Legacy - October 2015

Legacy

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eMagazine of Wild Game Fish Conservation International

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Cover: Lifelong outdoorsman, Bill Bizak (Muzzleloaders Supply), teaches granddaughter, Mikaylah, effective fishing techniques before the big run arrives.

Photo credit: Becky Bizak Kelemen

Legacy – October 2015 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2015 – Removing Ocean-based Salmon Feedlots

Legacy Wild Game Fish Conservation International Wild Game Fish Conservation International (WGFCI): Established in 2011 to advocate for wild game fish, their fragile ecosystems and the cultures and economies that rely on their robust populations.

LEGACY – Journal of Wild Game Fish Conservation: Complimentary, nononsense, monthly publication by conservationists for conservationists LEGACY, the WGFCI Facebook page and the WGFCI website are utilized to better equip fellow conservationists, elected officials, business owners and others regarding wild game fish, their contributions to society and the varied and complex issues impacting them and those who rely on their sustainability.

LEGACY exposes impacts to wild game fish while featuring wild game fish conservation projects, fishing adventures, wildlife art, accommodations, equipment and more. Your photos and articles featuring wild game fish from around planet earth are welcome for possible inclusion in an upcoming issue of LEGACY. E-mail them with captions and credits to Jim (wilcoxj@katewwdb.com).

Successful wild game fish conservation efforts around planet earth will ensure existence of these precious natural resources and their ecosystems for future generations to enjoy and appreciate. This is our LEGACY.

Wild Game Fish Conservation International Founders

Bruce Treichler

Jim Wilcox

Legacy – October 2015 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2015 – Removing Ocean-based Salmon Feedlots

Contents Breaking News ____________________________________________________________________________________ 6  A victory for wild Pacific salmon and all that rely on them ________________________________________________ 6

Opinion ___________________________________________________________________________________________ 7  The Closing of the Canadian Mind ______________________________________________________________________ 7  Boycott open-pen fish farming products ________________________________________________________________ 7  It's Time for Action on Canada's Muzzled Scientists _____________________________________________________ 9

Community Activism, Education and Outreach ______________________________________________________ 14  Stopping Farmed Salmon at the Cash Register _________________________________________________________ 14  Preliminary examination of contaminant loadings in farmed salmon, wild salmon and commercial salmon feed _________________________________________________________________________________________  Frank Jr. to be inducted into Wild Salmon Hall of Fame _________________________________________________  Farmed Salmon – No Thanks! _________________________________________________________________________  The beginning of the end for this BROWN industry _____________________________________________________  WDFW invites public to help identify conservation and recreation priorities ______________________________  MANAGEMENT AND STATUS OF OUR FISHERIES RESOURCES _________________________________________

14 15 17 18 20 22

Apathy is expensive_______________________________________________________________________________ 23  Analysis suggests Harper government ‘all but abandoned’ protection of fish habitat ______________________ 23

Climate Change _____________________________________________________________________________________ 25  River temperatures down in B.C., but so are projected sockeye returns: DFO _____________________________ 26

Habitat Restoration _______________________________________________________________________________ 28  LEVEE BREACH IMPROVES FISH ACCESS TO ENTIRE SNOHOMISH WATERSHED _______________________ 28

Harvest __________________________________________________________________________________________ 30    

Feds issue overfishing notice for 4 northwest salmon stocks ____________________________________________ Determination of Overfishing or an Overfished Condition _______________________________________________ Ocean fish numbers on 'brink of collapse,' WWF reports ________________________________________________ Fishery laws failing to protect endangered species, say scientists _______________________________________

30 31 32 35

Seafood consumption: Public health and environmental risks________________________________________ 38  Warning: Eating Farmed Salmon May Affect Your Baby _________________________________________________ 38  The most toxic protein on earth..... DO NOT EAT ! (Leanne Hodges) ______________________________________ 39  Consumer groups urge Costco to publicly reject GMO salmon __________________________________________ 40

Salmon and trout feedlots _________________________________________________________________________ 41  Ottawa ignoring Cohen report on salmon, say conservation groups______________________________________ 44  The Beginning Of The End Of Salmon Farming In BC ___________________________________________________ 47  First Nations blockade Clayoquot Sound salmon farm __________________________________________________ 52  Sea Shepherd Canada issues statement of support for Ahousaht salmon farm blockade near Tofino British Columbia _____________________________________________________________________________________ 53  Big Agriculture Becomes Big Aquaculture _____________________________________________________________ 55  Dumped salmon points at perverted industry ___________________________________________________________ 58  Petition: Supporters for Blocking Yaakswiis Salmon Farm in Ahousaht Territory __________________________ 60  Petition Update: Cermaq in Hiding _____________________________________________________________________ 61  Group threatens to sue over farmed salmon in Puget Sound ____________________________________________ 62  Virus forces Peninsula company to destroy salmon stock _______________________________________________ 64  Stephen Harper makes wild salmon a BC election issue _________________________________________________ 67

Legacy – October 2015 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2015 – Removing Ocean-based Salmon Feedlots Energy Generation: Oil, Coal, Geothermal, Hydropower, Natural Gas, Solar, Tidal, Wind _______________ 69 Petroleum – Drilled, Refined, Tar Sands, Fracked _________________________________________________________ 70  Petropolis - Rape and pillage of Canada and Canadians for toxic bitumen ________________________________ 70  Petition: Join the Roar ________________________________________________________________________________ 72  Kinder Morgan Should Pay to Clean up its Oil Spills ____________________________________________________ 73  Hoquiam finalizes crude oil ban _______________________________________________________________________ 74  Researchers may have found link between Exxon Valdez spill and decline in fish _________________________ 77  WARNING: Oil money is extremely addictive ___________________________________________________________ 79  BREAKING: Burnaby formally asks NEB to cancel Kinder Morgan hearing _______________________________ 80  More than oil: Texas firm pitches propane export at Port of Longview ____________________________________ 85  US Senator Maria Cantwell: Prohibition against the export of domestic crude oil __________________________ 88  Draft environmental reports released for crude-by-rail projects in Grays Harbor __________________________ 89  We will not earn Greenest City title if we are West Coast’s major tar sands-oil port ________________________ 91 Coal ___________________________________________________________________________________________________  Save the Chuitna _____________________________________________________________________________________  The oil boom in one slick infographic __________________________________________________________________ Hydropower / Water Retention ___________________________________________________________________________

95 95 95 96

 Site of the former upper dam on the Elwha is now jammin' with salmon! _________________________________ 96  California Dam Lets Water Shared by Farms Flow to Salmon ____________________________________________ 97  'Clean' hydroelectric power poses northern methylmercury threat: study _________________________________ 99  Petition: Stop work on Site C until BC Utilities Commission reviews the Dam project _____________________ 101 Natural Gas ___________________________________________________________________________________________ 102  TransCanada's Pipeline Plans & Petronas' Terminal Plans _____________________________________________ 102  Shocking, disgusting, B.C. critics say of Petronas audit ________________________________________________ 108  Report shows juvenile salmon from more than 40 populations utilize Flora Bank ________________________ 110  Drilling at proposed LNG terminal starts despite First Nation opposition ________________________________ 112  B.C. EAO gives thumbs up as work progresses on Kitimat LNG project _________________________________ 114  Pipeline Rupture Report Raises Questions About TransCanada Inspections _____________________________ 117  Steelhead LNG announces pre-construction agreement for natural gas pipeline from Washington State to Vancouver Island _______________________________________________________________________________________________ 120 Solar _________________________________________________________________________________________________ 122  A solar revolution in the tar sands. ___________________________________________________________________ 122  How Technology Is Fueling The Push Toward Solar ___________________________________________________ 123  A bright future for roadside solar farms _______________________________________________________________ 126

Mining – Precious Metals _________________________________________________________________________ 131    

Status: Application for a permit amendment on behalf of Mount Polley Mining Corporation _______________ Obama's fish tale: salmon spawning on his shoes _____________________________________________________ Battle Over Alaska's Bristol Bay Pits Salmon Against Gold _____________________________________________ Will Canada's new mines hurt Alaska's salmon? _______________________________________________________

131 132 134 139

 EPA blocks release of Colorado mine spill documents to hide truth of toxic lead, arsenic poisoning Navajo waters_______________________________________________________________________________________ 142

Legacy – October 2015 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2015 – Removing Ocean-based Salmon Feedlots

Forward The October 2015 issue of “Legacy” marks forty eight consecutive months of our complimentary eMagazine; the no-holds-barred, watchdog journal published by Wild Game Fish Conservation International.

As recreational fishermen, conservation of wild game fish is our passion. Publishing “Legacy” each month is our self imposed responsibility to help ensure the future of these precious gifts that have been entrusted for safekeeping to our generation.

Please read then share “Legacy” with others who care deeply about the future of wild game fish and all that rely on them.

Sincerely,

Bruce Treichler James E. Wilcox Wild Game Fish Conservation International

Happy Birthday Wild Game Fish Conservation International

4

Legacy – October 2015 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2015 – Removing Ocean-based Salmon Feedlots

Breaking News

 A victory for wild Pacific salmon and all that rely on them The beginning of the end for this “BROWN” industry September 18, 2015

Lennie John: Historic salmon feedlot removal announcement

Alexandra Morton: Waiting for the big day

Alexandra Morton: The Ahousaht WON!!!! The new site granted to CERMAQ by the Province of British Columbia has to be removed.

"This is a victory. This is what I was fighting for. I wanted to protect the Atleo River and the salmon for our future generations. There are many other battles to be fought, but I am satisfied with the outcome. We are just waiting to witness the removal of the floats and anchors as this is now a protected site." Lennie John

Legacy – October 2015 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2015 – Removing Ocean-based Salmon Feedlots

Opinion

 The Closing of the Canadian Mind A recent editorial titled “The closing of the Canadian Mind”, was published in the New York Times. In it, the author, Stephen Marche, who lives in Toronto, is sharply critical of the current Prime Minister, Stephen Harper. Here is the link to the article; http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/16/opinion/sunday/the-closing-of-the-canadian-mind.html Usually, we do not comment on political affairs, even in our own state, in the Legacy. In this instance, we have made an exception. This editorial captures some our concerns about the actions of the Canadian government. Our concerns relate to a specific issue, namely, that government scientists are not allowed to discuss their research findings, comment on climate change, and are at risk of being unable to continue their work because of lack of funds.

We want to make a couple of things clear. We both enjoy visiting Canada and have found its citizens friendly as well as helpful. We are not happy to find ourselves criticizing the Canadian government or its leader. However, the issues that bedevil Canada also impact us where we live, hence this comment.

 Boycott open-pen fish farming products September 14, 2015

Legacy – October 2015 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2015 – Removing Ocean-based Salmon Feedlots The open-pen fish-farming industry and governments are likely quite pleased that attention to this crisis has died down a bit. It’s time that it was brought back to the forefront. Here are some unanswered issues: 

What is being done about the Doelle-Lahey report? Two lawyers pocketed a significant amount of taxpayers’ dollars to relay what every coastal resident already knew about the disastrous pollution, disease and poisons of ocean-based fish farms, seemingly to have their findings shelved by the Liberals. Doelle-Lahey insisted that all of the recommendations must be adopted to make the industry environmentally sustainable.



If there is any credibility to the report, then no additional licences should be granted for open-pen fish farms. Therefore, Cooke Aquaculture should not be building a processing plant in the Shelburne area and must return the portion of the $25 million the NDP government “gave” to it in 2012. Earlier this year, I wrote the government and was told that this file has been turned over to the Department of Business, and that if Cooke didn’t “live up to their commitments,” the money would be repayable. OK, then recoup those dollars. That money could be helpful to defray healthcare and/or education costs.



Dozens of coastal residents from the South Shore, the Eastern Shore and the Digby area and other concerned citizens have been sending letters and videos as evidence of the pollution, destruction of cages and strange and questionable practices in the fish-farming industry. The overwhelming number of problems that are brought to the attention of those responsible (including MLAs) are conveniently ignored.



How about the deplorable influence of the federal government? The tolerance for the use of a pesticide that is lethal to lobsters is criminal. Why? Because the owner of the company in Maine that sold the pesticide (a chemical that is illegal in Canada) to Cooke Aquaculture was given a jail term. Ottawa has doled out $120 million-plus to compensate industry operators for fish that died of infectious salmon anemia or “superchill.” In the previous two years, a company in this industry has received almost $45 million in compensation. Ottawa pays them to grow fish in a crowded environment and in shallow waters where they die of the cold. It saves them from shipping and marketing.

The Harper government shows total disdain for the environment, giving the industry freedom to pollute and poison while ensuring toobig profits.

The decline and eventual extinction of wild Atlantic salmon and the risk to lobster and other fisheries are significant offshoots of this industry. Blind eyes, closed minds and deaf ears are rampant in provincial governments, and 3D politics of “divert, delay and deceive” is a common strategy. Ottawa only makes things worse.

Consumers are urged to boycott the products of open-pen fish farms. If the governments won’t act, the only recourse to get this poisonous business to go belly-up like a dead salmon is to hit it in the marketplace.

Legacy – October 2015 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2015 – Removing Ocean-based Salmon Feedlots

In July 2012, thousands of Canadians marched on Parliament Hill to protest 'the death of evidence' in Canada

 It's Time for Action on Canada's Muzzled Scientists While we wait on info commissioner's probe, a reminder of the story so far.

September 15, 2015 What has become of the federal Information Commissioner's investigation into Canada's muzzled federal scientists?

There's evidence that scientists are being silenced, and that the government has been misleading the public and Parliament about it. The damage to the public interest is extensive and ongoing.

Yet in almost two and a half years since the investigation was launched, information commissioner Suzanne Legault hasn't provided any information about its progress. Maybe the creeping investigation is due to the commission's funding crisis, but no one is saying.

Legacy – October 2015 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2015 – Removing Ocean-based Salmon Feedlots When I contacted the Office of the Information Commissioner in April, I got no answers. "The investigation is ongoing," the office said. "We cannot comment further given the strict confidentiality rules governing our investigations." The commission does not "speculate on a completion date for any of our investigations," it said.

That's not good enough. The stalled investigation has allowed the government to continue to muzzle federal scientists. Information that should be shaping our public policy debates is being kept from citizens.

Who are the muzzled?

The commissioner's investigation was launched in March 2013 following a joint complaint from the University of Victoria's Environmental Law Centre and Democracy Watch. It alleged "systematic efforts by the Government of Canada to obstruct the right of the media and through them, the Canadian public to timely access to government scientists."

The complainants submitted an exhaustive 128-page report documenting the silencing of scientists and highlighting three cases. 

Environment Canada ozone scientist David Tarasick was prevented from speaking to the media about the discovery of the very first Arctic ozone hole, as published in the prestigious journal Nature. After intense public pressure, the federal government relented.



Fisheries and Oceans scientist Kristi Miller was not permitted to talk to the media about her research implicating a virus in the death of sockeye salmon on B.C.'s coast. Miller's findings were published in the leading scientific journal Science.



Natural Resources scientist Scott Dallimore was prevented from talking to the media about a colossal flood that swept across northern Canada 13,000 years ago and reported in Nature.

By the time permission arrived, media deadlines (and interest) had passed.

There are other examples.

Environment Canada scientist Mark Tushingham was stopped from talking about his novel that dealt with climate change. Environmental scientist Philippe Thomas was prevented from discussing toxins in fur-bearing animals in the oilsands. Ice scientist Leah Braithwaite was denied the opportunity to speak about the deteriorating Arctic ice cap, and National Research Council scientists were not allowed to discuss a snow study they conducted with NASA. Imagine, Canadian government scientists not allowed to discuss ice and snow!

Two other cases are even more absurd: The federal government tried to extend its muzzle to U.S.based scientists, and algae scientist Max Bothwell was prevented from talking to the media about "rock snot," an unwelcome river algae.

The Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada surveyed government scientists and found 90 per cent reported they are not allowed to speak freely with the media. In one case, the government sent "minders" with scientists to a conference in order to "monitor and record" what they were saying.

Legacy – October 2015 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2015 – Removing Ocean-based Salmon Feedlots "This is the type of thing I used to see when, back in the 1980s, I reported from the Soviet Union," political commentator and journalist Lawrence Martin noted.

'Byzantine' series of approvals The muzzling of scientists apparently began in earnest in early 2008 when Environment Canada ordered its scientists to redirect media requests to Ottawa. Their goal was to manage the message and eliminate "surprises" for the environment minister. Other departments followed suit.

Here's how the muzzle works. When a reporter emails or calls a government scientist with a question, it has to be forwarded to department communications staff. From there, a "Byzantine" series of approvals must be sought before the scientist is allowed to respond. In the case of the study of the deteriorating polar ice cap, the request had to go through nine levels of approval.

If, somehow, government decides to let the scientist speak, "media lines" are developed by communications staff. The scientist is expected to stick to the script. Finalizing the talking points can take days or weeks and involve a small army of operatives. The request for answers about "rock snot" resulted in 110 pages of emails among 16 different communications staffers. It's an astonishing waste of taxpayers' money.

The policy effectively prevents the public from hearing from government scientists. Media timelines are short. Because the approval process is so involved, reporters abandon their interview requests.

Some departments have gone further. The Department of Fisheries and Oceans, for example, authorizes managers to block scientists from publishing in peer-reviewed scientific journals.

Government librarians have to get permission to speak at a conference or school, even on their own time.

How widespread is muzzling? Evidence for Democracy, a non-partisan, not-for-profit organization (I sit on its advisory board), graded 16 Canadian federal government departments on their communication and media policies. It found that "overwhelmingly, current media policies do not effectively support open communication between federal scientists and the media" and "government media policies do not protect against political interference in science communication."

Info requests show government's decisions Journalists have used access to information requests to shed light on how scientists are muzzled, and who is behind the decisions.

Fish scientist Kristi Miller was muzzled by the Privy Council Office, which supports the Prime Minister's Office and cabinet. Ministerial Services cancelled the polar ice briefing. Toxics expert Philippe Thomas was stifled by the environment minister's office, as was ozone scientist David Tarasick.

Opposition MPs repeatedly grilled the environment minister about Tarasick's muzzling during Question Period after the story broke in Oct. 2, 2011. On Oct. 3, Peter Kent, then the minister, said "let me say again that we are not muzzling scientists." The next day, he stated categorically, "We do not muzzle our scientists." Two days later, he admonished MPs that "one should not believe everything one reads or hears in the media," and then added Tarasick would be interviewed "depending on his availability." Six months later, the minister suggested that the "circumstances simply did not work out."

Legacy – October 2015 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2015 – Removing Ocean-based Salmon Feedlots But documents show that Tarasick was available and interested in doing the interview. Kent's office silenced Tarasick, but he repeatedly told Parliament the opposite. Nobody was publicly held to account for misinforming Parliament, an oversight for which the opposition is partly responsible.

The government continues to claim it is not muzzling scientists despite clear evidence that it is.

Message control Almost all the muzzled scientists were studying the environment at a time when oil and pipelines were emerging as the government's priority. Research was increasingly showing that development of the oil sands and fossil fuel use was environmentally unsustainable. Toxins from the oil sands were found to be accumulating, and the threat of climate change was provoking calls to action.

The government's program of total message control let it advance its priorities while suppressing information that raised troubling questions.

The new communications policies appear to have worked. An internal Environment Canada document revealed that in 2008 "media coverage of climate change science, our most high-profile issue, has been reduced by over 80 per cent." The media silence presaged Canada's withdrawal from the Kyoto Protocol, a global agreement for the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.

Muzzling added to the public's confusion on climate change. Several MPs and senators have questioned the scientific legitimacy of climate change. In normal times trusted government scientists could have been interviewed to correct their misconceptions.

Cutting scientists out of the media cycle was useful to the government. The silence of scientists was crucial to message control as the government rolled out draconian cuts and legislative changes beginning with the 2011 budget. Environment Canada was severely wounded, its budget ultimately reduced by half. More than $100 million was cut from Fisheries and Oceans Canada, responsible for protecting Canadian waters. Cuts to Libraries and Archives Canada led to the dumpstering of scientific collections -- a modern-day book burning which continues to this day.

The government has still not disclosed what programs were cut; the Parliamentary Budget Officer famously sued (and failed) to obtain this information. Because government scientists were not allowed to speak, news of impact on programs important for Canadian's health and safety trickled out from other sources.

We still have only a partial understanding of what has been lost, but a few examples stand out.

Environment Canada's ozone research group -- inventors of the UV index now used around the world -- was dissolved despite having just observed the first ever Arctic ozone hole. The Experimental Lakes Area, a unique facility established in 1968 to protect Canada's freshwater resources, was shuttered.

Environmental protection legislation was subsequently gutted using omnibus legislation, and documents showed that some changes were suggested to the government by the oil industry.

Legacy – October 2015 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2015 – Removing Ocean-based Salmon Feedlots Fish habitat protections were eliminated from the Fisheries Act, provoking four former ministers to express their "serious concern." Protections for most rivers and lakes were removed from the Navigable Waters Protection Act. The Environmental Assessment Act was repealed and replaced with much more limited legislation.

The muzzling of scientists contributed to a broader loss of voices. In what might be called a war on dissent, savage cuts were made to non-governmental organizations and the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy was eliminated for providing unwelcome advice. Tax audits targeted environmental charities. At the same time, the two reporters who did the most to expose the government's cuts and muzzling program -- Margaret Munro and Mike de Souza -- were laid off.

Science and democracy And here we come to the crux of the matter. Muzzling represents an erosion of the principle of free speech and impoverishes the public debate. We can't hope to make sound decisions on complex problems like climate change without input from those who know the most about it -- the scientists.

But instead, we have a federal government silencing scientists in a scurrilous "attempt to guarantee public ignorance," as the New York Times put it.

Government scientists occupy a special place in our democracy. They are the only scientists paid specifically to protect the public interest. They are also the only scientists whose task is to inform government on scientific matters, to the exclusion of any competing interests. Silencing government scientists ultimately damages the common good.

My colleague Jeff Hutchings once wrote: "Let's be clear. When you inhibit the communication of science, you inhibit science. The legitimacy of scientific findings depends crucially on unfettered engagement, review, and discussion among interested individuals, including members of the public."

Let me add to this by saying that when you inhibit science, you inhibit democracy. Muzzling undermines the ability of citizens to exercise their democratic rights. Depriving citizens of scientific evidence weakens their ability to hold policy makers to account. This cannot be tolerated in a free and open society.

The information commissioner's two-and-a-half-year investigation is overdue. The commissioner could have made an important contribution to the present discussion. Release of her report will now presumably wait until after the federal election. If she rules muzzling illegal, the next government will trot out some version of the "bad apples" defence. If, on the other hand, the commissioner finds the government acted legally, the opportunity for candidates to explain how they would remedy this deficit in the law will have been lost.

It now falls to Canadian voters to hold their politicians to account. Candidates in the federal election should be pressed to explain their views on science policy and to commit to letting scientists speak.

The U.S. government has a scientific integrity policy that protects the right of scientists to speak to the media and the public about their official work without censorship. Canadians should expect no less.

Thomas J. Duck is an associate professor in the Department of Physics and Atmospheric Science at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. He is on the advisory board of Evidence for Democracy.

Legacy – October 2015 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2015 – Removing Ocean-based Salmon Feedlots

Community Activism, Education and Outreach

 Stopping Farmed Salmon at the Cash Register

Legacy – October 2015 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2015 – Removing Ocean-based Salmon Feedlots

 Frank Jr. to be inducted into Wild Salmon Hall of Fame August 20, 2015

Legacy – October 2015 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2015 – Removing Ocean-based Salmon Feedlots The late Billy Frank Jr., longtime treaty rights activist, salmon proponent and an Auburn Reporter guest columnist, will be inducted into the Wild Salmon Hall of Fame during an Oct. 10 gala at the Kitsap Conference Center in Bremerton.

The Hood Canal Salmon Enhancement Group’s Salmon Center is honoring Frank’s legacy. Billy Frank Jr.’s son, Willie Frank, will accept the award on his behalf.

The inductees to the Wild Salmon Hall of Fame are chosen for their contributions to saving wild salmon populations throughout the Northwest.

From his activism that helped lead to the 1974’s Boldt decision to his work as chairman of the Northwest Fisheries Commission, Frank fought for healthy streams, restoring estuaries, removing blockages and most important, protecting and sustaining the Northwest culture and way of life.

“We can’t overstate how long lasting his legacy will be,” said Gov. Jay Inslee. “He pushed the state when he needed to push the state. And he reminded the state when it needed reminding. His legacy is going to be with us for generations. My grandkids are going to benefit from his work.”

For tickets and details, visit pnwsalmoncenter.org/wshf.

Legacy – October 2015 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2015 – Removing Ocean-based Salmon Feedlots

 Farmed Salmon – No Thanks!

Farmed Salmon Boycott and Rally August 29, 2015

Legacy – October 2015 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2015 – Removing Ocean-based Salmon Feedlots

 The beginning of the end for this BROWN industry

Alexandra Morton: The day is breaking on Yaakswiis Ocean Camp as the Occupation of Cermaq starts 8.

After the community meeting last night we are feeling a groundswell of support from within Ahousaht and far beyond.

I am proud to stand with Ahousaht.

It is time for the dirty, aggressive ocean fish farming industry to grow up and deal with their sewage. Why should any Nation accept the tons of fecal matter released daily by these farms?

There is no phone service at the site, so postings are made when possible. You can follow this via Warriors for Yaakswiis Facebook page.

This is the beginning of the end of this dirty industry.

Legacy – October 2015 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2015 – Removing Ocean-based Salmon Feedlots

Legacy – October 2015 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2015 – Removing Ocean-based Salmon Feedlots

 WDFW invites public to help identify conservation and recreation priorities

WASHINGTON DEPARTMENT OF FISH AND WILDLIFE

Print Version

NEWS RELEASE 600 Capitol Way North, Olympia, WA 98501-1091

August 28, 2015 Contact: Joe Stohr, 360-902-2650 Bruce Botka, 360-902-2262 WDFW invites public to help identify conservation and recreation priorities OLYMPIA - State fish and wildlife leaders are asking people to share their views on the values and priorities that should drive the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW) over the next several years.

The opportunity is part of WDFW's new multi-year initiative, "Washington's Wild Future: A Partnership for Fish and Wildlife," which is an effort to strengthen the department's relationships with communities, increase support for conservation and outdoor recreation, and help ensure WDFW programs and services meet the public's needs.

People can talk with WDFW managers at six regional forums in September and October. Comments will also be accepted through Oct. 31 on WDFW's website at http://wdfw.wa.gov/wildfuture/ and by email to WildFuture@dfw.wa.gov. People may also participate in the conversation through the WDFW Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/WashingtonFishWildlife Public comments and proposals will help determine priorities for conserving and managing Washington's fish and wildlife in the coming years, said WDFW Director Jim Unsworth, who was hired to lead the agency in January.

"Since I joined WDFW, I have been asking people, 'If you could tell the director of Fish and Wildlife one thing, what would you say?'" Unsworth said. "This is a great opportunity for people across the state to do just that. I want to hear about what we are doing right, where we need to improve, and where we should focus our efforts and our funding over the next five to 10 to 20 years."

Unsworth, senior WDFW managers, and regional staff are scheduled to attend the meetings, where people can discuss fishing and hunting and other outdoor recreation opportunities, as well as habitat protection and restoration, licensing, enforcement, and other fish and wildlife management issues.

Legacy – October 2015 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2015 – Removing Ocean-based Salmon Feedlots The meetings are scheduled for 6 to 8 p.m. at the following dates and locations:

     

Sept. 10 - Selah Civic Center, 216 1st St., Selah.

Sept. 30 - Center Place, 2426 N. Discovery Place, Spokane Valley.

Oct. 6 - WDFW Mill Creek Office, 16018 Mill Creek Blvd, Mill Creek.

Oct. 8 - Saint Martin's University, Norman Worthington Conference Center, 5300 Pacific Ave. SE, Lacey.

Oct. 14 - Water Resources Education Center, 4600 SE Columbia Way, Vancouver.

Oct. 20 - Port of Chelan County Confluence Technology Center, 285 Technology Center Way, Wenatchee.

Each meeting will include a brief presentation from a WDFW regional director about the importance of fish and wildlife management to Washington's quality of life and the economies of local communities throughout the state. Participants will then be invited to talk in small groups with representatives of the department's Fish, Wildlife, Enforcement, Licensing, and Habitat programs, as well as Unsworth and his staff.

Later this year, WDFW will summarize the comments and suggestions from the public, as well as input from outdoor organizations, advisory groups, tribes, and state and local elected officials. The information will be used to help identify potential changes in WDFW's operations and services, and to develop future policy, budget and fee proposals.

"We face major management challenges over the next several years, and for us to be successful we need the public's support and assistance," Unsworth said. "That can only happen if the department has strong relationships with anglers, hunters, outdoor recreation groups, and others interested in fish and wildlife in Washington."

More information about WDFW is available at http://wdfw.wa.gov/ ###

Persons with disabilities who need reasonable accommodations to participate in the public meetings are invited to contact Dolores Noyes by phone at 360-902-2349, TTY at 360-902-2207, or email at dolores.noyes@dfw.wa.gov. Reasonable accommodation requests should be made at least three business days before the meeting to ensure availability. Please provide two weeks' notice for requests for ASL/ESL interpretation services. For more information, see http://wdfw.wa.gov/accessibility/reasonable_request.html

Legacy – October 2015 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2015 – Removing Ocean-based Salmon Feedlots OLYMPIA CHAPTER OF TROUT UNLIMITED SEPTEMBER 23, 2015 7:00PM NORTH OLYMPIA FIRE STATION 5046 BOSTON HARBOR ROAD NE

 MANAGEMENT AND STATUS OF OUR FISHERIES RESOURCES

Program: The public is invited to the September 23rd meeting of the Olympia Chapter of Trout Unlimited for a presentation on key management programs and issues for 2015 by Joe Stohr, Deputy Director of the Department of Fish and Wildlife. His presentation will include management directions enacted by the Washington State Legislature; progress on new Fish & Wildlife Commission sponsored programs developed in 2014; and information on the WDFW budget as it relates to 2015. The presentation will address administrative and operational issues relating to the impact on our fisheries resources.

Kelly Cunningham, Deputy Assistant Director of the Fish Program, will provide an update on the Department’s hatchery reform efforts, progress made in implementing Fish and Wildlife Commission Policy (C-3619 Hatchery Reform), and the establishment of Wild Steelhead Management Zones (WSMZ).

Refreshments and a fishing equipment raffle will follow the presentations.

Bio: Joe Stohr Joe Stohr has been the DFW Deputy Director since 2007. He has a Bachelor of Science in Fisheries and Master of Science in Health Physics/Radiological Sciences. His early career was with the Department of Health studying health impacts to the public from historic Hanford operations. This included state management of regulatory programs during the transition from nuclear weapons production to environmental cleanup. Subsequently, he was the Department of Ecology Program Manager for Oil/Hazardous Substance Spill Prevention and Response. He managed the state Water Rights Program and served with the Department of Ecology as water policy advisor before coming to WDFW. Bio: Kelly Cunningham Kelly Cunningham has been the Fish Program Deputy Assistant Director with responsibility for program operations since 2012. He holds Masters degrees in Public Administration and Environmental Studies where he focused on Salmonid Freshwater Ecology. He has over 20 years of experience commercial fishing in Bristol Bay, Alaska. On the recreational side, he is a “lifelong” fly fisherman.

Legacy – October 2015 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2015 – Removing Ocean-based Salmon Feedlots

Apathy is expensive

 Analysis suggests

Harper government ‘all but abandoned’ protection of fish

habitat September 1, 2015 A statistical analysis of the Conservative government’s changes to environmental laws and procedures suggests Ottawa has “all but abandoned” attempts to protect Canada’s lakes and rivers.

“Over the last decade, what we’ve seen is a not-so-gradual abandonment of the fish habitat protection field,” said University of Calgary law professor Martin Olszynski.

He has sifted through reams of data and dozens of development applications to conclude that federal protection for fisheries and waterways has been declining for more than a decade.

Olszynski found environmental oversight by the Department of Fisheries and Oceans dropped dramatically during the 2000s – a time when Canada saw huge spending in the resource industries.

And he concludes changes to environmental law in 2012 weren’t intended to cut red tape, as the government suggested, but to lower the environmental bar.

Legacy – October 2015 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2015 – Removing Ocean-based Salmon Feedlots “What my data suggests is that the narrative provided doesn’t add up in terms of this unduly intrusive regulatory regime. It was never really about reducing red tape.”

Fisheries and Oceans was not immediately available for comment.

In a paper for the Journal of Environmental Law and Practice, Olszynski shows the number of proposals to the department’s Central and Pacific regions fell to fewer than 4,000 by 2014 from more than 12,000 in 2001.

The drop came in two stages.

In 2004, the government decided to minimize oversight for projects deemed low-risk, which cut the number of projects it reviewed in half. The rest of the decrease came in 2012 after the government revamped environmental laws.

Over that same period, enforcement fell off a cliff.

Olszynski reports that environmental warnings and charges under the Fisheries Act fell to about 50 from about 300. Staff time allotted to enforcement dropped to 10,000 hours from 35,000.

The department’s budget was cut by $80 million in 2012. Another $100 million in cuts are planned over three years beginning this year.

The analysis shows officials are granting approvals without seeing a developer’s plans to fix any problems, despite federal law that says such plans must be approved before a project goes ahead.

Olszynski’s suggests most approvals are now granted with the understanding a developer will file a plan later.

Meanwhile, records show that the pace of development on rivers and lakes has kept roughly stable.

A number of studies and peer-reviewed papers have also documented rapidly increasing impacts on forests and waterways.

The federal government has argued it’s getting out of the regulatory end, so provinces can take over and duplication is reduced.

Olszynski said that if red tape alone had been the issue, it should have been solved in 2004 when Ottawa first backed off overseeing some projects.

He writes: “(Department of Fisheries and Oceans) appears to have been exemplary in reducing the administrative burden on proponents carrying out what it deemed to be low-risk activities.

“Rather, the problem appears to have been substantive; government (or) proponents, or both, deemed actual compliance (i.e. avoidance and mitigation of impacts to fish habitat) too burdensome.”

Provincial approvals for development projects still have to abide by federal law. Olszynski said his analysis shows the department doesn’t even see many of those proposals.

Scaling back assessments for low-risk developments can be a valid way to reduce regulatory burdens, Olszynski said. But to work, he said, it requires credible oversight and enforcement.

“DFO says we will reduce the burden on you, but you still have to comply with the act. What evidence is available suggests that industry did not keep their end of the bargain.

“The strong deterrent signal wasn’t there … in terms of enforcement.”

Legacy – October 2015 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2015 – Removing Ocean-based Salmon Feedlots

Climate Change

Legacy – October 2015 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2015 – Removing Ocean-based Salmon Feedlots

Rick Yen is silhouetted as he checks his lure while fishing for salmon near the mouth of the Capilano River off Ambleside Park at sunset in West Vancouver, B.C., on Tuesday August 25, 2015. Coho and Pink salmon have returned to the mouth of the river to swim upstream to spawn

 River temperatures down in B.C., but so are projected sockeye returns: DFO September 9, 2015

Legacy – October 2015 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2015 – Removing Ocean-based Salmon Feedlots VANCOUVER — Late summer can be “sockeye crazy” in British Columbia’s rivers, but one fish expert says this year’s salmon season seems to be non-existent.

Low river flows and hot water temperatures likely combined to create poor conditions for the annual sockeye migration, said Ken Ashley, director of the Rivers Institute at the B.C. Institute of Technology.

But because the weather has cooled in recent days, warm water that’s often lethal to returning salmon has become more hospitable, said the Department of Fisheries and Oceans Wednesday.

“I didn’t smoke or can anything this year,” Ashley said.

“So I’m looking at last year’s salmon that I canned and was thinking, ’Thank god I bought a bunch of Adams River fish last year and I have enough to bring me through a second year.’ Yeah, it was that quiet.”

The Fisheries Department has predicted a meager 1.5-million sockeye are due to reach spawning grounds in B.C. over the coming weeks.

Last year’s sockeye season was considered a banner year, returning nearly 21-million fish to the Fraser River. Scientists had also pegged 2014 as the one-in-four “dominant” year of the Adams River sockeye cycle.

Fisheries area director Stu Cartwright said 2015’s number appears to be “considerably lower” than biologists would prefer.

“We aren’t seeing the abundance that we’d like to be seeing, for sure.

And that is a concern,” he said.

This year’s Adams River season was automatically deemed a “subdominant” year, in which the typical pattern would return only about five per cent of the previous year, said Ashley. Forecasts for the next two year are even more dismal, at one per cent returns from 2014 season.

Ashley said that even when the Adams River run is low, sockeye runs from other lakes often push up the overall return. That doesn’t seem to be the case so far this year, he said.

“Normally, some of the other fish lakes are not all dominant in the same year. It’s like having a blended stock portfolio,” he said. “It averages out.”

Even while the Fisheries Department is nervous over the potential for fewer fish, there is some relief that water temperatures in the Fraser are slowly dropping.

The temperatures have decreased to around 15 C or 16 C, an acceptable range crucial for fish health, Cartwright said.

He added the department believes anticipated returns of chinook salmon will be stronger.

Cartwright has also praised B.C. residents who continue to voluntarily cut water consumption. He noted that water flow in the Fraser River system remains below normal, increasing pressure on returning salmon

Legacy – October 2015 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2015 – Removing Ocean-based Salmon Feedlots

Habitat Restoration

Tulalip field specialist Michael Abrahamse, left, and NOAA biologist Casey Rice beach seine for fish using the newly restored Qwuloolt Estuary.

 LEVEE

BREACH IMPROVES FISH ACCESS TO ENTIRE SNOHOMISH WATERSHED

After 20 years of planning and $20 million invested by a number of partners, the Ebey Slough levee was breached in late August, restoring tidal flow to the 400-acre Qwuloolt Estuary in Snohomish County.

Legacy – October 2015 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2015 – Removing Ocean-based Salmon Feedlots Named for the Lushootseed word for “marsh,” the Qwuloolt restoration was led by the Tulalip Tribes and is one of the largest in Puget Sound. A lack of quality spawning and rearing habitat is the main reason for declining salmon populations in the region. Treaty tribes in western Washington have restored thousands of miles of habitat with the goal of recovering salmon runs to sustainable levels.

Ebey Slough was diked and drained 100 years ago to create farmland, cutting off fish access to valuable salt marsh habitat. Efforts at watershed management began in the late 1980s, with the formation of the Puget Sound Water Quality Authority under then-Gov. Booth Gardner.

Tulalip tribal member Terry Williams, who is now the tribes’ natural resources commissioner, was part of that process.

“While creating the watershed program, we realized that at the time, it was legal to build dikes in the estuary, but it was illegal to use funding to tear them down,” he said. “We set out in that first plan to change that and we did.”

The Water Quality Authority evolved into the Puget Sound Partnership, setting a goal of restoring Puget Sound by 2020.

So far, the tribes and Snohomish County have accomplished their 10-year goal, Williams said.

“Originally in the Puget Sound Partnership, we said we’d get about 1,100 or 1,200 acres restored in the estuary and we’re now at over 1,500,” he said.

Before the levee was breached on Aug. 28, juvenile fish could out-migrate through tide gates, but adult fish were blocked from returning to the estuary, said Casey Rice, biologist for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

“This one estuary breach affects the whole watershed,” he said.

Rice, along with Tulalip natural resources staff, is monitoring changes to water quality and fish use of the habitat before and after the breach. A week after tidal flow was restored, the team found both a juvenile and an adult coho salmon in the estuary.

“This habitat is so crucial to migrating and juvenile salmon, providing food and refuge for those fish,” said Kurt Nelson, manager of the Qwuloolt Estuary project for Tulalip. “It’s the intent of this project to increase production and quantity of those salmon that are extremely important to the tribe for cultural and economic purposes.”

While Tulalip was responsible for stream and tidal channel restoration, berm construction and native planting, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers built the setback levee and did the actual breach. Other partners include the city of Marysville, NOAA, state Department of Ecology, Salmon Recovery Funding Board, Natural Resources Conservation Service, Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, and U.S. Fish and Wildlife, among others.

“We all have a common goal together,” said Bonnie Juneau, member of the Tulalip Tribes Board of Directors. “It was really about our environment; putting our environment back so that our children and our grandchildren would have a better place to live.”

View a time-lapse video of the levee being breached

Legacy – October 2015 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2015 – Removing Ocean-based Salmon Feedlots

Harvest

Adult coho salmon spawning in the Tillamook State Forest.

 Feds issue overfishing notice for 4 northwest salmon stocks September 2, 2015 The federal agency in charge of managing fisheries has ruled four stocks of Pacific Northwest salmon are being overfished.

The National Marine Fisheries Service and the Department of Commerce on Wednesday posted a notice in the Federal Register of the excessive fishing pressures on Chinook and Coho salmon in the Columbia River Basin and along the Washington coast.

Legacy – October 2015 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2015 – Removing Ocean-based Salmon Feedlots The notice, which included overfishing findings for North Pacific swordfish, is meant to alert fishery managers that fishing pressures are driving salmon populations down.

Federal law requires the Pacific Fishery Management Council to take immediate action to end the overfishing.

The notice covers the following four salmon populations:

   

Summer Chinook in the upper river area of the Columbia River Basin Fall Chinook in the Willapa Bay area of the Washington coast Fall Chinook in the Grays Harbor area of the Washington coast Coho along the Hoh area of the Washington coast.

 Determination of Overfishing or an Overfished Condition A Notice by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration on 09/02/2015 SUMMARY This action serves as a notice that NMFS, on behalf of the Secretary of Commerce (Secretary), has found that the following four stocks of Pacific salmon are subject to overfishing: 



Chinook salmon o Columbia River Basin: Upper River Summer o Washington Coast: Willapa Bay Fall Natural o Washington Coast: Grays Harbor Fall Coho salmon o Washington Coast: Hoh

In addition, NMFS has found that the North Pacific swordfish stock in the Eastern Pacific Ocean, which is jointly managed by the Pacific Fishery Management Council and the Western Pacific Fishery Management Council, is subject to overfishing.

NMFS, on behalf of the Secretary, notifies the appropriate fishery management council (Council) whenever it determines that overfishing is occurring, a stock is in an overfished condition, a stock is approaching an overfished condition, or when a rebuilding plan has not resulted in adequate progress toward ending overfishing and rebuilding affected fish stocks. None of these stocks is in an overfished condition.

Legacy – October 2015 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2015 – Removing Ocean-based Salmon Feedlots

Bluefin tuna are seen inside farming pens prior to harvest near Ensenada, Mexico in a 2007 photo.

Populations of some wild commercial fish stocks, such as a group including tuna, mackerel and bonito, had fallen by almost 75 per cent, according to a study by the WWF and the Zoological Society of London (ZSL).

 Ocean fish numbers on 'brink of collapse,' WWF reports September 16, 2015 The amount of fish in the oceans has halved since 1970, in a plunge to the "brink of collapse" caused by over-fishing and other threats, the WWF conservation group said on Wednesday.

Populations of some commercial fish stocks, such as a group including tuna, mackerel and bonito, had fallen by almost 75 per cent, according to a study by the WWF and the Zoological Society of London (ZSL).

Marco Lambertini, director general of WWF International, told Reuters mismanagement was pushing "the ocean to the brink of collapse".

Legacy – October 2015 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2015 – Removing Ocean-based Salmon Feedlots "There is a massive, massive decrease in species which are critical", both for the ocean ecosystem and food security for billions of people, he said. "The ocean is resilient but there is a limit."

The report said populations of fish, marine mammals, birds and reptiles had fallen 49 per cent between 1970 and 2012. For fish alone, the decline was 50 per cent.

The analysis said it tracked 5,829 populations of 1,234 species, such as seals, turtles and dolphins and sharks. It said the ZSL data sets were almost twice as large as past studies.

A bearded seal sits on the ice in Quidi Vidi, N.L. The WWF analysis said it tracked 5,829 populations of 1,234 species, including seals, turtles and dolphins and sharks.

"This report suggests that billions of animals have been lost from the world's oceans in my lifetime alone," Ken Norris, director of science at the ZSL, said in a statement. "This is a terrible and dangerous legacy to leave to our grandchildren."

Damage to coral reefs and mangroves, which are nurseries for many fish, add to problems led by over-fishing. Other threats include coastal development, pollution and climate change, which is raising temperatures and making waters more acidic.

Legacy – October 2015 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2015 – Removing Ocean-based Salmon Feedlots Huge fishing subsidies The study said the world's fishing fleets were too big and supported by subsidies totalling $18 to $46 billion a year.

Later this month, governments are due to adopt new U.N. sustainable development goals, including ending over-fishing and destructive fishing practices by 2020 and restoring stocks "in the shortest time feasible".

Closing fishing grounds and cracking down on illegal fishing gives stocks a chance to recover, Lambertini said. Some grounds, such as those off Fiji, have been revived by stronger protection.

World marine fish catches dipped to 79.7 million tonnes in 2012 from 82.6 million in 2011, according to the U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organization. Safeguarding the oceans can help economic growth, curb poverty and raise food security, it says.

Fish for sale are seen at the fish market of Villa Maria del Triunfo, on the outskirts of Lima, March 30, 2015. World marine fish catches dipped to 79.7 million tonnes in 2012 from 82.6 million in 2011, according to the U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organization

Legacy – October 2015 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2015 – Removing Ocean-based Salmon Feedlots

 Fishery laws failing to protect endangered species, say scientists September 16, 2015 While Canada has laws that should serve as a safety net to protect marine fish at risk of extinction, a new study has found they’re not being put to good use.

Published this week in the Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences, research by teams on the East and West Coasts shows that Canadaʼs Species at Risk Act (SARA) and the Fisheries Act are both failing to protect endangered fish species — and the most endangered marine species are the ones least likely to receive protection.

Legacy – October 2015 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2015 – Removing Ocean-based Salmon Feedlots “(We found) so many perverse outcomes that we constantly had to stop ourselves to double- and triple-check things,” said Julia Baum, co-author and assistant professor of biology at the University of Victoria. “It would be hard to design a (protection) process less effective if you tried. It’s almost a comedy of errors, except it’s not funny at all because there are endangered species at stake.”

The study — Missing the Safety Net: Evidence for Inconsistent and Insufficient Management of AtRisk Marine Fishes in Canada — looked at the SARA listing process and Integrated Fisheries Management Plans, which are meant to implement the Fisheries Act, to see whether populations deemed to be at risk received the conservation measures they need to rebuild.

It’s the Committee on the Status of Wildlife in Canada (COSEWIC), made up of scientists, that designates species at risk as being of special concern, vulnerable, threatened or endangered, and provides those assessments to the environment minister. That starts the SARA listing process.

Fewer than 20 per cent of at-risk marine fish species in this country have been listed under SARA and Baum said that’s no coincidence. Many of them — including Atlantic cod, cusk, porbeagle shark, bluefin tuna and sockeye salmon — have seen their population levels sink as a result of overfishing, but remain targets or unintended catches in commercial fisheries. A listing under SARA would warrant protective measures which would curb what could be caught.

“As part of its decision-making process, the government considers, among other things, the views of Canadians, as well as the economic and social implications of protecting a species under SARA,” the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) said in a written statement.

The department insists these species can still be protected adequately under the Fisheries Act, through management plans and conservation tools, including limit reference points and harvest control rules for key target stocks to ensure harvest levels are sustainable, a range of bycatch management measures, and fishery closures to protect sensitive benthic species such as corals and sponges from fishing gear. DFO also says it has established a number of stock rebuilding plans, including one for the northern Gulf cod.

“A lot of the policy mechanisms we need do exist in Canada, but they’re not being used,” said Susanna Fuller, co-author and marine program coordinator at the Ecology Action Centre in Halifax.

“When the rubber hits the road, the Fisheries Act is not being applied.”

Researchers found that the most at-risk marine fish species which were denied a SARA listing only received 50 to 54 per cent of the protective measures the Fisheries Act could provide. It’s difficult to gauge whether those are being implemented effectively.

“People don’t think of marine fish as wildlife, they think of them as commercial entities, so they keep falling through the safety net,” Fuller said. “There’s been a complete failure by the feds here. And it’s been over many years.”

Even the marine species that make it into the SARA process aren’t faring much better. They wait between three and five years, sometimes longer, to see if they’ll be listed. In that time they receive no protection at all.

“We should have a mechanism so that measures can be put in place for them once that COSEWIC assessment has been made,” Baum said.

Legacy – October 2015 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2015 – Removing Ocean-based Salmon Feedlots “Instead we have these huge delays. We have a species at high risk of extinction and we have to sit and twiddle our thumbs when we could be doing something as soon as we know they’re in trouble.”

It’s a long process at the best of times, but what researchers found most troubling is that the species in greatest peril generally wait the longest and are the least likely to be granted protection under the Species at Risk Act. If an endangered species gets listed, the act requires that a recovery plan be put in place for them.

To date, Baum said, no recovery plan has ever been made for marine fish.

“It’s like having a critically ill patient and telling them to come back in five years. When they do, we tell them, ‘Sorry, we’re not going to do anything for you.’”

Baum said it all amounts to deliberate stalling and inaction by the federal government.

“It’s a perverse outcome of the way the system is set up with good intentions to see the most threatened receive the recovery plans, but instead all they get is delays and inaction. The only consideration that’s being taken into account is their economic value. It’s a pretty dismal situation.”

DFO says while it recognizes it must protect species at risk, stable and sustainable industries have to be maintained “while maximizing economic opportunities for fisherman.” Every effort is made to work with those in the fishing and aquaculture industry to meet SARA’s objectives, as “protecting species at risk is a shared responsibility by all Canadians.”

In its statement the department says that “amongst fishing nations, Canada has one of the largest number of fisheries certified as sustainable by the Marine Stewardship Council.”

And while it’s true that Canada has 29 MSC certified fisheries, the study found that the seafood certification body doesn’t actually provide any additional conservation measures for those at-risk species that aren’t listed under SARA. Even if COSEWIC has found a species to be at risk, the council still puts its sustainable stamp on it, something Baum thinks is “pretty hard to defend.”

Fuller said that although it’s embarrassing that Canada is not dealing with species at risk, their goal isn’t just to slam the government. “We want them to use the tools they have.”

She’s already presented the paper to several DFO offices and plans to meet with staff across across the country to talk about possible changes. In Ottawa, she said, the problem needs to be addressed at the highest levels from a resource-management perspective.

The Ecology Action Centre also will be reaching out to the fishing industry to look at incentives for stewardship.

The research has been well-received so far, but Fuller said there are plenty of obstacles ahead.

“We have a government that doesn’t care about fish and oceans. (The Fisheries Act) is not a priority unless they’re changing it to allow pipelines to go through,” she said. “But we have three oceans. They should be a priority. We need to change our relationship with them and how we take care of them.”

Legacy – October 2015 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2015 – Removing Ocean-based Salmon Feedlots

Seafood consumption: Public health and environmental risks

 Warning: Eating Farmed Salmon May Affect Your Baby

Legacy – October 2015 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2015 – Removing Ocean-based Salmon Feedlots

 The most toxic protein on earth..... DO NOT EAT ! (Leanne Hodges)

Legacy – October 2015 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2015 – Removing Ocean-based Salmon Feedlots

 Consumer groups urge Costco to publicly reject GMO salmon August 31, 2015 Consumer groups are pressuring retail giant Costco to publicly promise not to sell genetically modified salmon even if it’s approved by federal regulators.

Friends of the Earth said more than 18,000 letters will be delivered to Costco Wholesale Corp. stores this week, about two months after a coalition of groups including the Center for Food Safety, Food & Water Watch, and Food Democracy Now, collected more than 300,000 signatures on petition urging Costco to refrain from selling the salmon, which they dubbed “Frankenfish.”

In the absence of regulatory approval, Costco responded by saying it did not plan to sell salmon classified as a genetically modified organism (GMO). But consumer groups say the retailer has left the door open to selling it in the future if the Food and Drug Administration approves it.

“We are asking Costco to stand behind the science, be a true leader in seafood sustainability and listen to the majority of consumers who do not want to eat genetically engineered fish,” Dana Perls, Friends of the Earth’s food and technology policy campaigner, said in a news release. “More than 60 of Costco’s competitors have committed to not sell GMO salmon — Costco needs to catch up and provide its customers with what they want: natural, sustainable seafood that isn’t genetically engineered in a lab.”

According to the coalition of consumer groups, more than 60 retailers including Target, Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s, Safeway and Kroger have made commitments to not sell the genetically modified fish, they say threatens to harm the environment, pollute the genetics of native salmon and undermine the livelihood of fishermen.

In a statement to The Hill, Costco said scientific research is being conducted and oversight of GMO foods falls under the FDA’s area of responsibility.

"The FDA has not approved the sale of GMO salmon,” the company said. “Costco has not sold and does not intend to sell GMO salmon at this time."

Legacy – October 2015 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2015 – Removing Ocean-based Salmon Feedlots

Ocean-based Salmon feedlots

Legacy – October 2015 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2015 – Removing Ocean-based Salmon Feedlots

Legacy – October 2015 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2015 – Removing Ocean-based Salmon Feedlots

Legacy – October 2015 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2015 – Removing Ocean-based Salmon Feedlots

Fed-up conservation groups say proposed guidelines for locating fish farms in B.C. ignore recommendations in the $37-million Cohen inquiry launched by Prime Minister Stephen Harper in 2009.

 Ottawa ignoring Cohen report on salmon, say conservation groups Letter accuses federal Fisheries of ignoring call for science-based decisions September 18, 2015

Legacy – October 2015 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2015 – Removing Ocean-based Salmon Feedlots OTTAWA — Fed-up conservation groups say proposed guidelines for locating fish farms in B.C. ignore recommendations in the $37-million Cohen inquiry launched by Prime Minister Stephen Harper in 2009.

The federal Fisheries department stands accused, in a letter from a group of environmental agencies, of not taking seriously Justice Bruce Cohen’s call for science-based decision-making.

The proposed guidelines, distributed to B.C. groups for consultation in July, “fail completely to consider the best available scientific and other information available,” the critics charge.

And the complaint sizzles with anger over the groups’ exasperation with what they see as Ottawa’s reluctance to consider the views of British Columbians.

“Overall, we are very frustrated with DFO’s continual cycle of ‘consultation’ on aquaculture policy with no demonstration of genuine consideration of the feedback that is provided,” wrote Stan Proboszcz, science adviser to the Watershed Watch Salmon Society.

“In our respective opinions, the opportunities for public involvement and accountability in government decision-making regarding aquaculture licensing are at an all-time low,” he stated on behalf of his group that also included David Suzuki Foundation, the Living Oceans Society, and the Pacific Salmon Foundation.

The letter, provided exclusively to The Vancouver Sun, was in response to draft guidelines sent out in July to B.C. groups seeking input into proposed changes in how the Fisheries department handles applications to set up new salmon farms.

Conservation groups have been long concerned about the risk of disease and sea lice from Atlantic salmon-stocked pens spreading to migrating wild Pacific salmon.

Cohen, in his 2012 report, said he couldn’t find a “smoking gun” linking fish farms or any other single issue to problems with the Fraser River sockeye fishery.

But he did call on Ottawa to, by March of 2013 and every five years thereafter, “revise salmon farm siting criteria to reflect new scientific information about salmon farms situated on or near Fraser River sockeye salmon migration routes as well as the cumulative effects of these farms on these sockeye.”

The proposed guidelines, which would replace rules developed jointly with the B.C. government after a 1997 policy review, call for pens to be located in areas best-suited to ensure the health of both wild and farmed stocks, “while ensuring an environmentally, economically and socially sustainable industry.”

But the letter says Ottawa falls short in several areas: o Its guidelines are based on the best-available “information” available. “The word ‘science’ is largely left out of the equation and replaced with the word ‘information,’” yet “no information is cited (and) no supporting references are provided,” Proboszcz wrote.

Legacy – October 2015 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2015 – Removing Ocean-based Salmon Feedlots o There used to be a minimum three-kilometre separation between farms unless they were owned by the same company, in which case the gap had to be at least a kilometre. “Now the one-kilometre minimum is gone.” o There is no clear definition to explain how the government will define “critical or important habitat” that could be threatened by a farm. o The guidelines don’t spell out a clear process to determine whether a new farm could harm existing commercial, recreational or aboriginal fisheries, and the wording suggests Ottawa is in fact trying to “legitimize” rather than avoid such conflict.

A media relations official in the Fisheries department said The Sun’s request for comment would be considered, but no comment was received.

Jeremy Dunn, executive director of the B.C. Salmon Farmers Association, rejected the suggestion that science isn’t a major factor in regulatory approval of site selection.

“The amount of science, testing, monitoring, etc., that goes into siting a salmon farm is significant.”

Dunn said the federal government has approved four sites this summer, two that will be joint ventures between the Tlatlasikwala First Nation and Marine Harvest Canada off North Vancouver Island, a project involving the Ahousaht First Nation and Cermaq Canada in Clayoquot Sound (the project is opposed by some band members), and Grieg Seafood is partnering with the Tlowitsis First Nation to grow salmon in Clio Channel on east Vancouver Island.

Dunn dismissed speculation that the industry is gearing up for an expansion, saying there are currently no new site applications before the federal government.

“None of the companies BCSFA represents have plans at the moment to apply for new farming sites.”

Legacy – October 2015 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2015 – Removing Ocean-based Salmon Feedlots

 The Beginning Of The End Of Salmon Farming In BC When the Province of British Columbia recently issued the biggest salmon farm expansion in over a decade, they knew the public were not onboard with the decision. A petition with over 110,000 signatures was recently delivered to the Premier.

However, the Norwegian-based companies each courted a First Nation chief and council and once they made their deals, the Province of BC felt it would be clear sailing to grant leases, despite the public demand that this industry get away from our wild fish. Four more salmon farms were given tenures to release tons of waste daily.

We can’t know what kind of deal was made with each of the three Nations involved, but what we are seeing now is the failure of this scheme. Governments can't ignore the people forever.

On September 9, 2015 five members of the Ahousaht Nation stepped onto one of the new salmon farms that Cermaq was busily anchoring in their territory. The men asked the fish farm crew to leave and declared they would stay until the farm is removed with no replacement tenure.

Legacy – October 2015 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2015 – Removing Ocean-based Salmon Feedlots The site is called Yaakswiis. It is a bay on Flores Island in Clayoquot Sound and it lies just south of the Atleo River. The Atleo was once a highly productive river for all six species of salmon, and trout and has long been utilized by the Ahousaht Nation. There is already a salmon farm just north of the Atleo, placing a second salmon farm just south of the mouth of this river, is going to seal its fate.

Juvenile salmon leaving the Atleo River are not going to survive. Attempts to restore the river have been unsuccessful.

This occupation of the Cermaq salmon farm at Yaakswiis is not the first time this has happened. In the early 1990s, Gwawaneuk Chief Charlie Williams near Kingcome Inlet stepped onto a salmon farm and demanded that it release its moorings from an island that is an ancient burial ground. The farm was removed and a restraining order placed on Chief Williams. Since then there have been many First Nation led protests around salmon farms - to no avail.

Legacy – October 2015 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2015 – Removing Ocean-based Salmon Feedlots

Government and industry like to tout the media-friendly message - that First Nations support salmon farming, but as Namgis Chief Debra Hanuse recently testified before the Senate Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans, nations who refuse to allow salmon farms are ignored. Salmon farms go in whether First Nations say yes or no.

Legacy – October 2015 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2015 – Removing Ocean-based Salmon Feedlots This is painfully evident in Dzawada’enuxw territory, Kingcome Inlet. The Dzawada’enuxw never said yes, and yet salmon farms arrived, continue to operate, and they are expanding. The scientific evidence suggests this is why Kingcome herring and salmon have dwindled to almost nothing despite closures of fisheries. Foreign shareholders and CEOs get rich and the local people get poorer.

The biology is clear; it is the politics that are muddy. We know that another Norwegian company, Grieg Seafood tried to pay commercial fishermen that opposed two new farms. What I don’t know is why the Province of BC stubbornly persists in thinking it is a good idea to ignore the people in favour of a small industry run by 3 foreign companies. What are they getting out of this deal? The industry has failed to make jobs and they are hated even as they try to buy their way into the hearts of British Columbians.

Legacy – October 2015 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2015 – Removing Ocean-based Salmon Feedlots Recent sea lice data from the Cermaq farm closest to Yaakwiis reveals that Cermaq is apparently unable to keep its sea lice under the limits prescribed in BC. As well, these fish were treated with Aquaflor for some bacterial issue. See info posted on this drug does this belong in waters that people food fish in?

Aquaflor Indications For the treatment of furunculosis caused by susceptible strains of Aeromonas salmonicida in salmon.

Warning: Treated fish must not be harvested for use in food, or released as stocker fish, for at least 12 days after the latest treatment with this drug. Do not use in fish maintained at water temperatures <5°C. Avoid inhalation of dust and contact with skin and eyes. Wear protective clothing (mask and gloves). Wash hands after handling. Keep this and all medication out of the reach of children.

In a petition to keep Yaakwiis clean for the wild fish - Lennie John writes: Our initiative aims to protect our waters, our salmon and our other marine resources.

Hiisstalktsawaak – All is one. What we put into our waters affects everything living in the water and everything that depends on it… including us! The fecal output, excess feed and fish diseases and illnesses do far more harm than any financial aid Cermaq offers us can repair.

I asked Lennie John, the first to step onto the farm and who remains there, what is his purpose.

I am fighting to get the fish farms out of our water and we are not going anywhere until they are gone for good!

All fish farms in your territory?

Yes, this new one is just the beginning.

The salmon farming industry has misused the BC coast for 20 years. Today, this is the beginning of the end for this dirty, aggressive little industry. It can move itself into tanks on land, or it can leave, while others work to rebuild the wild salmon and herring and bring prosperity back to this coast.

The Chilean government just made a unprecedented move to disallow salmon farms on part of their coast http://oceana.org/blog/ceo-note-expansion-harmful-salmon-farms-stopped-chilean-patagoniacommunity

I stand with the Ahousaht.

See more at: http://alexandramorton.typepad.com/alexandra_morton/2015/09/the-beginning-of-theend-of-salmon-farming-in-bc.html#sthash.d6L7sNoL.dpuf

Legacy – October 2015 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2015 – Removing Ocean-based Salmon Feedlots

 First Nations blockade Clayoquot Sound salmon farm September 10, 2105 Ahousat, BC - Members of Ahousaht First Nations are currently blockading the attempts of Cermaq to install a new open-net salmon farm at Yaakswiis, north of Tofino BC. On Wednesday Ahousaht members took boats out to the site and prevented Cermaq from anchoring the controversial new farm, which was assembled off-site and towed to Yaakswiis.

“Wild salmon are in decline everywhere salmon feedlots are in operation around the world. We will stop any future activity at this location”, said Tom Paul, an Ahousaht member. “We will stay out there until we are moved—we will be arrested if need be” he added.

The Ahousaht Fish Farm Committee strongly opposed any fish farms at the Yaakswiis location, due to concerns about proximity to rich seafood resources such as clam beds and wild salmon rivers.

Cermaq is a Norwegian-based corporation recently acquired by Mitsubishi. They currently hold 17 salmon farm tenures in Clayoquot Sound, which was the site of major logging confrontations in 1993.

Cermaq applied in 2014 for two new tenures in Ahousaht First Nations territories. The Department of Fisheries and Oceans approved one application in late July this year, and one was refused.

The salmon farming industry is poised to increase four-fold on the BC coast by 2030. These new applications are the first round of this major expansion.

Legacy – October 2015 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2015 – Removing Ocean-based Salmon Feedlots

 Sea Shepherd Canada issues statement of support for Ahousaht salmon farm blockade near Tofino British Columbia September 18, 2015 Sea Shepherd Canada has issued a statement expressing its full support for the Yaakswiis Ocean Camp, now entering its tenth day occupying a salmon feedlot in Ahousaht First Nation territory in Clayoquot Sound.

The direct action ocean conservation organization is calling upon the federal and provincial governments to revoke all permits for the site, in absence of the consent of the Ahousaht people. Sea Shepherd supporters will be among those in attendance in Vancouver today at a public rally in support of the Yaakswiis occupation.

The rally, “Say NO to Fish Farms and YES to Indigenous Sovereignty” will take place at Main Street and Terminal Avenue today, Friday, September 18, at 4 pm.

The Yaakswiis salmon feedlot site (located approximately 25 km north-northwest of Tofino) is one of four new tenures announced on July 31, 2015 by the BC government, marking the largest expansion of the industry in over a decade. The structure was taken over by members of the Ahousaht First Nation last week as crews from foreign-owned salmon farming giant Cermaq were attempting to anchor the site.

Although a protocol agreement exists between Cermaq and the Ahousaht, the feedlot was installed without the consent of the Ahousaht people and the members of the Yaakswiis Ocean Camp have declared it illegal.

“Without consent from the people of the Ahousaht First Nation, this salmon farm must be removed,” said Sea Shepherd Canada director and veteran crew member, Rod Marining. “The Ahousaht people, like many other coastal First Nations in British Columbia, were promised jobs and prosperity by the salmon farmers. Instead, they have seen just a handful of jobs and watched as wild salmon runs that have sustained their people for generations continue to decline.”

Evidence continues to accumulate showing salmon farms and wild salmon cannot co-exist in the same waters. The problems with salmon farming are well documented and include the transmission of disease and viruses to wild salmon, sea lice infestations and exposure to salmon farm waste laden with pesticides and antibiotics, among other issues.

“While wild salmon are increasingly struggling to deal with the effects of warming oceans due to climate change, we cannot afford to continue to compound that risk by forcing them to swim through toxic salmon farm waste and expose them to disease,” said Marining. “It’s a recipe for disaster.”

The Ahousaht action is a wake up call to all British Columbians that we risk losing our most precious resource, one of the foundations of West Coast culture and a species that underpins our entire coastal ecosystem.

Legacy – October 2015 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2015 – Removing Ocean-based Salmon Feedlots “The stakes are enormous. Fundamentally, the Ahousaht are fighting to defend their indigenous rights and food security, but in defending wild salmon, every British Columbian owes them real a debt of gratitude.”

Cermaq currently holds licenses on 16 other salmon farms in Ahousaht territory.

The full text of the Sea Shepherd Canada statement is below: Sea Shepherd Canada stands in solidarity with the ocean defenders occupying the Yaakswiis salmon farm in Ahousaht First Nation territory in Clayoquot Sound.

Out of respect for the wishes of, and in recognition of the constitutionally protected Aboriginal rights and title of the Ahousaht people, we call upon the Federal and Provincial governments to: •

Immediately revoke any and all permits for the Yaakswiis site; and

• Institute a moratorium on any and all new fish farms, fish farm expansion and relocations in all of Ahousaht territory.

Legacy – October 2015 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2015 – Removing Ocean-based Salmon Feedlots

 Big Agriculture Becomes Big Aquaculture September 14, 2015 On August 17, the privately owned agriculture giant Cargill made the second-biggest acquisition in its 150-year history.

But it didn’t purchase in the grain, meat, poultry, or any of the other traditionally lucrative sectors.

Nope. Cargill is betting that the next hot growth area in farming will come from the sea.

The company plunked down about $1.5 billion for the Norwegian salmon feed producer, EWOS AS. In July, Cargill announced another smaller, $30-million deal with Naturisa to build a shrimp feed facility in Ecuador.

It seems the world’s largest grain trader has suddenly transformed itself into one of the three top aqua-feed producers in the world.

Hot Fish!

The reason behind Cargill’s moves is obvious. Fish farming has quietly become a big business. In fact, farmed fish production exceeded global beef output in volume back in 2010.

Legacy – October 2015 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2015 – Removing Ocean-based Salmon Feedlots Leading the way is salmon. Over the past five years, production of farmed salmon worldwide has soared by a third to 2.5 million metric tons. Much of this growth occurred in China. The country is believed to produce about 62% of the world’s farmed salmon.

More salmon raised means more feed is needed. Demand for salmon feed is expected to climb by 4% to 5% this year and next. That’s a faster clip than any other animal protein, according to Rabobank.

And Cargill is hardly alone in its move into aquaculture and salmon.

In 2014, Japan’s Mitsubishi Corporation (MSBHY) bought Norwegian fishery Cermaq ASA for about $1.4 billion. That made it the world’s number two salmon farmer.

The timing of both purchases looks to be right on the money.

Last year was a key milestone for the aquaculture industry. It was the first time that the consumption of farmed fish globally exceeded that of wild-caught fish. Just three decades ago, farmed fish accounted for a mere 11% of the amount of fish consumed.

That growth will continue to accelerate. By 2030, the World Bank estimates that 62% of all fish eaten will be farm-raised. And since 1980, farmed fish production has grown a spectacular 13-fold.

Legacy – October 2015 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2015 – Removing Ocean-based Salmon Feedlots But it’s not enough. A study from the World Resources Institute said that the world, with more than nine billion people by 2050, will need farmed fish production to more than double by then.

Much of that demand for salmon will come from the world’s growing middle class. The Brookings Institution thinks the middle class will grow by 50% to 3.8 billion people in just 10 years.

The Water Jump In order to meet that demand though, the industry must overcome some hurdles.

One major stumbling block for the industry is the problem of sea lice infestation. The parasite is found in much larger concentrations when fish are penned, as with farming. And it can spread to nearby wild populations.

The lice can weaken the host fish’s immune system, too, making it more susceptible to disease.

In the past, medicines were added to the fish feed, but the lice became resistant. Other measures like chemicals or pesticides in the water led directly to pollution of the surrounding waters.

Now the industry is trying out cleaner fish, such as wrasse and lumpsuckers, to take care of the lice.

These fish naturally feed on the parasites.

“Lice lasers” are also being introduced.

Aquaculture Investment One company leading the way in such preventative practices is the world’s largest producer of farmed salmon and trout, Marine Harvest ASA (MHG).

The company joined the Aquaculture Stewardship Council, which is championed by the World Wildlife Fund.

From a business standpoint, it’s the biggest consolidator in the industry. And it’s adding to its operations both in its home base of Norway as well as Chile. The added capacity allowed Marine Harvest to produce 27% of the world’s farmed salmon last year.

And there’s a nice kicker here for income-oriented investors. The current yield on Marine Harvest is 5.5%. But their dividend isn’t fixed. Its floats, depending on how well the company does.

There’s probably no better pure play in aquaculture than Marine Harvest.

Good investing, Tim Maverick

Legacy – October 2015 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2015 – Removing Ocean-based Salmon Feedlots

It is not yet clear who dumped the salmon and for what reason, but many point at the regional aquaculture industry

 Dumped salmon points at perverted industry September 8, 2015 Locals in the area of Molochny, a village south of Murmansk city, have probably long wondered where the intense stench of rotten fish comes from. This week it became clearer. Tons of distorted salmon is dumped in the area, parts of it bulldozed into the ground, parts located in the open.

According to locals, every week up to eight trucks have dumped fish loads in the area, news site Bloger51reports. Pictures from the site show major volumes of rotting salmon scattered on site.

It still remains unclear where the fish comes from, and the reason for the dumping.

However, the findings published by Bloger51 increases pressure on the regional aquaculture industry, and first of all on Russian Aquaculture, the powerful company operating the lion’s share of fish farms in the area.

As previously reported, local salmon fishermen this summer cried alarm as numerous discoveries of infected wild salmon were made in regional rivers. Suspicions were quickly directed against Russian Aquaculture, however the allegations were rebuffed by the company.

Sources told Bloger51 that the regional aquaculture industry is seriously troubled by infection outbreaks, and that big numbers of fish in spring this year escaped from a fish farm.

Legacy â&#x20AC;&#x201C; October 2015 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2015 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Removing Ocean-based Salmon Feedlots Following the discoveries of infection, Murmansk regional authorities in mid-August decided to introduce a moratorium on salmon fishing in the major rivers and initiated investigations.

The Russian Aquaculture have major plans in Murmansk Oblast and promise regional investments of up to 13 billion rubles.

Production is planned boosted to 21,000 tons in years 2019-2020, four times more than in the period 2014-2015.

However, the ambitious plans have not progressed smoothly. On 18 July, the companyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s new major storage refrigerator facility outside Murmansk burnt to the ground giving material damage of up to 130 million rubles, Vedomosti reports. In addition, the company admits that the outbreak of disease in its salmon farms in the first half of the year have given major economic losses.

According to the newspaper, first half 2015 results from the company show total losses of 325,5 million rubles.

Before 2014, Russian Aquaculture produced only trout. From 2015, the company expanded with salmon and that same year delivered 4500 tons of salmon and 600 ton of trout to the market. The company is owned by Gleb Frank and Maksim Vorobyov, two businessmen closely associated with powerful tycoon Gennady Timchenko and Moscow Governor Andrey Vorobyov.

Legacy – October 2015 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2015 – Removing Ocean-based Salmon Feedlots

 Petition:

Supporters for Blocking Yaakswiis Salmon Farm in Ahousaht

Territory

Three Ahousaht 'Chiefs' have signed off (in 2013 and 2014) on Cermaq's Yaakswiis salmon farm 2km away from the Atleo River and just south of a clam beach.

Ahousaht people were not informed of this farm during the consultation process and now that the Government has granted approval and they have become aware of it, they want to put an end to this farm. The 'endless growth' model that the aquaculture industry is built on is unsustainable in Clayoquot Sound. We are at risk for losing our wild salmon stocks and shellfish beaches. There will be no natural resources to sustain our future generations, nor traditional food sources for them to experience if we allow this to continue.

The Chiefs are supposed to look out for their people, and represent their views and opinions. This is NOT happening in the case of the Yaakswiis farm.

Ahousaht Chiefs have the power to revoke the 'permission' given to Cermaq, but if the Chiefs will not represent their people, the people will take action themselves.

This petition represents Ahousaht members who feel another salmon farm in Clayoquot Sound, only 6km from the mouth of Ahousaht Harbour, 2 km's from the Atleo River, and 1.25 km's from a clam beach, is not in the best interests of the Ahousaht people.

LETTER TO Ahousaht Chiefs Wiikwaak Please do not allow the Yaakswiis salmon farm to go ahead. It is not in the best interests of the Ahousaht people, our waters or our wild fish.

Legacy – October 2015 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2015 – Removing Ocean-based Salmon Feedlots

 Petition Update: Cermaq in Hiding August 28, 2015 Lately we have noticed barges moving from Tofino and heading up Herbert Inlet, the area where one of the two farms proposed for Clayoquot Sound was denied. We were curious why they were heading up this way with floats and walkways, when no new anchors had been set out, and nothing has developed at Yaakswiis.

Interestingly enough, as we rounded the point before Whitepine Cove (Ahousaht’s main clamming site) we found an entire 8 pen farm in the last stages of construction. (We have since learned that Yaakswiis is intended to be a 12 pen farm, nearly double the size of most farms in Clayoquot Sound). Floats and walkways were bolted together and the barge was just loading up to leave. We politely asked the three Cermaq employees where this farm was slated to be put, but they have been instructed not to talk or engage with the public.

They refused to answer or even raise their heads. This tactic is one companies use when they are running scared. They know they have opposition and they know they are doing wrong in the eyes of the public. The other interesting thing was the location chose for the construction. There is a long tow between Whitepine and Yaakswiis, but Whitepine is not visible from the main waterway as Yaakswiis is. They are hiding like cowards.

Litter from their construction was floating near the pens. Pieces of rope had fallen off the barge. We picked up what we could find, but it saddens us that the farms not only pollute while they are in operation, but also while they are being built. In a pristine and culturally significant area. We question whether their permit to operate at Yaakswiis also gave them permission to construct in this area?

Ahousaht members we talked to had no idea they would be using Whitepine at any stage and are quite upset that it is being used in this way.

Campaigners against this farm were planning on speaking at the Ahousaht AGM, which was scheduled for this weekend, but has since been postponed… Again! We ask that the farms operations and further construction be halted until the Ahousaht Muschim (People) can discuss this with their chiefs and the matter be settled. Until then, there is great disrespect being shown to the Ahousaht people, from both the Chiefs and Cermaq.

Legacy – October 2015 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2015 – Removing Ocean-based Salmon Feedlots

 Group threatens to sue over farmed salmon in Puget Sound August 25, 2015 SEATTLE (AP) — A conservation group says it intends to sue the federal government for allowing farm-raised salmon in Puget Sound.

Wild Fish Conservancy sent a letter Tuesday to the National Marine Fisheries Service and the Environmental Protection Agency, giving them a required 60-day notice of intent to sue. The organization says the agencies failed to fully assess the danger of floating pens of non-native Atlantic salmon to protected wild salmon runs, including chinook and Hood Canal chum salmon as well as steelhead. Wild Fish Conservancy says that violates the Endangered Species Act.

Legacy – October 2015 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2015 – Removing Ocean-based Salmon Feedlots The organization says there are eight net-pens operating in Puget Sound that annually raise 10 million pounds of Atlantic salmon, but those fish can and have spread disease to wild salmon.

A spokesman for the EPA said it does not comment on pending litigation, and the fisheries service did not immediately return a call seeking comment.

O Orriig giin na all P Prre essss R Re elle ea asse e::

Environmental Protection Agency & National Marine Fisheries Service Violating Endangered Species Act Aug 25, 2015 WILD FISH CONSERVANCY PO Box 402 Duvall, WA 98019 · Tel 425-788-1167 · Fax 425-788-9634 · info@wildfishconservancy.org Contact: Kurt Beardslee, Wild Fish Conservancy, 425-788-1167 Brian Knutsen, Kampmeier & Knutsen, PLLC, 503-841-6515 Today, Wild Fish Conservancy sent a 60-day Notice of Intent to sue the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) for violations of the Endangered Species Act (ESA) associated with the agencies’ evaluation of the harmful effects to threatened salmonids from commercial salmon farming in Puget Sound.

In 2008, EPA consulted with NMFS under section 7 of the ESA on the effects of revisions to Washington Sediment Management Standards intended to enable commercial salmon farms in Puget Sound to be permitted under the Clean Water Act. Despite the known harm and significant risks these facilities pose to wild salmonids, NMFS determined that EPA’s action is not likely to adversely affect protected species. The ESA consultation thus concluded without preparation of a biological opinion that would fully evaluate the effects of salmon farms and impose monitoring and other requirements designed to protect wild salmonids.

Wild Fish Conservancy challenged the 2008 consultation as insufficient under the ESA. The Court found the 2008 consultation inadequate and set aside EPA’s approval of the revised Sediment Management Standards and further ordered EPA and NMFS to reconsider whether preparation of a biological opinion is required.

EPA reinitiated ESA consultation with NMFS in 2010. Remarkably, NMFS again determined that the Puget Sound commercial salmon farms are not likely to adversely affect threatened salmonids and declined to prepare a biological opinion.

Legacy – October 2015 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2015 – Removing Ocean-based Salmon Feedlots In May of 2012, there was a major outbreak of the infectious hematopoietic necrosis virus (IHNV) at the commercial salmon complexes near Rich Passage at the southern end of Bainbridge Island. The outbreak occurred at a time when juvenile salmonids were migrating through the nearshore environment near the commercial salmon facilities. It can hardly be disputed that this disease outbreak adversely affected threatened salmonids—or, at a minimum, demonstrates that commercial salmon farms in Puget Sound may adversely affect ESA-listed species.

“Atlantic salmon farms pose an unacceptable health risk to ESA-listed wild salmon in Puget Sound,” said Kurt Beardslee, executive director of Wild Fish Conservancy. “By not fully evaluating the impacts of these farms, EPA and NMFS are in clear violation of the Endangered Species Act.” The groups are represented by Kampmeier & Knutsen, PLLC, in Seattle, WA and Portland, OR. - Court Filing: 60 Day Notice of Intent to Sue Letter, August 25, 2015 ###

R RE EL LA AT TE ED D::

American Gold Seafood's ocean pens in Port Angeles are unaffected so far.

 Virus forces Peninsula company to destroy salmon stock May 27, 2012

Legacy – October 2015 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2015 – Removing Ocean-based Salmon Feedlots PORT ANGELES — A deadly fish virus known to affect wild salmon has hit a Peninsula fish farm, forcing American Gold Seafoods to kill the entire stock of Atlantic salmon it had at its Bainbridge Island site, and triggering concerns of a possible spread of the disease among fish in the Salish Sea. Tests earlier this month confirmed the presence of an influenza-like virus called infectious hematopoietic necrosis, or IHN, in the fish contained in 2 acres of nets near the shores of Bainbridge Island.

The virus does not affect humans but occurs in wild sockeye salmon and can be carried by other fish, such as herring, that sometimes pass through fish net pens, affecting the farmed fish.

It first appeared in two British Columbia fish farms, forcing the destruction of almost 600,000 fish, the Kitsap Sun reported.

Tests on the Bainbridge fish came back positive for the virus this month, after fish farm employees noticed a higher than usual die-off in April.

American Gold Seafoods, affiliated with Icicle Seafoods of Seattle, operates two hatcheries near Rochester, and has 120 pens off Port Angeles, Bainbridge Island, Cypress Island and Hope Island in Puget Sound.

The company's Port Angeles pens are on Ediz Hook, near the Coast Guard Air Station/Sector Field Office Port Angeles.

No company representatives answered phones at the Port Angeles hatchery Sunday, but the company websitewww.americangoldseafoods.com lists the pens at Port Angeles as being “juvenile pens.”

John Kerwin, fish health supervisor for the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, said the virus is a big concern.

“Any first time it occurs, you don't fully understand the impact to wild fish,” Kerwin said.

“We know it can impact (farm) fish. If we move fast, we can try to minimize the amplification.”

American Gold Seafoods plans to remove more than a million pounds of Atlantic salmon from infected net pens in Rich Passage off the southern tip of Bainbridge Island.

“It's a very, very big loss for us,” Alan Cook, Icicle's vice president of aquaculture said. “We'll clean up and start again.”

The company plans to remove all dead or dying fish by the end of June. Nets from 2 acres' worth of pens will be removed and disinfected. The fish farm could be running again in four months.

Cook said the company has increased monitoring of net pens in Clam Bay near Manchester in Puget Sound, which is about a half-mile from the infected pens.

The recent outbreaks have prompted Washington-based Wild Fish Conservancy to call for tougher testing rules and limits on net pen salmon aquaculture.

Even though the virus occurs naturally in Northwest salmon, the group worries that densely packed fish farms can amplify the virus' spread, foster its mutation and infect wild fish that pass in or near the pens.

Legacy – October 2015 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2015 – Removing Ocean-based Salmon Feedlots Cook said his company is taking the virus seriously. Its plan to remove all the farm's fish is not required by law, he said.

“It's good husbandry to limit the risk to other fish,” he said. “We're not letting the situation sit and fester and then explode.”

Adding another disease outbreak to the list of threats to wild salmon concerns local fishermen.

“They have enough problems right now,” said Curtis Reed, manager of the Waters West Fly Fishing Outfitters in Port Angeles.

Local fishermen are more concerned with the sea lice problem in salmon, which is concentrated by the salmon in pens and then can infect young wild salmon as they pass by the pens on their way out to sea, Reed said.

“Wild fish are unique and pretty special,” he said.

Legacy – October 2015 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2015 – Removing Ocean-based Salmon Feedlots

 Stephen Harper makes wild salmon a BC election issue Social media gaffe suggests government priority is farmed, not wild salmon, says biologist August 24, 2015 Sointula -- Stephen Harpers’ recent announcement of $15 million for wild salmon habitat restoration was met with ridicule on social media after a Facebook gaffe highlighted Harper disastrous record on wild salmon.

A post to Harper’s Facebook site featuring the Conservative party logo to promote the campaign initiative erred in one critical detail: they used the wrong fish, an Atlantic salmon, the fish of choice of the controversial salmon farming industry in BC. “Perhaps if Harper hadn’t fired or muzzled all of his scientists, they could have helped him get this right,” said biologist Alexandra Morton.

“This government has shown time and time again that it places higher priority on the foreign-owned Atlantic feedlots; more than our precious wild salmon,” said Morton, “in fact they are shameless about it.”

As evidence, Morton points to the Harper government’s decision to join with Norwegian-based salmon farming giant Marine Harvest to appeal her recent Federal Court decision (Morton vs. Marine Harvest) prohibiting transfer of diseased-carrying farmed salmon into BC marine waters.

“With rivers warming, our wild salmon are more vulnerable than ever to disease,” says Morton. “Why on earth would a government go to court to expose them to more disease? I can only assume Canada has given up on its wild fisheries in favour of the foreign-owned salmon farming industry and that poster says it all.”

While a photo of a Pacific salmon has now replaced the salmon photo in question, the gaffe places the BC Atlantic salmon farming industry in the election crosshairs. There have been over 700 shares of the image on Morton’s public profile Facebook page where it has reached 57,000 people.

The salmon farmers using BC waters have received a number of exceptional gifts from the Harper government this year. Minister of Fisheries, Gail Shea, enacted new regulations allowing them to use pesticides previously banned under the Fisheries Act, due to their potential to kill wild fish. The industry was offered much longer licenses -- up to 9 years and the scandal-ridden Senate recommended that aquaculture double in size in Canada. In late July, the Provincial government followed Harper’s lead, granting 4 new farm sites, the largest expansion of the industry in over 15 years ignoring a petition of over 110,000 signatures calling for no expansion.

Legacy – October 2015 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2015 – Removing Ocean-based Salmon Feedlots “What Harper got right is that British Columbians care a lot about wild salmon,” says Morton, “I look forward to the other parties getting over their fear of offending the salmon farming industry and standing up for what British Columbians want.”

According to Harper’s $37 million Cohen Commission which dedicated 11/75 recommendations to salmon farms, where spread of disease is the issue getting salmon farms off wild salmon migration routes may be the single greatest benefit any government could offer British Columbia’s wild salmon.

All indications suggest the Fraser sockeye maybe in trouble again this year, while once again sockeye stocks not exposed to salmon farms are thriving (Port Alberni).

In 2014, wild salmon, through both commercial and recreational fisheries, contributed over 9,800 jobs and $334.8 million to the provincial economy. In contrast, salmon farming contributed only about 1,700 jobs and $58.5 million to BC GDP the same year.

Contact: Alexandra Morton 250-974-7086.

Please also visit Alex's Facebook Page for more information.

Legacy – October 2015 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2015 – Removing Ocean-based Salmon Feedlots

Energy Generation: Oil, Coal, Geothermal, Hydropower, Natural Gas, Solar, Tidal, Wind

Legacy – October 2015 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2015 – Removing Ocean-based Salmon Feedlots

Petroleum – Drilled, Refined, Tar Sands, Fracked

 Petropolis - Rape and pillage of Canada and Canadians for toxic bitumen Watch video HERE

Legacy – October 2015 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2015 – Removing Ocean-based Salmon Feedlots

Legacy – October 2015 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2015 – Removing Ocean-based Salmon Feedlots

 Petition: Join the Roar Stand with Emma Thompson, Audrey Siegl, other activists and Aurora the giant polar bear in opposition to Shell’s oil drilling in the Arctic

Legacy – October 2015 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2015 – Removing Ocean-based Salmon Feedlots

 Kinder Morgan Should Pay to Clean up its Oil Spills

Legacy – October 2015 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2015 – Removing Ocean-based Salmon Feedlots

 Hoquiam finalizes crude oil ban September 15, 2015

Legacy – October 2015 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2015 – Removing Ocean-based Salmon Feedlots The Hoquiam City Council unanimously passed an ordinance banning any crude oil storage facilities for the foreseeable future — a move that’s caused mixed reactions from both sides of the issue, but for some marks the end to a chapter of a Harbor-wide debate.

The decision at Monday’s meeting came with no discussion from the council, but 10 “yes” votes.

Councilmen Ben Winkelman and Kevin Swope were absent.

“I think everybody’s just kind of tired of it,” said Mayor Jack Durney after the council’s Monday night meeting.

Durney’s memorandum to the council in early March imploring members to vote in a six-month moratorium on the facilities ignited a six-month process to reach an ordinance that theoretically bans the facilities for good. The council passed that moratorium nearly unanimously at the council meeting immediately following Durney’s memorandum.

Since then, the council has run through several iterations of an ordinance, with the most notable changes surrounding how the law defined “crude oil.” The council last month narrowed its decision to two drafts with different definitions. The city’s hearings examiner provided his own, which the council ultimately voted for, with some minor changes.

The final ordinance defines a land use for “bulk crude oil storage and handling facilities,” but then avoids listing that land use in any of the city’s four zones, effectively not allowing it anywhere in the city.

The ordinance does not apply to several facilities currently proposed for Port property. The city, officials have said, cannot retroactively ban certain facilities that have already filed permit applications.

Port officials, throughout the process, expressed concern over the ordinance’s language, worried loosely worded language would inadvertently prevent companies involved with other types of oil from developing in the region.

Port spokeswoman Kayla Dunlap said the Port was pleased with the ordinance’s final language, adding that Port officials hoped it wouldn’t scare off potential developers.

“We appreciate them being precise with the language that they chose,” Dunlap said.

“We feel like they did a good job of clarifying their intent.”

Others, like Citizens for a Clean Harbor member Arnie Martin, questioned the city’s willingness to change language at the Port’s behest, specifically one suggestion that struck the word “pipeline,” therefore allowing pipelines.

Durney denied that the city worked as “puppets” to the Port, adding that banning all “pipelines” could inadvertently ban certain types of pipes necessary to transfer liquids of various types throughout a facility.

“We haven’t done things just because the Port wanted us to,” he said. “I think they had legitimate concerns because they’re in the economic development business and they deal with companies all the time trying to improve the waterfront and waterborne commerce.”

Legacy – October 2015 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2015 – Removing Ocean-based Salmon Feedlots Durney also noted that Renewable Energy Group — the Iowa-based company that purchased Imperium Renewables in August — had no other crude-oil facilities on their other properties.

“I’m hopeful that they find that it doesn’t fit their corporate vision,” the mayor said.

Renewable Energy Group directors, at the company’s Monday-afternoon ribbon-cutting, shied away from saying they were “moving forward” with the prospects of crude oil, instead saying they were still “reviewing” them.

Durney, who’s said in the past that the ordinance would help define the city’s future, said passing it was “significant.”

“I think it’s a real feeling of accomplishment,” he said. “It’s something that all of us who are here on the council and the staff and myself can feel like we did a good job and we did it properly.”

Legacy – October 2015 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2015 – Removing Ocean-based Salmon Feedlots

 Researchers may have found link between Exxon Valdez spill and decline in fish September 8, 2015 Federal scientists in the United States may have found a link between the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill and a decline of herring and pink salmon populations in Prince William Sound.

In a study published Tuesday in the online journal Scientific Reports, researchers from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration found that embryonic salmon and herring exposed to even very low levels of crude oil can develop heart defects.

Legacy – October 2015 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2015 – Removing Ocean-based Salmon Feedlots Herring and pink salmon juveniles that were exposed to crude oil as embryos grew slower and swam slower, making them vulnerable to predators, said John Incardona, a research toxicologist at NOAA Fisheries’ Northwest Fisheries Science Center in Seattle, in a prepared statement “These juvenile fish on the outside look completely normal, but their hearts are not functioning properly and that translates directly into reduced swimming ability and reduced survival,” Incardona said. “In terms of impacts to shore-spawning fish, the oil spill likely had a much bigger footprint than anyone realized.”

The 986-foot Exxon Valdez struck a charted Bligh Reef at 12:04 am March 24, 1989, spilling 11 million gallons of crude oil. At the time, it was the largest spill in U.S. history. Oil extensively fouled shoreline spawning habitat of herring and pink salmon, the two most important commercial fish species in Prince William Sound.

Fish larvae sampled close to high concentrations of oil were found with abnormalities. Little was known in the early 1990s, however, about effects of low-level crude oil exposure on fish in early life stages, according to the study.

Pink salmon declined but recovered. The herring population collapsed three to four years after the Exxon Valdez ran aground and the role of the spill, NOAA Fisheries scientists acknowledged, remains controversial.

The silvery fish is a key species because it is eaten by salmon, seabirds and marine mammals from otters to whales. Four years after the spill, the estimated herring population based on modeling shrunk from 120 metric tons to less than 30 metric tons.

For their study, the scientists temporarily exposed herring and salmon embryos to low levels of Alaska North Slope crude oil before placing them back into clean water. They found that thresholds for harm were “remarkably low,” suggesting that the effects of spilled Exxon Valdez crude was much greater than previously thought.

According to water samples collected in Prince William Sound during the 1989 herring spawning season, 98 per cent of the samples had oil concentrations above the level that caused heart development problems among herring in the study.

Scientists used swimming speed as a measure of cardiorespiratory fitness. Fish exposed to the highest levels of oil swam slowest, likely making them easier targets for predators, the scientists said.

“We now know the developing fish heart is exquisitely sensitive to crude oil toxicity, and that subtle changes in heart formation can have delayed but important consequences for first-year survival, which in turn determines the long-term abundance of wild fish populations,” said Nat Scholz, leader of the NOAA’s Northwest Fisheries Science Center in Seattle.

If most herring spawned in 1989 near oiled shorelines developed heart defects, the mortality when they were juveniles would have resulted in far fewer adults joining the population. That could have explained the collapse four years after the spill when those adults would have matured and spawned.

Incardona said the findings should contribute to more accurate assessments of the effects of future spills.

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 WARNING: Oil money is extremely addictive

Legacy – October 2015 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2015 – Removing Ocean-based Salmon Feedlots

Burnaby Mayor Derek Corrigan.

 BREAKING: Burnaby formally asks NEB to cancel Kinder Morgan hearing September 4, 2015 In the City of Burnaby’s strongest worded letter yet to the National Energy Board, the B.C. municipality has formally urged the pipeline regulator to cancel and restart the entire Kinder Morgan hearing process, citing extraordinary conflict of interest concerns — especially following the hire of the company's consultant to the NEB. As the National Observer broke on Aug.1, the Harper government appointed Calgary-based oil executive Mr. Steven Kelly precisely as national media attention was diverted by the impending start of the Prime Minister's federal election call.

Legacy – October 2015 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2015 – Removing Ocean-based Salmon Feedlots Controversially, Kelly's consulting firm was also hired two years earlier by Kinder Morgan, when he wrote and submitted an economic report to the NEB to justify the $5.4-billion Trans Mountain pipeline expansion proposal. Kelly will soon sit on the NEB's board in October just as other board members will deliberate on whether Kinder Morgan’s $5.4 billion oil sands pipeline is in Canada’s economic and environmental interest.

The city’s lawyer, Gregory McDade, says Kelly’s hire means the whole pipeline hearing must now be thrown out to "erase the perception of bias" toward Kinder Morgan.

"Burnaby is of the view that the review process for the project has been irrevocably tainted by [his] appointment,” the lawyer wrote in a Sept.4 letter now on the NEB website. “[The pipeline hearing] must start again from the beginning with the appointment of a new panel in order to cure what the board has referred to as “concerns about the integrity of this hearing process,” he added.

Kinder Morgan said Friday that a new energy consulting firm, Muse Stancil & Co., will prepare a new report to replace Kelly’s evidence.

"Trans Mountain is prepared to submit the Muse Stancil report by Sept. 25. However, it is ultimately up to the NEB to determine the revised regulatory process for our application,” wrote company spokesperson Ali Hounsell.

Kinder Morgan hearing likely after the election now The board says it will respond to Burnaby's request letter to nix the hearing, once the company has had its chance to comment.

But following the outcry from the Kelly appointment (the National Observer story got more than 29,000 Facebook shares), the board said it took appropriate action to "strike the evidence prepared

by Mr. Kelly from the hearing record." The public hearings are now delayed as a result.

Burnaby city councilor Sav Dhaliwal said Kelly's appointment was the “last straw” in the city's nearly two year battle over the pipeline, that has even the Mayor promising to get arrested to stop it. The councillor even suggested the Conservative government may have deliberately appointed Kelly to force the NEB to delay the hearing until after the election when it would cause less embarrassment.

“By the way they’ve been rigging this process, I think they did this to not have this [pipeline hearing] in the limelight," said Councillor Dhaliwall.

Legacy – October 2015 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2015 – Removing Ocean-based Salmon Feedlots “Particularly because the Conservative government was already in the headlines for the Senate scandal — the last thing they wanted was to take attention away from their [campaign] platform and announcements and on to this hearing," he added.

The hearings this month were expected to draw huge protests over the project, just as the pipeline did on Burnaby Mountain last November. Crowds as large as 800 gathered, and more than 100 citizens were arrested in protest of the company's drill tests.

Dustin Rivers from Squamish Nation (Skwxwú7mesh-Kwakwaka'wakw) gives a speech to the 800plus-crowd that showed up on Burnaby Mountain just prior to the arrest clashes in November 2014.

Legacy – October 2015 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2015 – Removing Ocean-based Salmon Feedlots 'You [NEB] clowns have d**ked us around' Burnaby city councilor, Nick Volkow, also said very colourfully on Friday that the 20 months that the city has spent reviewing Kelly's evidence has been a huge waste of taxpayer money —possibly more than one million dollars.

"You clowns have [expletive] us around for so long, and we've spent so much friggin' money on this, and you had such a rigged system at play, that we'd like our [taxpayer] money back," said councillor Volkow.

A lawyer for an anti-pipeline group called Pipe Up has also formally written the NEB to cancel and restart the hearing, citing similar concerns as the city.

Mayor Derek Corrigan, who is currently in Japan, told the Burnaby Now recently that the NEB’s chair, Peter Watson, very likely would have known about the controversial appointment of Kelly by the federal Conservatives, but did not stop it. Watson just completed a cross-country PR tour to present its message that the board applies strict requirements to make sure a pipeline protects Canadians and the environment.

The council for the leafy suburban city, home to 220,000 and next to Vancouver, has long said the pipeline expansion endangers the safety of its citizens and threaten conservation areas. Fire officials have also cited seismic and emergency response concerns in oil pipeline disaster scenarios. The company has countered that its project is safe, and will be built to world-class environmental standards.

Pipeline politics in federal election The Conservative Party, the Minister of Natural Resources, and the PMO were asked to provide a comment on this story Friday, but have so far not responded.

Meanwhile, NDP leader Tom Mulcair recently told the National Observer in a sit down interview: “You cannot approve Kinder Morgan, any other pipeline for that matter, because Stephen Harper has gutted the environmental legislation to allow the public to see if there had been a thorough, credible evaluation and assessment of a project —that’s not the case anymore.”

"We’d make sure we’d put back a system that Canadians could have confidence in —like I did when I was the provincial minister of the environment —and I would make sure it was enforced rigorously,” Mulcair added.

Liberals and Greens have similarly pledged to overhaul Canada's environmental review system for oil pipelines.

Legacy – October 2015 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2015 – Removing Ocean-based Salmon Feedlots

Pipeline construction workers.

Legacy – October 2015 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2015 – Removing Ocean-based Salmon Feedlots

The area shaded in red, lower left, is the site of the proposed oil refinery. The area shaded in blue, lower middle, the site of the proposed propane/butane export facility

 More than oil: Texas firm pitches propane export at Port of Longview September 3, 2015 A Houston-based company Wednesday unveiled plans for a dramatically expanded energy project on private property at the Port of Longview.

In addition to a previously announced $800 million oil refinery, Waterside Energy revealed it wants to build a separate $450 million liquid propane export facility.

The total investment would be $1.25 billion and would create 700 construction jobs and 180 direct jobs once the facilities went online, Riverside officials said.

“Longview has the mentality that ‘We can get the job done’, we want to invest in the community,” said Lou Soumas, Waterside Energy CEO told The Daily News editorial board.

Wednesday evening, Soumas and other Waterside officials described the projects to an estimated 200 people at the Cowlitz Expo Center. The company has not yet started to seek permits for the project.

Legacy – October 2015 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2015 – Removing Ocean-based Salmon Feedlots Both proposed projects would be built on private property totaling 75 acres: One parcel is owned by Fern America, another owned by N.A.P. Steel. The locations are slightly different from those announced earlier.

Waterside already has a contract with N.A.P. Steel, contingent on a successful deal with the port, to buy the land and then lease it back to N.A.P. for the two-year construction period. The steel company is currently looking to relocate in Longview, said Danny Younce, N.A.P. general manager.

The only part of the Waterside project the Port would have jurisdiction over is an underground pipeline, a rail corridor and a wharf that would be needed to ship petroleum products.

The project in no way infringes on the port’s “laydown” yard, and cargo handling area that union dockworkers defended from encroachment by the proposed Haven Energy butane and export terminal.

Riverside’s newly proposed liquid petroleum (LPG) gas export facility is dubbed “Washington Energy Storage and Transfer” (WEST). It could receive up to 75,000 barrels per day of butane and propane.

Every month, about 29 pressurized rail trains would carry propane and butane from Canada and North Dakota to Longview. The trains would use the port’s rail corridor and avoid all street crossings.

Once delivered, the propane would be chilled and stored in refrigerated tanks, which Waterside said is a safer method of storage than pressurized tanks. Eventually it would be exported to Asia by four ships every month.

The LPG project will be a 50/50 venture with a yet-to-be-named partner, Soumas said.

Waterside’s proposed propane export facility would actually be larger than the Haven project, which port commissioners rejected this spring.

Soumas said his company is very different from Haven.

“We were watching (Haven) from the sidelines and sort of scratching our heads,” he said.

Riverside proposed oil refinery would process 45,000 barrels per day of oil — 15,000 barrels of vegetable seed oils and 30,000 barrels of crude oil. Most of that product will be sold into the greater Portland market.

The company says about 10, mile-long “unit” trains would deliver light Midwestern crude oil to the Longview project each month. (This means the two project components combined will bring about 39 trains a month to the area.)

Riverside Refining would increase the amount of renewable fuels produced in the region by 235 percent, according to the company, and would meet low-carbon fuel standards that could potentially be adopted in Washington.

Soumas said combining both renewable and crude oil at the plant is necessary because investors aren’t interested in renewable fuels alone, and the crude oil component was too small to stand by itself.

“We can’t do one without the other at this point. The market won’t let us,” Soumas.

An environmental group questioned how green the project truly is though.

Legacy – October 2015 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2015 – Removing Ocean-based Salmon Feedlots “I see the biofuels component as a public front for what is simply a new oil refinery on the Columbia River,” said Columbia Riverkeeper organizer Jasmine Zimmer-Stucky.

She also raised concerns about potential exclusion zones around ships, and about the cumulative impact of “far more unit trains” coming through the region.

Soumas said his company would only accept “stable, low vapor” crude removed of volatile components to lower the risks associated with crude-by-rail.

Port Commissioner Bob Bagaason said Wednesday “there are so many positives” to Waterside’s proposed projects.

“If something this huge comes in, it’s going to change the port,” Bagaason said.

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ď ś US Senator Maria Cantwell: Prohibition against the export of domestic crude oil

Dear Mr. Wilcox, Thank you for contacting me about the prohibition against the export of domestic crude oil. I appreciate hearing from you on this important issue.

As you may know, in response to a 1973 oil embargo from Arab countries- which significantly raised U.S. gasoline prices - the U.S. Congress enacted the Energy Policy and Conservation Act of 1975.

This legislation outlawed most domestic crude oil exports. A provision in the law allows for the president to alter the ban if it is deemed to be in the nation's interest.

While I have focused on ways to provide relief at the pump in the short-term, we also need to focus on lasting long-term solutions. America simply does not have enough supply to impact global prices significantly; that is even more clear today since U.S. oil production is at its highest levels in eight years. The Energy Information Administration, the independent statistical arm of the U.S. Department of Energy, concluded that even the most comprehensive drilling proposals, which entail oil production off every coastline in the United States, would only decrease the price of gasoline by three cents per gallon-and not until 2030. Canada and Britain both produce more oil than they need but still suffer from the same surge in world gas prices.

In this environment of short-term vulnerability to world oil price spikes and long-term vulnerability to oil supply shortages, I am very concerned about the effects of lifting the crude oil export ban. That is why, along with Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR), I recently sent a letter to the Department of Energy's Energy Information Administration asking it to investigate the impacts lifting the ban would have on American consumers.

I also have concerns about the safety of moving additional volumes of crude oil across the state.

Incidents like the tragic 2010 Tesoro refinery explosion in our home state of Washington and the recent accidents involving crude oil transported by railroad remind us that oil can be dangerous if not handled correctly. Please be assured that as a member of the U.S. Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources I will keep your thoughts in mind as we explore opportunities and challenges associated with lifting the crude oil export ban.

Thank you again for contacting me to share your thoughts on this matter. Please do not hesitate to contact me in the future if I can be of further assistance.

Sincerely, Maria Cantwell United States Senator

Legacy – October 2015 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2015 – Removing Ocean-based Salmon Feedlots

 Draft

environmental reports released for crude-by-rail projects in Grays Harbor Public can comment through Oct. 29

HOQUIAM – The Washington Department of Ecology and the city of Hoquiam have released draft Environmental Impact Statements for the Westway and Imperium crude oil-by-rail expansion projects in Grays Harbor county, and are inviting the public to comment.

Starting today, the public will have 60 days to comment on the draft Environmental Impact Statements (EIS). This expanded comment period includes two days of public hearings, Oct. 1 in Elma and Oct. 8 in Aberdeen, as well as comments submitted online and by mail.

Ecology and Hoquiam served as co-lead agencies to study the proposals, looking at potential environmental impacts. The two projects are separate, but were studied together for efficiency. Once finalized after the comment periods, the city of Hoquiam, Ecology and other local, state, and federal agencies will use the final EISs in their permitting decisions.

“The draft studies evaluate impacts and risks, and now it’s time for the community to review and offer their perspective,” said Paula Ehlers, shorelands and environmental assistance section manager for Ecology’s Southwest Regional Office.

The draft EISs include studies of the natural and built environments, recreation, historic and cultural preservation, and tribal resources. For transportation, the studies looked at rail traffic, noise and vibration, vessel traffic, and vehicle traffic and safety. In the environmental health chapter, the studies analyzed the risks and potential impacts of spills, fires and explosions.

“The partnership between Ecology and the City of Hoquiam brings together the local knowledge and state perspective to form a thorough consideration of impacts,” said Brian Shay, city administrator for the city of Hoquiam.

The public can download the studies as well as multiple fact sheets with overviews of key issues at www.ecy.wa.gov/GraysHarbor. The factsheets include:

    

Air Plants and Animals Historic and Cultural Preservation Tribal Resources Recreation

    

Legacy – October 2015 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2015 – Removing Ocean-based Salmon Feedlots Rail Traffic Vehicle Traffic and Safety Vessel Traffic Crude Oil, Environmental Health and Safety Noise

The comment period ends Oct. 29, and the final EIS will be prepared after all comments have been reviewed.

Public hearings and open houses: Oct. 1 – Satsop Technical Park, Elma, 1 p.m. to 9 p.m.

Oct. 8 – D&R Theater, Aberdeen, 1 p.m. to 9 p.m.

Presentations will begin at 1 p.m. and 5:30 p.m., with open houses and hearings officers available throughout the entire day.

Comments can be submitted online at https://public.commentworks.com/cwx/westwayimperiumcommentform or mailed to: Westway and Imperium Terminal Services Expansion Projects EISs c/o ICF International 710 Second Street, Suite 550 Seattle, WA 98104 Contact: Chase Gallagher, communications, 360-407-6239, @ECYSW Brian Shay, City of Hoquiam, 360-581-3815

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The near tripling of the capacity of the Westridge Terminal would mean an estimated 520 tankers a year that must pass through the Second Narrows in Burrard Inlet, in what is considered by many the riskiest oil-tanker passage in the world.

 We will not earn Greenest City title if we are West Coast’s major tar sands-oil port Despite losing faith in the NEB's hearing on the Trans Mountain Pipeline Expansion Project, Vancouver city councillor Adriane Carr is compelled to participate in order to register her strong opposition.

August 25, 2015

Legacy – October 2015 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2015 – Removing Ocean-based Salmon Feedlots The following is Vancouver City Councillor Adriane Carr's official Aug. 18 Letter of Comment to the National Energy Board (NEB) Review Panel on Kinder Morgan's Trans Mountain Pipeline expansion proposal.

I am participating in this hearing with trepidation. I have lost faith in the National Energy Board in general, and in your hearing on the Trans Mountain Pipeline Expansion Project in particular.

Failure to consider the broader impacts that this project will have on greenhouse gas emissions is unconscionable and tragic in the light of scientifically-verified and rapidly accelerating global warming (think of the droughts, fires and heat waves in B.C. and Canada this summer). Considering the vast quantities of fossil fuels that the proposed Kinder Morgan Trans-Mountain pipeline expansion project is intended to deliver over its lifetime, its negative impacts on carbon emissions are relevant and are of both Canadian and global significance.

Besides not weighing the overriding climate consequences of the project, your board has done much to limit discussion by not allowing verbal cross examination of witnesses by interveners and by siding with the company’s decision to not fully reveal pertinent information about spill clean up preparedness. Your decision to allow Kinder Morgan to withhold such information is particularly egregious given that authorities in Washington State — but not Canada — have been given the information. Such actions contribute to making this hearing a sham. The public has good reason to be cynical. Like many, I believe that no matter what I or anyone else presents to you at these hearings, you are going to approve the project. How tragic for democracy.

Notwithstanding the frustrations I express above, I cannot boycott this hearing. I feel that it is my duty and responsibility to act in whatever way I can to protect the interests the citizens of Vancouver — where I serve as a city councillor — and my children and those in the future who will have to live with the decisions being made today. Here are my comments for your thoughtful consideration.

I was born in Vancouver, am married and have two grown children who live in Vancouver, too. I own a condo in Vancouver’s West End, a few blocks from English Bay and Stanley Park. My husband and I chose to invest here because of its proximity to the beaches that I played on daily every summer as a child, and the globally-renowned seawall and park that we use regularly. On a personal level, my quality of life and my property value would be negatively impacted should a spill of diluted bitumen occur either during transport in our harbour or at Westridge Terminal.

Both as a Geographer (MA, UBC) and as a former member of the executive team at Western Canada Wilderness Committee, which participated in the clean-up of the 1988 bunker C oil spill from a barge off Washington State that fouled some of the beaches in Clayoquot Sound, I understand the potential of tides and currents to spread an oil spill and how difficult it is to clean up even only a small percentage of it. Perhaps 15 per cent can be recovered under ideal conditions. The rest persists over many years, with negative impacts on water, marine life, shorelines, and beaches.

Legacy – October 2015 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2015 – Removing Ocean-based Salmon Feedlots I understand, too, the disastrous negative socio-economic impacts that a spill can have. As a coauthor of the Globe 90 Sustainable Tourism Strategy and former lead campaigner with the Wilderness Committee, I have expertise in the field of eco-tourism, which relies on maintaining a pristine natural environment. As Vancouver’s first elected Green Party city councillor (re-elected at the top of the polls in 2014) I am deeply concerned about the potential impacts — both short and long-term — of an oil spill on the health of Vancouver citizens and on our city’s reputation and economic well-being.

Our local economy is highly dependent on a thriving tourism industry.

The long term impacts of a spill — especially of thick, heavy bitumen which sinks to depths where clean-up is virtually impossible — are now well known after the Kalamazoo River spill in Michigan which is still not cleaned up. Vancouver is striving to be the world’s Greenest City. This goal will be unachievable if we become the West Coast’s major Tar Sands oil port.

The danger of a spill is real. The near tripling of the capacity of the Westridge Terminal would mean an estimated 10 tankers a week: 520 tankers a year that must pass through the Second Narrows in Burrard Inlet, in what is considered by many the riskiest oil-tanker passage in the world. The big tankers carrying 500,000 and 700,000 barrels of bitumen must leave at high tide. At high tide there are only about two metres of draft under the keel. The waters in this narrow passage are swift and turbulent and the tide drops quickly. There is no room for error, but we all know that human error cannot be full eliminated.

The risks are too high to allow this project to move forward.

Those risks were brought home to me in April of this year when the MV Marathassa grain carrier spilled about 2,700 litres of bunker fuel in English Bay, just offshore from Vancouver’s Stanley Park.

The spill was first noticed by a recreational sailor. It took 13 hours for our city to be officially informed of the spill. Small releases continued from April 8 to April 13 — five days — until the point of leakage was finally identified.

The Coast Guard and Department of Fisheries and Oceans did not have any scientists on staff to sample the waters and wildlife for contamination. In the absence of government scientists, sampling was independently undertaken by scientists engaged by the Vancouver Aquarium. The City of Vancouver also engaged experts to scientifically monitor contamination effects on the environment.

The oil dispersed to beaches in Vancouver and to the north shore of Burrard Inlet where clean-up efforts began on April 10.

It is still unknown how much of the oil sank to the ocean bottom.

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Adriane Carr walks the walk at a rally on Burrard Bridge.

As a member of Vancouver city council I asked the city staff reporting to us on the Marathassa spill whether or not there was a multi-agency integrated oil-spill emergency response plan for our coast. I was told that, previous to the Marathassa spill, staff had inquired about such a plan but none had been forwarded to the city. In dealing with the spill, they were not aware of such a plan. A few weeks later I attended a meeting of the Lower Mainland Local Government Association that was focused on emergency planning. I asked representatives of Port Metro Vancouver and of IMPREM (Integrated Partnership for Regional Emergency Management) whether an integrated multi-agency marine spill emergency response plan exists. I was told “no."

This is not acceptable. The City of Vancouver is responsible for the safety, health and well-being of our residents. The completely inadequate response to the relatively small Marathassa spill raises huge concerns about the risks, lack of emergency response preparedness and potentially devastating impacts of the Trans Mountain Pipeline expansion project.

This project should not be approved.

The opposition to this project is overwhelming. It includes all the First Nations surrounding Kinder Morgan’s Westridge Terminal. Based on the literally thousands of conversations I have had with local citizens and the results of the November 2014 local election in which the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion project became a key issue, with those opposed now forming a majority on Vancouver city council, I believe opposition to this project includes a clear majority of Vancouver residents. They have nothing to gain and everything precious to our city’s quality of life to lose if this project is approved.

Please consider my comments, and turn this project down.

Legacy – October 2015 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2015 – Removing Ocean-based Salmon Feedlots

Coal

 Save the Chuitna

Legacy – October 2015 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2015 – Removing Ocean-based Salmon Feedlots

Hydropower / Water Retention

 Site of the former upper dam on the Elwha is now jammin' with salmon!

Legacy – October 2015 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2015 – Removing Ocean-based Salmon Feedlots

The Bureau of Reclamation released water from Lewiston Dam to try to prevent a Klamath River fish kill like this one in 2002.

 California Dam Lets Water Shared by Farms Flow to Salmon August 22, 2015 GRANTS PASS, Ore. — With water scarce in Northern California’s Klamath Basin, a federal agency is again releasing water into the Klamath River to prevent a repeat of the 2002 fish kill that left tens of thousands of adult salmon dead.

That move could lead to a renewed fight about the Klamath River, which has long been subject to intense political battles over the sharing of scarce water between farms and fish. Three tribes depend on the river’s salmon for subsistence and ceremonial needs, and a fourth is looking forward to the day that four aging hydroelectric dams are removed so it can again harvest the fish.

Releases from Lewiston Dam on the Trinity River, the Klamath’s primary tributary, started Friday and will continue into late September, the federal Bureau of Reclamation said. Similar releases were done the last three years. They come from water that is shared with farms in the Central Valley.

Legacy – October 2015 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2015 – Removing Ocean-based Salmon Feedlots “In this fourth year of severe drought, the conditions in the river call for us to take extraordinary measures to reduce the potential for a large-scale fish die-off,” David Murillo, the bureau’s mid-Pacific regional director, said in a statement. “This decision was made after discussions with federal and state fish regulatory agencies and serious consideration of the impacts on all affected parties.”

There was no immediate word from the Westlands Water District in Central California, the state’s largest irrigation district, about whether it will again go to court to try to stop the releases. But Thomas Schlosser, a lawyer for the Hoopa Valley tribe, said the district’s lawyer, Daniel J. O’Hanlon, had notified him that he would seek an injunction. Mr. O’Hanlon did not immediately return a phone call and email seeking comment. Last year, a federal judge denied the injunction sought by irrigators.

The Hoopa and Yurok tribes and Humboldt County sought the releases to stave off an outbreak of a gill-rotting disease — known as Ich, short for Ichthyophthirius multifiliis — that spreads in low and warm water conditions. The cooler, rising water spurs salmon to swim upstream to spawn.

High levels of the parasite have been seen in fish since July, and the bulk of the fall chinook run is expected to move into the river soon.

“The community is grateful,” said Mike Orcutt, director of fisheries for the Hoopa tribe.

Legacy – October 2015 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2015 – Removing Ocean-based Salmon Feedlots

This July 1, 1999, file photo shows Ice Harbor Dam on the Snake River near Burbank, Wash

 'Clean' hydroelectric power poses northern methylmercury threat: study September 8, 2015 ST. JOHN'S, N.L. -- Hydroelectric projects will put more methylmercury pollution into northern ecosystems than climate change, suggests a new Harvard University study.

Methylmercury, a neurotoxin created as mercury blends with bacteria, is linked to heart issues and intellectual problems in children.

High levels of the substance in Arctic marine life have been traced to global warming as sea ice melts.

Legacy â&#x20AC;&#x201C; October 2015 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2015 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Removing Ocean-based Salmon Feedlots But the researchers say governments turning to hydroelectric dams as a cleaner way to curb climate change must consider potential effects of flooding vast swaths of land.

The peer-reviewed study, published in the latest issue of the U.S.-based "Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences," echoes concerns raised by Inuit leaders who fear methylmercury levels from the new Muskrat Falls dam in Labrador will soar.

The project will create a reservoir near Happy Valley-Goose Bay, upstream from Lake Melville and more than 2,000 Inuit who rely on fish and seal meat as prime food sources. First power is expected to flow in 2017.

Harvard researchers led by Elsie Sunderland, associate professor of environmental engineering and environmental health, measured baseline methylmercury levels in Lake Melville. They noted that concentrations in plankton peaked between one and 10 metres under the water, just as they do in the central Arctic Ocean.

The study concludes that when fresh and salt water meet -- in estuaries such as Lake Melville or as oceans absorb melting sea ice -- the salinity means organic matter that would usually sink begins to float. It forms a bacterial layer that marine plankton then feast on.

Postdoctoral fellow Amina Schartup, the study's lead author, said the result is a very effective process for boosting toxic methylmercury.

"This system is very good at taking very low concentrations of methylmercury and making it relatively high in the plankton," she said in an interview. Fish then eat the plankton.

Schartup wonders to what extent toxin levels then accelerate higher up the food chain.

"This is a whole other study that needs to happen," she said. "I think we need to continue this work so if we do see spikes in the fish or in the water that could be potentially a problem, that we respond immediately before there is an impact on people's health."

Crown corporation Nalcor Energy is monitoring mercury levels but has said its projections suggest contamination in Lake Melville will be diluted to "no measurable effects."

Nalcor did not answer a request for comment Tuesday.

The study was mainly funded by the independent National Science Foundation based in North Arlington, Va., with support from the Nunatsiavut government representing Inuit in the Lake Melville region. Its members contacted Sunderland to help with related research after Muskrat Falls environmental assessments predicted no adverse effects downstream.

Darryl Shiwak, Nunatsiavut's minister of lands and natural resources, said Nalcor is not doing enough to set benchmarks against which potential contamination can be measured. He's also calling for the clearing of all trees and vegetation from a reservoir site the province has estimated will cover about 120 square kilometres.

Shiwak, who lives in Rigolet, said he's one of many people wondering how his ability to rely on fish and wild meat could be changed forever.

"Everybody's calling for more hydroelectric projects because they're better on the environment," he said in an interview. "But what nobody is seeing is the cost of that project -- the real, human cost."

Legacy – October 2015 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2015 – Removing Ocean-based Salmon Feedlots

 Petition: Stop work on Site C until BC Utilities Commission reviews the Dam project

After a tour of the beautiful Peace Valley region, members of the Rolling Justice Bus learned that the proposed construction of Site C dam is causing deep divisions in the communities impacted. First Nations, farmers, ranchers, and local political leaders expressed numerous concerns about this project including: 

the independent review of this project that would ordinarily be required by BC law did not happen



a joint federal/provincial review panel concluded that the project is not needed at this time and that alternatives that do not cause the same degree of environmental harm should be explored



the infringement of treaty rights is a major concern as is the loss of important cultural artifacts and heritage sites



provincial electricity rates will have to increase to pay for Site C when lower cost options for energy are available



borrowing $8.8 billion to finance the dam will affect the province's capacity to build other major projects



BC Hydro’s already sizeable debt will increase



destruction of key food-producing and prime farmland will occur at a time when food security concerns are rising



potentially worsening climate change may impact the watersheds



the beauty of this region of BC and its diverse ecosystems will be forever altered

PLEASE ADD YOUR VOICE to a large number of municipalities in British Columbia (as well as communities around the world) who have signed on to urge that Premier Clark invoke a two year moratorium on Site C and an expert BC Utilities Commission Review.

Legacy – October 2015 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2015 – Removing Ocean-based Salmon Feedlots

Natural Gas

 TransCanada's Pipeline Plans & Petronas' Terminal Plans TransCanada PipeLines Ltd. plans to build, own and operate a 48" diameter, 900 km pipeline, known as the Prince Rupert Gas Transmission Project (PRGT), to carry fracked ("natural") gas from fracking wells on Treaty 8 Land in Northeastern BC to the Petronas-led proposed LNG export facility Pacific Northwest LNG Terminal on Lelu island in the Skeena Estuary. Of the 19 currently proposed export LNG projects in BC, this pipeline and terminal are widely seen to be the closest to development. Click here to see map of all proposed fracked gas projects.

32 km of TransCanada's PRGT pipeline is slated to trespass and be laid on Madii Lii Territory from the Suskwa Pass to the Shegunia River, where approximately one half - 16 km - would destroy Babine Trail, the ancestral grease trail connecting Fort Babine to Gitanmaax. The proposed PRGT pipeline project is in deep conflict with core Luutkudziiwus interests and values.

Some of the specific reasons we oppose this project:

Legacy – October 2015 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2015 – Removing Ocean-based Salmon Feedlots 1. Our House of Luutkudziiwus has not been consulted by industry or government.

Government and TransCanada have not consulted with and show a distinct lack of respect for Luutkudziiwus members and our Hereditary Chiefs.

Our Wilp (House) consists of three high ranking Hereditary Chiefs: Luutkudziiwus (Charlie Wright), Xsimjiitsiin (Lester Moore) & Noola (Norman Moore).

Luutkudziiwus have been oppressed under the Gitxsan Treaty Society (GTS) system that was created to “represent the Gitxsan” and which is the entity that Government and industry officials consult with. Gordon Sebastian, Anuthembuhn, is the Executive Director of the GTS and is also misrepresenting himself as Chief Luutkudziiwus. He is communicating as such with Government and TransCanada. It is unknown what or how many “deals” he is making with Prince Rupert Gas Transmission, BC Environmental Assessment Office, and Gitxsan Development Corp. Gordon does not communicate with Luutkudziiwus leaders and members and as a result, any decisions by Gordon are considered as misrepresentation and as invalid. Click here to see a 2012 map of Gitxsan House groups who do not support the GTS. Today this overwhelming majority has grown.

Canada and BC assert ownership to Luutkudziiwus territory; however to date, they have not provided evidence showing how or when they acquired ownership. Luutkudziiwus have never been conquered, or relinquished, or surrendered our title and rights to the lands and resources within Madii Lii territory. We continue to occupy and use the lands and resources and to exercise existing title and rights within the territory. Luutkudziiwus have an inherent right to govern themselves and our territory according to our own laws, customs, and traditions. This was affirmed in the Supreme Court of Canada Delgamuukw decision.

Legacy â&#x20AC;&#x201C; October 2015 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2015 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Removing Ocean-based Salmon Feedlots Neither the BC Government nor the LNG industry has ever entered into any agreement, consultation, or had meaningful discussion with our Wilp despite our repeated attempts to seek solutions and reconciliation. Land and resource use planning and practices are going to sustain ourselves and future generations, and we do not take these responsibilities lightly.

If our territory is damaged, we do not get another, we canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t move to find a better location. This is all we have and we will protect it.

2. LNG terminals in the Skeena Estuary would likely collapse the entire Skeena salmon population.

The Skeena River supports the second largest wild salmon run in BC. All First Nations in the Skeena, including the Gitxsan and Luutkudziiwus, rely on these salmon for food, cultural, and economic livelihood; salmon underpin the culture. The proposed PRGT pipeline and the proposed Pacific NorthWest LNG terminal (PNW LNG) threaten our salmon.

Every single salmon in the Skeena system must pass through the Skeena Estuary twice in their lifecycle; going out to the Northeast Pacific as juveniles and returning as adults. PNW LNG will severely disrupt ecosystem functioning on Flora Bank, a sensitive eelgrass bed where juvenile salmon adjust to marine conditions. It is estimated that 80 to 90% of Skeena salmon utilize the biological powerhouse - Flora Bank estuarine habitat for growth and feeding.

In 1973, the Canadian government completed a study on Flora Bank that determined that because the area is vital to salmon, it is too sensitive to industrially develop.

Legacy – October 2015 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2015 – Removing Ocean-based Salmon Feedlots Yet today, this has been forgotten. Petronas plans to build the Pacific Northwest LNG Terminal on Lelu Island with a 2 km suspension bridge over Flora Bank, a project that could decimate the eelgrass beds and disrupt critical estuary functioning. Click here to see a study about why the updated suspension bridge plans will not protect the juveline salmon habitat, and click here to see more reasons why the suspension bridge is not a safe plan. TransCanada’s PRGT pipeline would supply this terminal. Construction of this terminal would require dredging to bury the incoming PRGT pipeline under the seabed, and will disturb contaminated seabed sediment that accumulated over decades from a now abandoned pulp mill. Once in operation, over 275 LNG tankers, among the largest ships in the world, would enter the estuary every year.

Scientists warn that construction and operation of the Pacific Northwest LNG Terminal may spell collapse of the Skeena Salmon.

Click here to see a video about the risks to the Skeena estuary.

Salmon are the backbone of our culture. We will not accept this risk.

3. TransCanada's PRGT pipeline will fragment our ancestral cultural infrastructure, fish & wildlife habitat and diminish the exercising of our fishing, hunting and gathering rights.

Luutkudziiwus maintains Aboriginal rights and title over Madii Lii territory. We have never ceded, treatied, or surrendered our land to anyone. Our longstanding relationship to Madii Lii territory includes rights and responsibilities in regard to social, cultural, spiritual, political, legal, environmental and economic elements.

32 km of TransCanada's proposed PRGT pipeline is slated to cross Luutkudziiwus Territory, where approximately one half - 16 km – would destroy Babine Trail, the ancestral grease trail connecting Fort Babine to Gitanmaax.

The proposed PRGT pipeline will entail direct and indirect impacts to Luutkudziiwus rights and title from potential adverse effects to fish and their habitats, wildlife and their habitats, terrestrial and aquatic resources, including cumulative effects, as well as to social, health, cultural, and economic values.

Legacy â&#x20AC;&#x201C; October 2015 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2015 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Removing Ocean-based Salmon Feedlots TransCanada has already shown disregard for wildlife habitat and local traditional knowledge by carrying out test drilling directly within moose habitat during calving season. TransCanada claimed there was no moose habitat in the vicinity. What level of respect can we expect from this company in the future?

4. These natural gas pipelines will likely be converted to carry oil products.

Natural gas pipelines can readily be converted to carry oil. In fact, this is exactly what TransCanada is proposing to do on their Energy East Pipeline project, where portions of an older natural gas line are slated to start carrying oil.

Though the BC government recently passed a regulation that would prohibit the BC Oil and Gas Commission from allowing fracked gas pipelines to carry oil or diluted bitumen, this regulation has no legislative power, and can be overturned behind closed doors by a single cabinet minister. We interpret this regulation as a veiled affirmation of the intention of oil conversion.

Luutkudziiwus is standing with neighbouring First Nations in being categorically opposed to allowing gas or oil pipes across our territory. The risks of land, and water contamination from pipeline spills are simply unacceptable.

Global economics of LNG are uncertain at best with numerous countries, including Australia, Russia, and Brazil racing to supply Asia with LNG. The BC Government has acknowledged that if they wait too long to develop LNG infrastructure, they could lose this global race.

If global economics leave no decent market for LNG once natural gas pipelines are built, at best stranded infrastructure would be left on our territory, and at worst the pipeline would be converted to carry bitumen. There has already been suggestions that some pipeline companies in BC are planning to switch their proposed natural gas pipelines to carry oil within 5 years.

Legacy â&#x20AC;&#x201C; October 2015 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2015 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Removing Ocean-based Salmon Feedlots It is time to diminish greenhouse gases and lessen global climate change and its associated impacts.

Since the mid 1990s, changes to land and aquatic ecosystems on Madii Lii territory have been increasingly common and those impacts have been affecting people, forests, fish, and wildlife, and in turn affecting our traditional ways.

We do not want the current climate change impacts and certainly not willing to take further risks.

5. Pipelines through our territory could open our region to Fracking.

The Bowser Basin, directly below the territories of the Gitxsan Nation, is a large natural gas deposit that has been estimated to be half the size of the massive deposits in Northeast BC. If pipelines cross our territory, and they are not converted to oil pipelines, then fracking in this basin will likely follow within decades.

Government and Industry have stated that one of the reasons that this deposit has not been developed is that there is no infrastructure to transport the gas out of the region. If pipelines are built to carry gas over the Bowser Basin, this impediment to extraction will no longer exist.

In fact, TransCanada's PRGT pipeline project BC EAO application includes a caveat that the pipeline could be used to collect gas from "mid-stream resources".

In other words, once the pipeline is in place across our territory, the next step may be to develop hydraulic fracturing (fracking) on our and neighbouring territories. Fracking would pose significant and unacceptable risk to our water and land.

This is not a risk we are willing to take.

Legacy – October 2015 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2015 – Removing Ocean-based Salmon Feedlots

A semi submersible floating production system for Malaysia’s Gumusut-Kakap deepwater field is delivered to be installed at the project in which Petronas is a partner.

 Shocking, disgusting, B.C. critics say of Petronas audit ‘If that’s how they’re going to be building facilities, then we can’t see that happening in our area’ September 11, 2015 OTTAWA — Deputy premier Rich Coleman said Friday he was never told by Petronas, the Malaysia state energy giant central to B.C.’s LNG (Liquefied Natural Gas) ambitions, that it had been struggling with major safety and structural problems in its Malaysian offshore operations.

But Coleman said Petronas’s problems with “severe” corrosion and incompetent personnel in Malaysia should not have any bearing on the company’s future operations in B.C. “No, I don’t have a concern,” he told The Vancouver Sun. “I can’t comment on the rest of their global multibillion-dollar operation, but I do know that here in B.C. they will meet the highest standards in the world.”

Legacy – October 2015 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2015 – Removing Ocean-based Salmon Feedlots Coleman was responding to The Sun’s disclosure of an internal Petronas audit that documented a litany of problems on offshore platforms, some of which were “almost certain”, if not remediated, to lead to “catastrophic” disasters resulting in lives lost and “massive” environmental impact.

B.C. Opposition leader John Horgan said details in a leaked internal audit were “jaw-dropping,” while the Green party’s Andrew Weaver said the “shocking” disclosure will likely prove fatal for the company’s B.C. project.

Aboriginal and conservation groups in the area also expressed alarm about the report, which according to two experts consulted by The Sun reflected badly on the company’s maintenance and safety systems.

“This gives us huge concerns,” said Garry Reece, mayor of the Lax Kw’alaams Band that is fighting the $11.4-billion project. “If that’s how they’re going to be building facilities, then we can’t see that happening in our area.”

Conservation activists on the north coast were also outraged over revelations about Petronas’s problems.

“My reaction is utter disgust,” said Des Nobles of the T. Buck Suzuki Environmental Foundation. “It concerns me that the provincial government, which is supposed to be looking after British Columbians, doesn’t seem to be doing due diligence.”

Shannon Lea McPhail, of the Skeena Watershed Conservation Coalition, said she was “terrified” to read about what she termed the company’s “nasty history.”

Petronas, however, has responded that the audit was part of a $10-billion US integrity program it launched in 2012, and that all the major issues discovered in the audit had been dealt with.

Horgan directed his criticism at Premier Christy Clark’s government, which not only wooed Petronas over several years, but also offered major financial concessions to keep the company committed to B.C. “It’s jaw-dropping that a company that has been doing business with the government of British Columbia for the past number of years would have a track record like this,” he said. “If the government didn’t know about this record, they should have. And if they did know and they didn’t tell people, why is that?”

Horgan, whose party conditionally supports the development of B.C.’s natural gas reserves but is opposed to the financial deal Victoria offered, stopped short of any suggestion that the welcome mat for foreign operators should be yanked.

“When you look at the record, as outlined in this audit, of their internal ability to manage the safety of their facilities, then that’s got to give us pause in B.C.,” he said. “There are other companies with much better international records, like Shell and Chevron, that are still at play in British Columbia.

“Petronas is a state-owned company that clearly has been cutting corners when it comes to the environment and safety, and that’s of paramount concern to us in the NDP.”

Legacy â&#x20AC;&#x201C; October 2015 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2015 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Removing Ocean-based Salmon Feedlots

ď ś Report

shows juvenile salmon from more than 40 populations utilize Flora

Bank September 3, 2015 The Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency (CEAA) says it is considering new research which shows juvenile salmon from more than 40 populations converge at the Flora Bank estuary near Lelu Island, the site of a proposed LNG processing facility.

Petronas has applied to the CEAA for environmental approval to build its Pacific NorthWest LNG processing and export facility in Port Edward.

Simon Fraser University scientist Jonathan Moore said the marine environment at Flora Bank had the highest abundances of different salmon species compared to other regions of the estuary.

Moore said the research suggests the proposed LNG terminal has more far-reaching risks than previously recognized.

"Salmon came from over 40 populations from throughout the Skeena watershed and beyond that are harvested in at least 10 different First Nations territories," said Moore.

"This is at least twice as many First Nations as were consulted during the assessment process.

"The LNG terminal proposed for the Flora Bank region poses risks to fish and First Nations fisheries throughout the Skeena Watershed."

Moore's findings are based on genetic testing conducted at the Flora Bank site in partnership with the Lax Kw'alaams Fisheries Stewardship program.

He said the CEAA should take the new research into account when preparing its assessment of the facility.

"We're calling for CEAA to recognize the risks posed not just to local fish and fisheries but to the entire watershed," he said.

"This letter is hopefully a public call.

"I think there's a great opportunity for CEAA to use this science to consider the true scale of consequences when they are considering balancing environment and jobs, and jobs not just for LNG but jobs for a salmon-based economy."

He said First Nations which harvest salmon from populations which are found in the Flora Bank area should also be consulted.

Legacy â&#x20AC;&#x201C; October 2015 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2015 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Removing Ocean-based Salmon Feedlots CEAA spokesperson Karen Fish said the agency would consider new relevant information released during the assessment period.

She said the agency was aware of Moore's findings.

"Some of the studies' findings were presented by Aboriginal groups to the Agency and the (Pacific NorthWest LNG) technical working group as part of the environmental assessment," she said.

"The Agency is carefully assessing the potential effects of the project on fish and fish habitat, in collaboration with experts from Fisheries and Oceans Canada and Natural Resources Canada.

"Included in this assessment is an examination of potential effects on Flora Bank and on marine species, including salmon that rear and migrate upstream from Flora Bank on the Skeena River, taking into consideration measures to prevent or mitigate these potential effects."

Fish said measures to protect fish and their habitats would be part of legally binding conditions if the project was allowed to proceed.

Legacy – October 2015 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2015 – Removing Ocean-based Salmon Feedlots

Drill ship at work off Lelu Island, near Prince Rupert.

 Drilling at proposed LNG terminal starts despite First Nation opposition Prince Rupert Port Authority orders protesters to stay 50 metres away from marine work September 16, 2015 Petronas-led Pacific NorthWest LNG has started test drilling off of Lelu Island, location of its proposed $11.4-billion liquefied natural gas terminal in northwest B.C., despite First Nation opposition.

Members of several First Nations — including the Lax Kw’alaams and the Gitxsan — appeared to stop drilling on the weekend, but the presence of Prince Rupert Port Authority boats has allowed the work to start, Lax Kw’alaams First Nation hereditary chief Don Wesley, also known as Sm’oogyet Yahaan, said Tuesday.

Legacy – October 2015 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2015 – Removing Ocean-based Salmon Feedlots Port authority personnel told him to stay at least 50 metres away from a drilling rig when he approached with his boat, said Wesley, a hereditary chief of the Gitwilgyoots, one of the nine tribes of the Lower Skeena River region.

“They are thinking that nobody is watching,” he said, referring to the work now underway.

Wesley said he is seeking legal advice to determine whether he should adhere to the 50-metre warning.

Wesley is leading a three-week-old occupation camp on Lelu Island in an effort to halt the project over concerns it will harm salmon-rearing eel grass beds on Flora Bank adjacent to the island.

The terminal and a pipeline have been approved by the province, but a federal review has been held up over concerns about a bridge and pier that skirt one edge of Flora Bank.

Wesley said he is particularly concerned the company was carrying work out on Flora Bank, including drilling and extracting eel grass.

Pacific NorthWest LNG said Tuesday it is doing neither, and that its drilling work is taking place away from Flora Bank.

Pacific NorthWest spokesman Spencer Sproule said engineering consultants Stantec are carrying out eel grass surveys on Flora Bank to determine its density, length and species but are not removing any grass.

The drilling work is the third phase of engineering work to gather data on soils in the marine environment, said Sproule.

He said the soil investigation is being conducted with the participation of First Nation monitors, but could not say from which First Nations.

This spring, Lax Kw’alaams members rejected a $1.15-billion benefits package from the company and province over concerns about Flora Bank. After the benefits rejection, the First Nation said it was not opposed to LNG development, but Flora Bank was off limits.

The First Nation issued a message last month to its members that alternative sites were being explored, but company president Michael Culbert told a LNG conference they were exploring modifications to the site, not an alternative location.

Pacific NorthWest LNG officials have declined to say if the drilling work underway is to examine another location for the bridge and pier.

An AltaCorp Capital report on leading LNG projects in B.C. released Monday — following the conference that included Culbert — concluded a major redesign is not possible because it would result in a delay of several years.

Instead, AltaCorp said they believed more likely is that the bridge and pier would be relocated farther from Flora Bank.

The Prince Rupert Port Authority said Tuesday it is monitoring the boats near the drilling work.

“Should a situation ever arise where the Port Authority encounters refusals to cease dangerous actions within the harbour, the situation could be referred to RCMP for consideration and involvement if appropriate,” port spokesman Michael Gurney said in an email.

Legacy – October 2015 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2015 – Removing Ocean-based Salmon Feedlots

 B.C. EAO gives thumbs up as work progresses on Kitimat LNG project September 10, 2015

Legacy – October 2015 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2015 – Removing Ocean-based Salmon Feedlots The British Columbia Environmental Assessment Office (BC EAO) has given the thumbs up to Chevron Corp. and Woodside Energy’s Kitimat LNG cooling and export facility project near Kitimat.

In a letter dated Sept. 8, Executive Director Peter Craven noted the project has been “substantially started.”

The project will consist of the development of natural gas resources in the Liard and Horn River Basins in Northeast B.C., transportation of that gas across northern B.C. via a third party pipeline and the Pacific Trail Pipeline to Kitimat on the west coast. A liquefaction facility at Bish Cove near Kitimat will cool the gas into a liquid for shipping to overseas markets.

Editorial Comment: As reported in Legacy:  Kitimat is located at the head of BC’s extremely dangerous Douglas Channel  Kitimat is the western terminus of the proposed Enbridge bitumen/condensate pipelines connecting with Edmonton, Alberta  These LNG and dilbit projects will result in hundreds of large crude oil carriers and LNG tankers navigating the challenging Douglas Channel each year This insanity is unacceptable for those of us working to preserve environmental integrity!

Under the B.C. Environmental Assessment Act, a project must be “substantially started” at least three years, and not more than five years after an environmental certificate is issued.

By acknowledging that the project is progressing, Craven assures that the company will maintain its certificate.

The Chevron/Woodside project is separate from another Kitimat LNG terminal planned by LNG Canada, a consortium involving Shell, PetroChina, Korea Gas Corp. and Mitsubishi Corp.

A final investment decision has yet to be announced for either of the two projects.

According to Gillian Robinson, a spokesperson with Chevron - a leading partner in the project along with Australian-based Woodside Energy International, who bought Apache Corp.'s stake in the project for $2.7 billion last year - the Bish Cove site saw the completion and re-opening of the Bish Cove Service Road.

“Since 2011, work on the road has upgraded it to a two-lane roadway, including the replacement of six bridges,” Robinson wrote in an email to the Alaska Highway News.

The terminal site saw further engineering and design work, including site clearing, rock blasting and grading, geotechnical work, construction of a temporary jetty, and building and maintaining a storm water management and treatment system.

“Full construction at the proposed LNG terminal site would begin once a final investment decision is made,” Robinson added.

Chevron pumped the brakes on the project in February, when it announced it would be slashing worldwide LNG spending to $8 billion this year, down from $10 billion in 2014. This meant the consortium would not be making an investment decision on the Kitimat project in 2015.

In a conference call, Chevron CEO John Watson said the Kitimat project was undergoing a front-end engineering and design phase.

Legacy – October 2015 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2015 – Removing Ocean-based Salmon Feedlots When asked by the Alaska Highway News in February, B.C. based LNG consultant Zoher Meratla of CDS Research Ltd. said “it’s a complicated equation,” trying to figure out when the trigger could be pulled on a final investment decision for the project.

Legacy – October 2015 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2015 – Removing Ocean-based Salmon Feedlots

 Pipeline Rupture Report Raises Questions About TransCanada Inspections September 1, 2015 A CBC News investigation has unearthed a critical report that the federal regulator effectively buried for several years about a rupture on a trouble-prone TransCanada natural gas pipeline.

On July 20, 2009, the Peace River Mainline in northern Alberta exploded, sending 50-metre-tall flames into the air and razing a two-hectare wooded area.

Few people ever learned of the rupture — one of the largest in the past decade — other than the Dene Tha’ First Nation, whose traditional territory it happened on.

In an early 2011 draft report about the incident, the National Energy Board criticized TransCanada, the operator of the line owned by its subsidiary NOVA Gas Transmission, for “inadequate” field inspections and “ineffective” management.

Final reports are typically published by the investigative bodies, either the NEB or the Transportation Safety Board, but this report wasn’t released until this January when the CBC obtained it through an access-to-information request.

Legacy – October 2015 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2015 – Removing Ocean-based Salmon Feedlots The NEB said the delay was caused by an “administrative error” when an employee left without transferring the file over.

TransCanada did not respond to a CBC request for an interview.

Timing questioned Environmental policy expert Nathan Lemphers says he’s “deeply concerned” that the federal regulator kept the “fairly damning” report behind closed doors.

“It’s quite likely that there are other incidents like this that the public simply doesn’t know about,” said Lemphers, a former Pembina Institute analyst. “This one stands out simply because of its size and the timing and the company involved.”

Lemphers questions whether TransCanada’s contentious Keystone XL proposal, under environmental review in the U.S. at the same time, had a bearing on the regulator not publishing the Peace River Mainline draft report.

“It's hard to guess intentions,” said Lemphers. “It certainly seems fishy from the outside that this report was kept quiet due to an apparent administrative error. If the report came out it would have been, risen to immediate public attention.”

In January 2011, TransCanada was in the midst of negotiating dozens of U.S. safety requests on pipeline construction, operation and design on the controversial Keystone XL proposal. That was followed by several months of public comments in the States later that year.

The Keystone XL project, first proposed in 2008, is still in limbo. A crucial assessment released last week said there are no major environmental objections to the $7-billion mega-project, but a 90-day comment period still remains.

‘Big ball of fire’ Members of Dene Tha’ First Nations community of Chateh, about 50 kilometres away from the site of the blast, also want to know why the report was not released until now.

“They should let the public know about these deficiencies that exist,” said Baptiste Metchooyeah, the former Dene Tha’ First Nation lands director. “We have to start saying something about these incidents, because the regulator is not there for us.”

According to the report, the pipeline spewed 1.45 million cubic metres of natural gas – equivalent to the volume of 580 Olympic-sized pools – over a period of hours before TransCanada stopped the flow and put out the fire.

Fabian Chonkolay, a local hunter who flew over the site, described the aftermath as looking like a “big ball of fire” had consumed the forest. “Just like when they drop a bomb,” he said.

Chateh residents fear that because the area is remote, it might be considered a low-risk area for pipeline operators, leading to fewer safety precautions. The pipeline runs under the community of Chateh, and hunters and trappers often travel in the area.

“It’s way in the bush, but there’s a lot of activities going on out there,” said Chonkolay.

High rate of ruptures

Legacy – October 2015 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2015 – Removing Ocean-based Salmon Feedlots The report reveals that the Peace River Mainline has a historically high rate of ruptures — six since the 1970s. The Alberta pipeline’s rupture rate is five times higher than Canada’s national rupture rate, reported in a 2004 study.

The pipeline had an uncommon problem: a bacteria that caused “particularly aggressive growth rates” of corrosion. But, as the NEB report notes, the bacteria was a known threat to the pipeline and caused a rupture in 2002.

The section of the pipeline that burst in 2009 was 95 per cent corroded. TransCanada’s own rules required that it physically inspect a pipeline when it reached 75 per cent corrosion, the report says.

The report notes the inline inspection tool failed to accurately assess the depth of the “corrosion within corrosion.”

Pipeline integrity experts say that given the pipeline’s high rate of ruptures and its known corrosion problems, the company ran along the “ragged edge” of the rules. Many operators use far lower thresholds, closer to 40 or 50 per cent corrosion, before inspecting.

The NEB says that since the incident, TransCanada changed criteria for identifying corrosion, while the NEB made changes to its management requirements for pipeline operators.

Safety ‘not compromised’: NEB The report on the 2009 rupture sat in draft stage for nearly three years, only coming to light when CBC obtained a copy this January.

NEB spokesperson Rebecca Taylor wrote in an email that the investigation closed Jan. 19, 2011.

“The delay in publishing this report to our external website in no way compromised the safe operation of the Peace River Mainline,” said Taylor.

CBC asked for the report last October on at least four separate occasions. NEB refused to release the report to CBC News, saying that it could be requested through access-to-information.

When the report was released, the final report was dated November 2013. A one and a half page section on TransCanada’s field inspection was redacted in the 2011 draft and changed in the final report.

NEB says they asked CBC to request the document through access to information to meet “legal and confidentiality obligations associated with the release of the document.”

For the Dene Tha’ First Nations community that lives above the pipeline, the focus is on what happens in the future.

In 2010, TransCanada began signalling its intent to decommission a 266-kilometre southern section of the line, built in 1968. The NEB is holding public hearings soon to get input as it decides whether to approve the move and the conditions.

But the section under review for decommissioning doesn’t extend into the northern Alberta region where Chonkolay lives.

“It’s an old pipeline,” said Chonkolay. “Heaven knows how many more damage it’s going to do in the future. … How many more times is it going to rupture?”

Legacy – October 2015 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2015 – Removing Ocean-based Salmon Feedlots

 Steelhead

LNG announces pre-construction agreement pipeline from Washington State to Vancouver Island September 1, 2015

for

natural

gas

Legacy – October 2015 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2015 – Removing Ocean-based Salmon Feedlots The Island Gas Connector Project would be an independent pipeline that would transport natural gas 52.8 kilometres from Sumas, Washington to Cherry Point, Washington, then 75.2 kilometres under water to the proposed Malahat LNG Project in the Saanich Inlet.

Steelhead LNG has signed a pre-construction agreement with United States pipeline developer Williams to commence with the design and regulatory approvals for the Island Gas Connector Project.

Environmentalists are concerned that an undersea pipeline could be built through B.C. waters and particularly the sensitive Saanich Inlet.

“Particularly along the coastline it is hard on the kelp forest, salmon, and marine mammals so we’re just really concerned about that” says Bob Peart of the Sierra Club BC. Steelhead LNG says the U.S. company that has signed on to build the pipeline has an outstanding safety record.

“They know exactly what they’re talking about in design, in construction and operation of pipelines, they do it every day they’ve got hundreds if not thousands of people doing this, they’re one of the best companies in the world to do this” says Nigel Kuzemko, Steelhead LNG CEO. This wouldn’t be the first underwater natural gas pipeline to serve Vancouver Island. FortisBC has a pipeline that runs from the Lower Mainland to Comox that was built 25 years ago and the company says it has never had a problem.

But those opposed to the project say this pipeline is part of a bigger problem with the LNG proposal itself.

“I’ve been very clear I don’t think Saanich Inlet is the location we should be piping natural gas to, cooling it, loading into carriers and shipping it through the Salish Sea” says BC Green Party Leader Adam Olsen.

The pipeline proposal is still in the very early stages.

It would have to be approved by regulatory boards both in the United States and Canada.

And before that the company says there will be extensive public consultation and environmental assessments.

If everything does get approved, the plan is to have the pipeline carrying natural gas to the Saanich Inlet by 2020.

The first phase of the project would be constructed to supply the Malahat LNG facility but the pipeline would be designed to meet the potential capacity requirements of both the Malahat and Sarita Bay (75 kilometres southwest of Port Alberni) LNG facilities.

Delivering supply to the proposed LNG Project at Sarita Bay would require an additional independent pipeline from the east coast of Vancouver Island to Sarita Bay, designed, owned and operated by a separate Canadian entity and subject to its own regulatory approval process.

For more information about the proposed Island Gas Connector Project you can visit www.islandgasconnector.com

Legacy – October 2015 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2015 – Removing Ocean-based Salmon Feedlots

Solar

 A solar revolution in the tar sands.

We are now powered by the sun.

Melina Laboucan-Massimo Our 20.8 kW solar system - with 80 panels standing 20 feet in the air generating power from the sun for the community!

This is the largest top of pole mount system in Northern Alberta.

Legacy – October 2015 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2015 – Removing Ocean-based Salmon Feedlots

 How Technology Is Fueling The Push Toward Solar August 30, 2015 Solar energy in the United States has seen immense momentum throughout the years. When the Solar Energy Industries Association released its annual report in 2008, it concluded that U.S. solar photovoltaic (PV) capacity reached a total of 1.183 gigawatts — a stellar achievement at the time.

Contrast that figure with today, and the number is dwarfed by the United States’ installed capacity of 21.3 gigawatts, enough energy to power 4.3 million homes.

Legacy – October 2015 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2015 – Removing Ocean-based Salmon Feedlots As to what is powering this widespread adoption, one only needs to look at the residential market.

According to recently released research by GTM, 72 percent of the market growth in 2014 is a result of solar tech companies offering diverse financing solutions and easy-to-navigate web platforms.

Going solar for homeowners has become as easy as online shopping.

The commercial sector isn’t as fortunate, outside of a few large-scale projects driven by Fortune 500 and utility companies. This impasse is mostly because small and mid-scale companies face a number of complications when it comes to investing in solar — the largest being a lack of easy and cost-efficient methods to evaluate and mitigate the risk of any given project.

Tech is changing that. First it made waves in the residential sector, introducing seamless tech platforms with creative financing options to make solar a reality for homeowners. Now it’s paving a path for similar, widespread national success in the commercial space.

Outpacing Commercial Solar We often hear of large companies, like Wal-Mart, Amazon and Target, deciding to go solar in a move that makes both economic sense and decreases their carbon footprint. If you were to search for large commercial solar sites, such as major corporate headquarters, metropolitan arenas or vast solar arrays, you wouldn’t be hard pressed to find them. They’re abundant, and they’re generally well publicized as a part of any company’s corporate social-responsibility program.

However, just because we know of an Apple or Google going solar doesn’t necessarily mean that the greater commercial solar industry is on a consistent upward swing. It is merely a segment of the market that is able to access renewable energy at scale because of their vast resources and investor relations. A significant portion of small and medium-sized enterprises are not adopting solar at record rates.

In fact, in 2014 the commercial solar market was no longer the leading market segment when it came to installed capacity — that’s when residential took over. This flip of leading markets is due to two facts: one being that residents are able to install PV systems at cost-effective rates thanks to technology advancements in established solar companies, the other being that a significant portion of the commercial market is bottlenecked and untapped.

Bringing Small And Medium-Sized Businesses To The Solar Grid When it comes to making the actual investment, large corporations have economies of scale that drive down costs and increase efficiencies. Additionally, financing of solar projects for these large corporations is generally easier to come by, typically because they have reliable and accessible public credit ratings that satisfy Wall Street’s risk evaluation and mitigation criteria.

Aside from large commercial facilities, we are left with the small to medium-sized firms that haven’t been able to go solar in similar numbers as the nation’s homeowners and their large corporate brethren. Think restaurants, wineries, galleries, printing shops, local gift stores and local religious community centers.

With complex tariff modeling, demand charges, time-of-use rates and limited roof space, as well as layers upon layers of decision-making, an average sales cycle can eclipse 12-18 months. That is if the deal ever closes.

Legacy – October 2015 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2015 – Removing Ocean-based Salmon Feedlots To top it off, most of these smaller commercial facilities lack those readily available and reliable public credit ratings enjoyed by corporations, so even if they are able to navigate the design process, persuading external investors of the viability of the project can be an uphill battle.

This is all changing, and the credit can be given to technology and innovation. With design and modeling tools from companies like HelioScope, Energy Toolbase, Wiser Capital and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory’s Building Component Library (built in conjunction with Concept 3D), the solar industry is beginning to access a large, often ignored market.

These companies have been able to develop software to streamline a complex design and modeling process, enabling solar systems to seamlessly work for the specific needs of small and mediumsized businesses.

The bulk of whether or not your favorite mom-and-pop sandwich shop down the street is going to go solar, however, largely rests on ensuring the cost of capital falls within acceptable risk tolerances for the deal to deliver required returns.

Again, because these types of facilities typically lack reliable and readily accessible public credit ratings that satisfy investor risk evaluation criteria, the cost of capital has generally been too high for many of these projects to take off.

An untapped market is untapped potential, and the tech industry is beginning to take note.

SolarCity, however, just announced its own foray into this space, utilizing California’s Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) financing programs to attach a solar lease agreement to a building’s property, essentially negating the need for a risk-rating score. Unfortunately, this option is currently limited to California.

The greater solution lies in technology. If every facility and project could earn a consistent, transparent and highly automated score, then the entire U.S. market would open up.

My own firm utilizes a proprietary cloud-based platform to optimize savings and determine any given project’s bankability. By automating the process and creating a marketplace for hosts, installers and investors, we have successfully brought new capital into a once stagnant market.

This underserved market is driving a new boom in solar. According to the 2015 Solar Investment Index, for example, a staggering 83 percent of investors will make an investment in solar a priority in the next five years, with one in five already having made commercial solar investment a priority in the same timeframe.

A Bright Future It’s becoming increasingly clear that the new boom in solar lies in the innovation and disruptive nature of tech bringing down the cost of capital required to make more solar projects possible, as well as simplifying the entire design and sales cycle.

This is true of both markets. Homeowners have been able to reap the joys of lower electricity costs while ensuring a positive impact on the environment, and now the small and medium-sized business market is starting to enjoy similar benefits.

The future of solar has never looked brighter.

Legacy â&#x20AC;&#x201C; October 2015 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2015 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Removing Ocean-based Salmon Feedlots

Two solar farms alongside the Mass. Pike contain 2,100 panels each

ď ś A bright future for roadside solar farms September 7, 2015 Five solar projects sprouting along the Massachusetts Turnpike and Route 3 are not the largest in the state, but they are among the most visible and striking examples of a solar industry that has grown more rapidly than most policy makers and energy specialists ever imagined.

As tens of thousands of commuters whiz by, the gleaming rows of solar panels in locations like the Interstate 90 service plaza in Framingham, an embankment on the turnpike near Natick, or a rest area on Route 3 in Plymouth show how solar power has been integrated into daily life. The Framingham and Natick projects are already generating power; when the other sites in Framingham and Plymouth become operational later this month, the five solar farms will produce a combined 2,500 kilowatts of electricity, enough to power about 500 homes.

Legacy â&#x20AC;&#x201C; October 2015 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2015 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Removing Ocean-based Salmon Feedlots The highway solar farms are part of an initiative launched two years ago by the state Department of Transportation that will build at least 10 solar projects on unused department property, eight of them along the Mass Pike. The remaining solar farms will be built next year near Stockbridge and in Salisbury off of Interstate 95.

Ameresco Inc. in Framingham, a publicly traded energy management and procurement company, is developing the solar projects under a contract that pays the DOT nearly $100,000 a year in land leases and allows it to buy electricity at reduced rates from Ameresco. The lower power costs could save the state $15 million over 20 years.

Officials from Ameresco Inc. inspected the site.

Ameresco, which is investing at least $12 million in the solar project, is allowed to sell excess power to electric utilities at a profit.

Legacy – October 2015 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2015 – Removing Ocean-based Salmon Feedlots

Kingston’s efforts to tap into renewable energy on town-owned land has hit its share of complications over the years, but an agreement is near on what may be the final chance for the town to see a solar farm erected on its former landfill, according to the town planner.

“It’s a win-win situation for both,” said Hongyan Oliver, a renewable energy analyst and project manager at the transportation department. “The more electricity produced, the more money we save, and the more they make.”

The highway solar projects are part of a wider push by the state to expand the use of renewable energy to generate electricity. Before the Green Communities Act, which set out ambitious goals to cut carbon pollution and boost wind, solar, and other clean-energy technologies, was passed in 2008, Massachusetts had only about 3 megawatts of solar-power capacity across the state. Today, the state’s solar capacity stands at 903 megawatts, or enough electricity to power about 137,500 homes, according to state data.

The five solar farms will produce a combined 2,500 kilowatts of electricity this month, enough to power about 500 homes. The long-term goal: 1,600 megawatts of electricity by 2020, enough to power about 240,000 homes.

Legacy – October 2015 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2015 – Removing Ocean-based Salmon Feedlots The state’s solar push has been so successful that developers have already hit the caps on the amount of electricity that utilities must buy from solar producers. Last month, the Baker administration filed legislation to lift those solar caps. The long-term goal: producing 1,600 megawatts of solargenerated electricity by 2020, or enough to power about 240,000 homes.

To date, the largest solar farms in Massachusetts — in Billerica, Carver, Chester, and Dartmouth — can each produce a maximum of nearly 6,000 kilowatts of electricity. By comparison, the largest of the current and planned Ameresco projects — in Framingham, Salisbury and Stockbridge — will generate about 650 kilowatts.

Joe DeManche, executive vice president at Ameresco, looked over one of the solar farms his company has built along the Mass. Pike in Framingham.

But the combined capacity of the 10 sites is about 5,500 kilowatts, making this public-private partnership a big deal in the renewable energy industry.

Legacy – October 2015 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2015 – Removing Ocean-based Salmon Feedlots In Framingham, there are two solar farms on either side of the Pike’s Exit 13, each containing 2,100 panels installed on metal ramps. Typically, each solar site has one or more inverters, to convert power from direct current to alternative current, and a transformer, to adjust voltage so power can be sent across the region’s electric grid.

Founded in 2000, Ameresco initially positioned itself as an energy management and efficiency firm whose involvement in the renewable energy market was limited to biogas: methane reclaimed from landfills and sewage treatment plants that is used to generate electricity or fuel for industrial boilers.

But over the past five years or so, the company has pushed aggressively into other renewable energy fields, particularly solar power.

Today, 25 to 30 percent of Ameresco’s more than $600 million in annual revenue comes from its renewable energy businesses. The company employs more than 1,000 people.

“The acceptance of solar and the penetration into the market has really accelerated in recent years,” said Joe DeManche, an executive vice president at Ameresco. “There are all types of solar customers now: residential, government, and commercial.”

Weather information is gathered at one of the solar farms.

Legacy – October 2015 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2015 – Removing Ocean-based Salmon Feedlots

Mining – Precious Metals

 Status: Application for a permit amendment on behalf of Mount Polley Mining Corporation August 27, 2015

Tracking Number: 334908 Authorization Number: 11678

Dear Concerned Person(s), Re: Application Amendment Pursuant to the Environmental Management Act The subject application for a permit amendment on behalf of Mount Polley Mining Corporation, dated March 20, 2015, and about which you provided comments, has now been adjudicated and this email is to inform you of the decision that has been made. Your comments, in addition to all other information available to us, were taken into consideration during the adjudication process for this application. Further to this, the Director has made the decision to issue a Permit Amendment in substantial accord with the application.

On July 9 2015 an amended permit was issued to Mount Polley Mining Corporation that allowed for the discharge of mill tailings to an existing open pit (the Springer Pit) on the mine site. In conjunction with this allowance were requirements for increased monitoring of ground water in the area near the pit, a contingency plan in the event that monitoring indicated a discharge to the receiving environment was likely to occur from the pit filling, increased meeting frequency of the mine’s public liaison committee, and development of a long term water management plan by September 30, 2015.

This amendment does not allow for any discharge of waste to the receiving environment beyond the previously impacted areas of the mine site (open pit) therefore no impact from the discharge on the receiving environment is expected.

You may view a copy of the Permit on our ministry website at http://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/topic.page?id=DF89089126D042FD96DF5D8C1D8B1E41 Yours truly, Allison Stewart Team Lead, Permitting Authorizations Business Services Branch l Environmental Protection Division I Ministry of Environment Phone: 250 387-9953 Fax: 250 356-0299 Please send all permit related emails to: PermitAdministration.VictoriaEPD@gov.bc.ca

Legacy – October 2015 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2015 – Removing Ocean-based Salmon Feedlots

President Barack Obama holds up a piece of salmon jerky while meeting with local fishermen and families on Kanakanak Beach, Wednesday, Sept. 2, 2015, in Dillingham, Alaska. Obama is on a historic three-day trip to Alaska aimed at showing solidarity with a state often overlooked by Washington, while using its glorious but changing landscape as an urgent call to action on climate change.

 Obama's fish tale: salmon spawning on his shoes September 2, 2015 DILLINGHAM, Alaska (AP) — This oh-my moment was nowhere on the official schedule for President Barack Obama's visit to Alaska: salmon spawning on his shoes.

"You see that?" Obama declared Wednesday.

"Something's got on my shoes. ... Generally you don't want fish spawning on your feet. He said he was happy to see me."

Editorial Comment:

Seriously???

  

Mr. Obama should not have been wading with spawning salmon?

A spawning salmon said he was glad to see Mr. Obama – unlikely No fillet knives available during a Presidential visit - - Go figure!

Visiting an isolated fishing village on a grey, overcast day, the president was full of admiration for the whole operation: He pronounced salmon jerky "really good," tried unsuccessfully to scare up a knife so he could attempt to fillet a fish, and carefully inspected smokehouse drying racks.

Legacy â&#x20AC;&#x201C; October 2015 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2015 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Removing Ocean-based Salmon Feedlots The president, wearing orange rubber gloves, held up a large silver salmon for reporters to admire but hastened to add: "I didn't catch it. I don't want anybody thinking I'm telling, you know, fish tales."

He listened intently as a woman holding her own wiggly fish nonchalantly explaining the fishing process.

As for the souvenir can of fish he received, Obama instructed aides not to go eating it.

The president's visit to the fishing operation came with a serious goal of promoting the importance of environmental protection.

"If you've eaten wild salmon it's likely to have come from here," Obama told reporters. "That's part of the reason it's so critical we protect this incredible natural resource."

Dillingham, which sits on an inlet off the Bering Sea, is the fishing hub for Bristol Bay, a worldrenowned salmon fishery. Obama's visit to Dillingham, home to fewer than 3,000 people, places him for a few hours at the center of a roiling conflict between fishermen and developers who want to build a gold and copper mine called Pebble Mine.

Editorial Comment: Mr. Obama apparently disregards wild salmon harvested and processed in British Columbia, Washington State, Oregon, California, Montana, Wyoming and Idaho as well as Russia and several european nations.

The salmon habitats in these other states, provinces and nations are as important as those in Dillingham, Alaska.

Although the company seeking to build the mine hasn't yet submitted any formal proposal, Obama's Environmental Protection Agency has taken the unusual step of pre-emptively blocking it out of concern it could harm the salmon population. That action triggered a lawsuit against the EPA. Fishermen have banded together with locals and environmental groups in warning the mine would produce more than 10 billion tons of mining waste.

Dillingham

Legacy – October 2015 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2015 – Removing Ocean-based Salmon Feedlots

 Battle Over Alaska's Bristol Bay Pits Salmon Against Gold September 2, 2015 A battle between salmon fishermen, environmentalists and the gold mining industry has been brewing for more than a decade in a remote part of Southwest Alaska where the Arctic tundra meets the wetlands, grizzly bears and caribou roam and rivers rich with fish spill out into Bristol Bay. Alaskans are being forced to choose between protecting one of the most crucial salmon fisheries in the world and a gold mine that brings with it the possibility of thousands of jobs and billions in revenue. Advocates and the Environmental Protection Agency say a major mining project so close to the watershed that feeds the bay would have a tremendous impact on the surrounding environment — including the salmon population.

The showdown will be highlighted when President Barack Obama visits the city of Dillingham, Alaska on Wednesday to talk to fisherman who are convinced the salmon fishery and the Pebble Mine — which could bring in an estimated $64 billion in economic contributions to the region — can't coexist.

"You're really going to have to make a choice—turn this into a giant mining district or have the greatest wild salmon fishery in the world," said Tim Bristol, a longtime environmentalist fighting against the mine. "Gold exploration in this part of southwest Alaska started in the late 1980's and plans for the Pebble Mine project became more firm around 2004.

Legacy â&#x20AC;&#x201C; October 2015 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2015 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Removing Ocean-based Salmon Feedlots

The site is so remote it can only be reached by helicopter. Google maps doesn't even have the exact details.

But that stretch of earth is rich in copper and gold. The Pebble Partnership says it could mine 67 million ounces of gold and 55 billion pounds of copper, which could translate into 15,000 jobs, $18 billion in revenue and $64 billion in economic contributions, according to an economic study commissioned by the company.

"We would make important contributions to the Alaska economy," said Mike Heatwole, a spokesman for the Pebble Partnership. "It would also be an economic engine for Southwest Alaska â&#x20AC;&#x201D; especially the communities closest to the project where people remain very open minded about the potential for development."

Commercial fisherman, native Alaskans and environmentalist in Bristol Bay have banded together to fight the building of the mine. Bristol Bay provides 40% of America's wild caught seafood and $2 billion dollars in commercial fishing. It's also the single greatest sockeye salmon fishery in the world.

Right now, much of the land is protected by either the federal or state governments, but not the one piece where the potential mine would sit.

The Pebble Mine could result in a pit as deep as the Grand Canyon and produce up to 10 billion tons of acid-generating waste, according to SEC filings.

Legacy â&#x20AC;&#x201C; October 2015 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2015 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Removing Ocean-based Salmon Feedlots

Workers operate a test drill at the Pebble mine project test in the Bristol Bay region of Alaska near the village of Iliamma, Alaska, in 2007. AL Grillo / AP file "The science is clear that mining the Pebble deposit would cause irreversible damage to one of the world's last intact salmon ecosystems. Bristol Bay's exceptional fisheries deserve exceptional protection," said Dennis McLerran, regional administrator for EPA for region 10.

The Pebble Mine partnership says the salmon fishery and the gold and copper mine can co-exist and have invested over $150 million dollars on environmental studies to prove it.

In fact, the plan to develop the mine never even got to the permitting process because in 2010 the EPA stepped in, did its own study, and concluded the mine would be too damaging to both salmon and the environment.

The company says this was completely unfair and filed a lawsuit against the EPA. It won an injunction stopping the EPA from taking any further action. The matter is still tied up in court.

The company says all the mine project is looking for is a fair shake.

Legacy â&#x20AC;&#x201C; October 2015 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2015 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Removing Ocean-based Salmon Feedlots "It comes back to our key message about wanting to have our project reviewed via the standard, objective and much more transparent (National Environmental Policy Act) review and permitting process," Heatwole said.

The EPA says the three year process was completely transparent and the Pebble Partnership need only apply for a Clean Water Act permit, which it hasn't done.

While the case is tied up in court, the community remains in limbo.

Former Alaska State Representative Rick Halford insists, "It is the most destructive and the most dangerous kind of mine." He's concerned not only over the size of the open-pit mine, larger than any other, but that it's in the middle of a sensitive watershed.

The project will also need hundreds of miles of new infrastructure and a new port, and Halford says that will degrade the land and cut off streams. Halford and others point to a catastrophic dam breach in Canada at the Mount Polley mine in August 2014. It dumped out 6.5 billion gallons of wastewater destroying part of British Columbia's watershed.

And that's exactly what they don't want to happen in Bristol Bay.

Crewmembers pull in a driftnet loaded with sockeye salmon in Bristol Bay, near Egegik, Alaska, in 2009.Margaret Bauman / AP file Mine proponents wrote a letter to the president in advance of his visit, touting the merits of the project. Environmentalist and fisherman hope to get on his agenda when he visits.

Legacy – October 2015 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2015 – Removing Ocean-based Salmon Feedlots Senior advisor Brian Deese says the president is aware of the project.

"He's aware of the broader issue on using science to make judgments about when certain activities pose too big a threat to local communities, local ecosystems and local economies," Deese said. "The EPA has a long and solid track record of using science in that way."

In December 2014, President Obama signed a memorandum that protects Bristol Bay from oil and gas drilling saying, "These waters are too special and too valuable to offer up to the highest bidder."

Some Republicans said his environmental policies are another example of government overreach and they put the EPA's action on Pebble Mine in the same category. And environmentalists worry that if a Republican takes the presidency in 2016, the move could swing favor back toward the mine.

"There is always a risk — there's a lot of gold and copper in the ground and someone's always going to have an eye on trying to develop it," Bristol said.

Legacy – October 2015 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2015 – Removing Ocean-based Salmon Feedlots

 Will Canada's new mines hurt Alaska's salmon?

August 24, 2015 Summer in southeast Alaska is salmon season. As the days grow long, the iconic pink fish begin to run up rivers and streams, and the fishing economy jumps to life. But this summer, fishermen are worried that new mining development could put their livelihoods at risk.

Alaska produces more than 50 percent of US seafood, a success cultivated by careful regulation.

“Alaska is the jewel of the world when it comes to fisheries management,” says Mike Erikson, the CEO of a small seafood processing plant in Juneau called Alaska Glacier Seafoods, “and that’s because you don’t see dams on our rivers you don’t see a lot of development in these watersheds that will have a negative impact.”

Legacy – October 2015 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2015 – Removing Ocean-based Salmon Feedlots Salmon is the dominant fish on the menu in southeast Alaska, accounting for 75 percent of the region’s seafood economy. Five different salmon species — Chum, Pinks, Coho, Sockeye and Kings — swim up rivers here to spawn. The salmon life cycle is a well-documented natural wonder.

Somehow, each fish manages to find its way back from the open ocean to a little freshwater stream where it was born. But last summer the salmon cycle was disrupted on one of the biggest sockeye rivers in North America.

On August 12, 2014, a dam holding back wastewater from the Mt. Polley copper and gold mine in British Columbia burst, sending more than six billion gallons of polluted water and mine waste into the Fraser River, just as the fish had begun their journey upstream.

It’s still too early to know how the Mt. Polley spill will impact the salmon runs on the Fraser, but some fishermen see the Mt. Polley disaster as the first shot in a growing conflict between Canadian mining businesses and the Alaskan salmon industry. British Columbia is in the midst of a mining boom, and several BC metal mines are planned along rivers that ultimately flow into Southeast Alaska — rivers like the Unuk, the Taku, and the Stikine. All of the mines would create massive amounts of toxic mining waste that will need to be stored and kept out of rivers. “[The mines] are all in very close proximity to major salmon streams and they are in remote very geologically unstable, wet environments,” says Chris Zimmer of the conservation organization Rivers Without Borders. Zimmer says that the accident at Mt. Polley shows that mining companies don’t have the technology to mine safely in sensitive ecosystems like wild rivers.

Many fisherman agree. “Mining on a salmon river, I’ve never seen an example where it worked to the benefit of salmon,” says Len Peterson a fisherman based out of Juneau.

Many of the proposed mines are in early development and still need investment, but the Red Chris copper and gold mine opened this summer. Owned by Imperial Metals, which also owns the Mt. Polley mine, Red Chris is located along a tributary of the Stikine River, about 70 miles from the Alaskan border.

BC minister of mines Bill Bennett has maintained there will be no problems containing the wastewater from Red Chris, but some Alaskans downstream aren’t convinced.

“It’s all part of this watershed,” says Angie Eldred of the Southeast Alaska Watershed Coalition. “If anything were to go wrong or there were to be a water quality impact, it’s going to wash downstream and impact all of our resources ... on this side of the border.”

That’s a concern for many people in the town of Wrangell, Alaska, a few miles from the mouth of the Stikine, people like tour-boat operator Brenda Schwartz-Yaeger. Part of the town’s small but growing tourist economy, Schwartz-Yaeger takes visitors upriver to see the bald eagles, grizzly bear, and wild glacial landscape of the lower Stikine.

“Wrangell wouldn’t be here today or earlier if it wasn’t for the bounty of the river,” she says. “I mean the natives came and settled this area because it was so rich and bountiful.” And native Alaskans in Wrangell today still depend on the Stikine’s bounty.

Legacy – October 2015 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2015 – Removing Ocean-based Salmon Feedlots “Each year I go up there and get sockeye and put that up for the winter,” says Einar Haasath, a member of the Tlingit tribe, one of the largest in southeast Alaska. Einar mostly fishes for subsistence, but commercial fishing is the biggest industry in Wrangell, and residents fear that the Red Chris mine could threaten the river at the center of the town’s fishing economy.

“If you lost the fishing industry you wouldn’t have anything,” Haasath says. “[Wrangell] would be a ghost town.” On August 2, about 100 Wrangell residents marched through town to protest mining development on the Stikine.

The Alaska state government has communicated extensively with British Columbia about the new mines, and so far state officials have said they trust British Columbia’s mine permitting process.

100 % Bovine Excrement!

“Our laws are very comparable, our standards for the mining industry are extremely comparable. We go about the business of evaluating mining proposals ... in pretty much the same way,” says Kyle Mosele of the Alaska Department of Natural Resources. But a coalition of fisherman, conservationists, and native Alaskans is demanding a stricter environmental review of new Canadian mines like Red Chris, and they want the US State Department to get involved.

“What we need is a better mechanism to get Alaska’s concerns on the table, says Zimmer, “and that’s probably something through the Boundary Waters Treaty, which was signed by both countries and says very clearly and simply, you cannot pollute the waters which flow between both countries.”

So far, the State Department has said that it sees this as a local issue, but Zimmer and other activists says that they are going to keep pushing to get standards in place that will protect Alaska’s downstream interests.

“I think there is some momentum here from the levels of concern with Mt. Polley. So I think now is the chance. We have BC’s attention and if we wait much longer a lot of these mines are going to get built,” he says.

Alaskans are used to the careful balancing act of managing different natural resources. Over the years the state has seen conflicts over the impacts of timber, oil and mineral extraction. But salmon advocates argue that fish are different — they’re a renewable resource. If you regulate the fishery and keep their habitat healthy, the sockeye, humpies and kings will keep coming back to the rivers and streams of Southeast Alaska every summer.

Climate change and ocean acidification are changing that equation, but in the short term those who depend on the salmon argue that the best way to help them is to keep the rivers running clean and free.

“The river is really important, says Haasath about his Stikine River, “and I would hate to see anything happen to it. People talk about industry and that sort of thing. Well, industry comes and goes, but a river, by golly, once you destroy it its gone. You can’t bring it back.”

Legacy – October 2015 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2015 – Removing Ocean-based Salmon Feedlots

 EPA

blocks release of Colorado mine spill documents to hide truth of toxic lead, arsenic poisoning Navajo waters September 14, 2015

A congressional panel is criticizing the Environmental Protection Agency after its refusal to hand over documents related the Gold King Mine spill, an incident in which more than three million gallons of orange, toxic water spilled into the largest source of drinking water in the West, Watchdog.org reported.

"It is disappointing, but not surprising, that the EPA failed to meet the House Science Committee's reasonable deadline in turning over documents pertaining to the Gold King Mine spill," Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas, told the site. "These documents are essential to the Committee's ongoing investigation and our upcoming hearing on Sept. 9. But more importantly, this information matters to the many Americans directly affected in western states, who are still waiting for answers from the EPA." Smith and the EPA frequently spar over various issues, but as chairman of the House Science, Space and Technology Committee, he nevertheless has an oversight function to serve for his constituents and the American people in general, which is why he requested the documents.

EPA Director Gina McCarthy has been asked to appear before the panel to answer questions about what role the agency played in the environmental disaster, which leaked highly toxic chemicals into Colorado's Animas River on August 5. Critics have charged that McCarthy and the EPA have not been responsive, have remained secretive, and are unsympathetic to millions of Americans who live in three states bordering the river.

No plan to deal with spill Watchdog.org reported: For several days, the EPA didn't notify the states of Utah, New Mexico or the Navajo Nation that the spill was coming their way. McCarthy waited a week before visiting Colorado and even then she refused to tour Silverton, the town nearest the Gold King mine where EPA contractors unleashed the toxic plume into waterways that feed the Colorado River. The agency withheld the name of the contractor working on the project and other details that are generally considered public information. Lastly, the Navajo Nation, which relies on the river for drinking water and farming, received an emergency supply from the EPA in oil-contaminated containers.

In addition, Smith criticized McCarthy for taking a trip to Japan as the controversy over the spill continues to fester. He also bashed President Obama.

Legacy – October 2015 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2015 – Removing Ocean-based Salmon Feedlots "EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy is currently crusading on climate-change action in Japan while President Obama, who has yet to visit the areas affected by the spill, is touring the U.S. to tout EPA's latest regulation that will do little to impact climate change and will only further burden Americans with higher electric bills," Smith said.

Perhaps the worst part of the entire incident is that it was foreseeable – by the government.

As reported by The Associated Press, U.S. officials were aware of the potential for a catastrophic "blowout" of highly poisonous wastewater from the long-inactive mine, but they only had a perfunctory plan to deal with such an incident when an EPA-contracted cleanup team breached a dam holding the toxic mix, internal agency documents revealed.

Government-caused disaster means no one will be held accountable The EPA only released the documents in mid-August after weeks of prodding by the AP and other media organizations. The documents indeed shed more light on the incident, but they also raise additional questions. For example, why wasn't there a better, more comprehensive plan in place to deal with any accidental spills like the EPA requires of private industry?

The spill occurred August 5 as workers excavated the entrance to the mine, which is located near Silverton, Colorado.

The AP further noted: A June 2014 work order for a planned cleanup noted the mine had not been accessible since 1995, when the entrance partially collapsed.

"This condition has likely caused impounding of water behind the collapse," the report said. "Conditions may exist that could result in a blowout of the blockages and cause a release of large volumes of contaminated mine waters and sediment from inside the mine."

Yet no real plan to deal with such a scenario existed, even as agency officials planned a cleanup project to deal with the water that was spilled.

No one has been held accountable for the spill yet. If history is any guide, no one will take the blame because it was a government-caused disaster.

Sources include: 

IndependentSentinel.com

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Watchdog.org

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NaturalNews.com

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BigStory.AP.org