but we need some kind of structure to help form the relationships," she said.

The (Reseau) Canadian Environmental Network (RCEN) was established in 1977 to promote and streamline environmental work being done by grassroots organizations and to provide Canadians working on the ground a platform for engagement with Environment Canada and their provincial departments.

In fact, RCEN plays a critical role in democratic policy-building in Canada, functioning as the formal mechanism for federally-legislated consultations on environmental policy and projects; "meaningful public participation" is called for in the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act.

"Small and often volunteer organizations take part in these consultations," said Jennifer McGowan from the Ecology Action Centre, another NSEN member group. Through the RCEN, "the environmental community decides who best speaks to a particular consultation topic, through a transparent application process," she said. In this way, community-sourced, scientific, Indigenous and traditional knowledge is filtered to provincial and federal policy.

"RCEN is not a special interest lobby group," said McGowan, who added, tongue-in-cheek, "This announcement only affects Canadians who breathe air and drink water and eat food."

"'Austerity measures' is code for 'spending priorities,'" said Angela Giles of the Council of Canadians, pointing out that these priorities were playing out the very day of the NSEN-organized press conference. While the panel addressed the Harper government's $547,000 cutback to grassroots environmental work across the country, Nova Scotia Premier Darrell Dexter was at the Halifax shipyards to congratulate Irving Shipbuilding on its $25 billion federal contract win. Media attention was painfully absent at RCEN's press conference (this volunteer reporter was the sole media person present). And the announcement that cut nearly $20,000 from Nova Scotia's environmental communities alone also came the day after Dexter announced a $10 million provincial investment in aerospace and defence jobs in Nova Scotia.

The nation-wide cuts amount to $547,000—the entire core budget for RCEN's Ottawa office, the 10 provincial networks and the Yukon network. Nova Scotia's allotment—based on population—would have been $18,000.

In an October 13 letter to RCEN, Environment Canada's Nancy Roberts wrote that the decision to cut the network's funding "reflects a broader shift away from providing core organizational funding...as part of Environment Canada's ongoing efforts to allocate its resources in the most efficient and cost-effective manner possible."

The panelists at the press conference on October 19 weren't buying that.

"The knowledge, resources and expertise amassed by 647 environmental groups over 34 years is priceless—you can't buy it," said NSEN Advisor Sheila Cole. "This is the best possible value Environment Canada could ever find."

RCEN member groups represent some 630,000 active individuals. Ninety-eight per cent of the work done in the networks is voluntary.

According to a study last year by Phoenix Youth Progams, investing in non-profit organizations is an extremely efficient use of public dollars because the calibre of workers is so high—three-quarters of people employed by non-profits in Nova Scotia hold at least one university degree. The study found that non-profits provide services at a cheaper rate than government or industry.

Janelle Frail, director of Nova Scotia's network, may not have her job come January, when NSEN's bank account runs dry. However, she agrees that the environment sector cuts leave the government itself the most serious casualty.

"Our annual meeting with the province is hugely beneficial to them: instead of having to organize 60 meetings, they have one," she said. NSEN, which celebrated its 20th anniversary this year, works with 62 grassroots environmental groups in Nova Scotia.

"We were very disappointed to hear of Environment Canada's decision to no longer fund this important work," wrote Nova Scotia Environment Minister Sterling Belliveau in an email. "I have written a letter to [federal Environment] Minister [Peter] Kent, asking him to reconsider this decision."

Halifax city councillors Peter Lund and Jennifer Watts announced they had just passed a resolution at City Hall to send a letter on behalf of Halifax Regional Municipality to Environment Canada, asking the department to reverse the cuts. "We hope the FCM [Federation of Canadian Municipalities] will get involved in this," said Lund.

In an interview after the conference, Frail explained how the networks have been stretched thin over time.

"Prior to 2006, RCEN received about $1 million. A half-million was to fund consultations, the other half was to run the networks. The consultations are still happening, but they're piecemeal: networks have to apply for grants as they come along," she said, explaining that this puts further strain on staff and volunteers to seek out and apply for monies that used to be provided in one chunk.

"For 30 years, the federal Minister of the Environment came to our AGMs...and there was lots of time to engage with our members," said Cole. "Only since the current majority Conservative government does the minister not come to our meetings, or even answer our calls."

"In any other sector, if that minister did not speak to their constituents... Can you imagine if the Department of Fisheries and Oceans didn't speak to fishermen's associations, or if the Department of Agriculture refused to return farmers' phone calls?" said McGowan. "It's mindblowing."

"Year after year we have sat at the table with industry," said Cole, describing RCEN's internationally-reknowned Multi-Stakeholder Decision-Making process, whereby government, academics, scientists and environmentalists cultivated relationships with Nova Scotia's paintings & coatings industry.

"There are very good people in the industry, and they were seeing the opportunities in manufacturing environmentally friendly products," said Cole, explaining NSEN's work in volatile and organic compounds which helped "put good paints on the shelves in Nova Scotia.

"Canada was at a point internationally to take the lead in green industry—without the greenwashing. Now, Canada has a horrific reputation," she said, citing Canada's international campaigns to rebrand oil from the tar sands "Ethical Oil."

"Nature Nova Scotia wishes to express shock and regret over the recent announcement," wrote Bob Bancroft, celebrated Nova Scotian biologist, in a letter of support to NSEN. "This is a broken promise, Mr. Kent."

The promise was a letter of intent, sent by Environment Canada to RCEN in August, which stated that RCEN's funding was coming. The funds, promised in August, and which never came, was to run the networks—including paying staff—for the 2011 fiscal year. RCEN announced on October 13 that its staff would be laid off as of the following day.

"Networks have been paying staff from their bank accounts for the past six months, assuming they'd be back-paid," said Frail, who also said Environment Canada's practice of delaying funding to RCEN was nothing new. "I once worked for four months without getting paid." She said that, over the year as federal funding continued to be delayed, she cut her hours from 30 per week to 20 to 10.

Now, she is unsure what will happen to NSEN, or to her work within the network.

"Everything is on pause—what should I continue to do? Should our rep continue to be part of the Nova Scotia Water Advisory Group? Will I continue to sit on the Minister's Roundtable on Environment and Sustainable Prosperity?" she said. "And remember, this is being repeated 11 times over—in 10 provinces and one territory."

Newfoundland & Labrador, New Brunswick and Manitoba are the only three networks that have confirmed they have enough cash to stay active until March 2012.

Cutting out Canada's environmental networks evokes a grim image of a "disjointed, disengaged and alienated" environmental community, according to Gina Patterson of Clean Nova Scotia.

"They're saying there's a shift to web-based consultations. Does this mean that corporations and politicians will also be shifted to web-based consultations?" said McGowan. "Or will they still be at the table while small environmental organizations are plugging away at their computers?"

Frail agrees. "For me, the worst part is that the government is going to cherry-pick who can sit at the decision-making table, instead of us deciding who sits at the table."

Moira Peters lives and bikes in Halifax.

This article was originally published by the Halifax Media Co-op

NSEN Youth

Legal Toolkit