RIVERS WITHOUT BORDERS

Northwest BC Needs a Different Vision

Last month, the British Columbia government announced that it was going to support the development of a 287 kV transmission line north from Terrace to Bob Quinn on Highway 37. Premier Gordon Campbell promised that miners, energy developers and others would soon be able to rely on "clean, reliable power" to promote development. He neglected to say that the development that the power would promote would be anything but clean, and in fact would undermine his own pledge from only a few days before to implement an aggressive new climate action plan.

The heavily publicly subsidized power line will be a gift to the mining sector, who would not be able to develop a number of projects in the northwest without this handout. Within minutes of the Premier’s announcement, the mining sector was declaring it a great day for mining. Sadly it was not a great day for taxpayers, or for the biggest remaining wilderness on North America’s Pacific coast. The new powerline will provide vastly more power than is needed by the small communities of the northwest, and could power greenhouse gas belching projects like an open pit coal mine, coalbed methane development in the Sacred Headwaters of the Skeena, Nass and Stikine rivers, and other dirty, unsustainable projects.

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e-PIC Problems

The on-line database for British Columbia’s Environmental Assessment Office (BC EAO) is called e-PIC, or environmental Project Information Centre. It is where you are supposed to be able to access information about projects currently being considered by the BC EAO. But the BC EAO seems to be playing fast and loose with when it chooses to make information public and when it doesn’t.

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Taku decision makes the CBC

Great news today — made the CBC online. Here’s a quick exerpt:

“CBC: Redfern’s Taku River plan raises new questions

New plans to use the Taku River, rather than a road, to service the proposed Tulsequah mine in northern B.C. will require a thorough environmental review, Transboundary Watershed Alliance spokesman David MacKinnon says.

Redfern Resources announced Monday that it has abandoned plans to build a controversial 160-kilometre road from Atlin south to the mine site.”

Click here to read the full story