Watershed Sentinel Vol 11 #4 (August/November 2001)

As usual Energy is a burning issue this month. Northern correspondent Leona Green tells of her experience with oil and gas exploration, the folks in Port Alberni stage a second tidal wave in opposition to siting a natural gas-fuelled turbine for electricity generation in the middle of town, and we present the news shorts which show that change is coming fast with alternative power. See:

Water also runs through these pages. Don Malcolm illustrates the poetry of the history of rivers and salmon. Medicins Sans Frontieres introduce the growing movement for a global water treaty to ensure social justice in water distribution; Wendy Holms argues darkly that Canadians were lied to about water and the various trade deals, while Friends of Cortes Island present the hopeful side of youthful energy vested in water stewardship. See:

Four stories in this issue point out the heart-breaking incoherence of Canada's Toxics policies - if policies there are. Anna Tilman tells about her passionate entanglement in a federal committee on the air-borne mercury from the burning of coal for electricity generation. Accompanied by a news update, Dr. Peter Carter reviews Frederick Street, the book which reveals how those un-policies have failed the people who live and die by the Sydney Tar Ponds. In Burnaby, students unveil a major oil company's contamination of groundwater with MTBE. And, on a positive note, Mae Burrows and the Labour Environmental Alliance Society work with workers to discover the toxins in commercial cleaning products and get them out of workers lives and out of the water. See:

Canadian governments, both federal and provincial, are more and more taking on the appearance of third world goon infested regimes, while their municipal minions scramble 'neath their laden tables for the bones and crumbs that might spill from the fat hands. And the general population searches through the promises, blowing in the wind through the corridors of power, for a shred of hope.

Those who were paying attention will remember Brian Mulroney's promise that the Free Trade Agreement (FTA) would not happen on his watch. But it did. And later, Jean Chretien promised he would abrogate the FTA. But he didn't. Instead, his government would sign the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and throw its weight behind the final corporate foreclosure on democracy, the World Trade Organization (WTO), rendering the FTA virtually insignificant by comparison.

And now, following the lead of the federal government's approving massive pay increases for MPs, Mike Harris' Ontario government has given notice it intends to follow suit for members in the provincial house. Are we witnessing the beginning of a rare occurrence in Canada where all of the provinces reach consensus on an issue? Both levels of government tell us pay increases will attract a better class of person to government.

Well ... if such were the case, perhaps most citizens would not object to the pay increases. It's likely many of the people in Walkerton and those around the Sydney tar ponds would appreciate a better class of politician.

But would it not make more sense to try to attract to government those whose prime motivation is service to our country rather than monetary compensation, whose priorities lean toward values rather than price? Is that idea too naive, too old-fashioned?

Surely most of the population would welcome leaders who would seek the path back toward democracy rather than the shortest path to the public trough.

"We actually planned to do that. I don't know why it wasn't done back in 1999. I have no idea." - Ray Lord, a spokesman for Chevron, not explaining why the company did not report contamination of groundwater on its site with MTBE to environment officials, Vancouver Province, July 19, 2001

"It should have happened and it didn't." - Cominco spokesman Richard Fish, on the company's failure to warn workers about the danger of exposure to high levels of thallium on their job, Vancouver Sun, August 31, 2001

Every couple of years, the joys of summer overcome our compulsive publishing natures, and we roll two issues into one very big fat production, as we have with this one, the August/November Watershed Sentinel. The next issue, December 2001/January 2002, goes to press at the end of November. Copy deadline Nov. 5th. Ad deadline Nov. 10th. Write to us!

The good news on the toxic struggle literally comes from the home front. The Hudson decision has pesticide activists, and those who suffer when their neighbours spray, celebrating. At the end of June the Supreme Court of Canada upheld the power of municipal governments to restrict the use of pesticides within their communities, protecting the health of their citizens and the environment.

In 1991 the Town of Hudson, Quebec, passed a municipal bylaw which tightly restricted the use of pesticides for cosmetic uses within its boundaries. Chemlawn and Spraytech, both companies that routinely apply pesticides, had lost challenges to the bylaw in two Quebec courts before appealing to the Supreme Court to strike down the bylaw. The companies argued that municipalities did not have the power to control local pesticide use.

Oil and Gas Disrupts Life
Private land and common resources at risk

The Northeast of BC is a large area of mountains, rolling hills and wooded valleys, dotted with farm and ranch land. There are many large rivers and streams as well as crystal clear lakes. It is home to a multitude of species of wildlife. Unfortunately, there are also untapped reserves of oil and natural gas. For the last few years exploration for this wealth has been in full gear, to the extent that drilling companies are like a lot of crazies in the gold strike eras of years long past. It appears they will stop at nothing to drill a well anywhere they have the smallest evidence of natural gas - even in a person's front yard if necessary! A great many of these wells are being drilled in critical areas of human and wildlife habitat.

Landowners here must contend with seismic crews, drilling crews and pipeline crews and the twenty-four hour a day noise from the screaming of the drills, the heavy equipment and the coming and going of all manner of traffic. Most people are opposed to the drilling of these sour (H2S) gas wells and laying of the pipelines in such close proximity to residences. They do not like the risks involved in the event of an emergency and during routine well and pipeline operations. As well as risks to human life there is the disturbing and displacing of the many species of our sensitive wildlife.

There is the instance of a widowed, eighty year old lady who is just recovering from a stroke. She was notified that a gas well is to be drilled just a few metres from the front of her home - right in the centre of the view from her living room window. Understandably, she is so upset and afraid that it is gravely affecting her health. The company is adamant concerning the drill site and, to make matters worse, if it turns out to be a producing well, it will be flared. Flaring produces some two hundred toxins, some of them carcinogenic, which will be spewed into the air. In several instances, residents living close to these flares are moving away from their homes as they can no longer cope with the odours and the health problems they are having. The health problems are many and varied, but the most common are headache, nausea and respiratory. One company at least has passed out information cautioning against pregnant women living near one of these flared wells.

The impact on the environment and wildlife is becoming more and more devastating. Wildlife of all species are displaced and sometimes destroyed, as in the example of bear dens being destroyed by heavy equipment building seismic roads and/or drill sites. Several species of wildlife have been brought in for care and rehabilitation that were displaced or injured in the process of oil and gas exploration.

There are so many problems involved with this industry. The Pine River oil pipeline break in August, 2000, which poisoned the Pine River is a good example. Also, the blow-out of the sour gas well near Ft. Nelson last year and the explosion of the natural gas plant in Taylor. These are only a few examples of the dangers we face every day.

Our private land is being invaded, our water (wells, streams, river and lakes), soil and air are being contaminated and as in the case of the South Dawson Creek, some of our waterways no longer run. The greed for money with no thought for the land or its inhabitants is what we face here.

* G. Leona Green, Dawson Creek BC

Thank you for producing the best environmental magazine that I know of.

* Don Ferguson, Lethbridge AB

Thanks for another GREAT year of W. S.

* Tom Pater, Kyuquot BC

Thanks, again, for your efforts in producing such a vital news magazine.

* Michael Maser, Victoria BC

NEWS

MTBE Additive Moves in Water
Burnaby threat discovered by school science project
by Delores Broten

Under a barrage of questions from local residents and the environmental organization SPEC, the Chevron refinery in Burnaby finally acknowledged that they had been aware of MTBE contamination of groundwater beneath the plant since 1999. Contamination of an industrial site is a private matter in British Columbia until the contamination passes the plant gates.

That appears to be the case at Chevron, but the problem was only discovered when two high school students tested for MTBE for a science project in April 2001. The results showed MTBE at 6.9 parts per billion (ppb) 20 feet from the refinery boundary. City officials then found levels at 21 ppb in a local creek. The BC draft drinking water guideline is 20 ppb. With Burnaby City Council demanding information, a study done for Chevron this spring showed MTBE in test wells on the refinery site at 170,000 ppb and 60,000 ppb.

In the just-released 1999 National Pollution Release Inventory, Chevron reported environmental releases of 55 and a half tonnes of MTBE. According to CKNW Radio, Chevron says its use of MTBE is being phased out in favour of isoctane, and they only released 11 tonnes in the year 2000.

MTBE (methyl-tertiary-butyl ether) is a fuel additive used to boost the octane of gas. It causes cancer in lab rats, and is extremely mobile in water. A spill of only one litre of gas with MTBE additive can contaminate a well up to 300 metres away. [See "Pumping Poison," Watershed Sentinel, October/November 1999.] MTBE has contaminated groundwater which supplies hundreds of thousands of people in California due to leaking underground gas storage tanks. The state is now banning MTBE, despite NAFTA challenges by the Methanol Corporation.

MTBE was assessed for toxicity in Canada, and declared "non-toxic," but the assessment used no health information generated after October 1991 and no environmental studies from after April 1992.

Sharon Campbell of Burnaby Residents Against Chevron Expansion has no doubt where the problem lies in this on-going story of contamination. "I'm angry with government," she says simply. "They're not doing their job."

* News from West Coast Environmental Law, Vancouver Province, July 2001, SPEC press release, Edmonton Journal, August 2001

On July17th, the newly formed BC Coalition for Sustainable Forest Solutions released a report which documented $3 to $5 billion annually in subsidies to the BC logging industry. Cutting Subsidies or Subsidized Cutting, co-authored by economists Tom Green and Lisa Matthaus, focuses on five main types of subsidies: tenure, stumpage, bail outs, environmental waiver, and infringement of aboriginal title.

The BC Forest Minister, Mike de Jong responded with a denial that the BC industry was subsidized and a reprimand to the Coalition groups for "jumping in bed with the Americans."

The BC Coalition for Sustainable Forest Solutions includes a broad cross-section of BC First Nations, labour and environmental groups. Information about the Coalition and the report is available at: http://www.forestsubsidies.ca.

Subsidies occur when public resources are available to private interests at less than their true cost. It is apparent to virtually everyone in BC that there are major systemic features of the British Columbia forest management regime that subsidize logging operations and promote, or do not discourage, environmentally and economically destructive behaviour.

Cutting Subsidies describes how the land tenure system is the foundation for other subsidies. As Michael M'Gonigle, Eco-Research Chair of Environmental Law and Policy at the University of Victoria points out, "these long-term tenures artificially depress prices (through lack of market competition) while they discriminate against innovative new entrants (through exclusion from access to timber)."

Cutting Subsidies also highlights the impact of subsidies on First Nations. The report estimates the subsidy resulting from non-recognition and infringement of Aboriginal rights and title at between $188 to $939 million annually.

Soon after Cutting Subsidies was released, and just before the decision on softwood lumber tariffs, which imposed a heavy penalty on BC producers and their workers, the BC government and the BC Lumber Trade Council submitted comments to the US Commerce Department based on a report by Yale Professor, Dr. William D. Nordhaus. This report mistakenly concludes that stumpage is merely like an arbitrary tax levied by the provincial government on rents earned by timber companies arising from their "ownership" of timber in provincial forests, rather than a price for goods purchased by the licensees, i.e., Crown timber. Taken together, the government submission and the Nordhaus' report misrepresent the strength of property rights granted to tenure holders in BC.

In response, Forest Futures and the Sierra Club of BC, commissioned a legal opinion from West Coast Environmental Law which identifies the following inaccuracies and mistaken assumptions in Nordhaus' report, which:

The newly elected government continues to ignore repeated attempts to dialogue with organizations involved in the Coalition. In fact, Forest Minister Michael de Jong convened a "Softwood Jamboree" to discuss structural reforms including "changes to the way companies hold timber land and pay to log." One hundred and forty industry representatives attended the meeting, but not one environmental representative was invited.

In the coming months the Coalition plans to release additional reports, including a study comparing Vancouver Log Market log prices with equivalent US market prices. Later this fall the Coalition will also be crafting a Solutions Paper or "Citizen's Agenda for Forestry Reform" to simultaneously provide a means to defuse brewing trade disputes and to help to reform forest policies and practices to benefit all British Columbians.

When in 1840 the strike-anywhere match came onto the market, the new invention soon became standard equipment for the wave of prospectors that fanned out over BC and the Yukon, looking for mineral riches. Most of British Columbia east of the coast range was covered in white spruce and interior Douglas fir, with lodgepole pine and some hardwoods scattered in between. The prospectors needed to see the rocks, so when the weather was right they burned the forest and the organic humus layer so severely that mineral soil was exposed. The new match was a wonderful and simple tool and was used frequently and everywhere. In short time, it would also aid in providing the much needed dry wood to keep warm in the winter.

But fires have a habit of growing and many millions of acres were burned needlessly, but who cared? The land was empty, except for, as the prospectors and miners put it, "some roaming Indians who had legs and could run away." The practice also gave the unexpected benefit of a much reduced mosquito problem and many areas were set on fire just for this purpose.

From the Cariboo gold rush on, most of the interior forests of BC were devastated. Pioneer tree species like lodgepole pine and aspen took advantage of the new opportunity and always recovered the ash-covered mineral soil, but organic soil needed centuries to recover. The pioneer trees were a blessing for our province because they covered the bare soil and prevented much erosion.

In 1896 the Yukon gold rush started and the permafrost had to be melted to get at the placer gold. Until the early 1950s, the Yukon Government issued official fire permits to set the forests along the Stewart and Yukon rivers on fire to supply the needed dry fuel wood for the many river boats and for the placer operations. The southern and central Yukon went up in flames, converting the predominantly spruce forests into pine forests. But only the smaller, easier to handle trees were utilized.

The new match had been an instrument of destruction for the forests of BC and the Yukon. The forest balance and its dependent animals, as had existed for centuries, was totally altered.

The lodgepole pines are fire-dependent trees and loaded with many different turpines which make up the turpentine and resins in the wood and the needles. Most cones on the trees are locked closed with a strong resin bond that needs to be broken by the heat of a fire, only then can they release their seeds. These trees are totally dependent on fire and burn they did, so fire followed fire followed fire, leaving nothing behind that could form the much needed organic layer, the home of the unseen forest.

Every forest is supported by an unbelievably complex system of mycorrhizal fungi with thousands of interacting, living components and what we know about them is very limited. Hyphal threads of this fungal system grow into and around the feeder roots of the trees bringing them phosphorus and other nutrients from the forest soil. In these fungal-root connections, the exchange takes place between minerals from the soil and sugars which the tree produces in the needles by photosynthesis. This beneficial exchange is called mutualistic symbiosis and neither the tree nor the fungus can live without it. There is always plenty of this sugar produced and the surplus is passed on to feed all other workers in the underground support system.

When the soil is burned virtually all of this unseen and indispensable support system is killed and the organic humus layer is destroyed, but some of the tougher species may survive in the mineral soil below. Without the periodic flow of photosynthate the organisms have three choices:

Some fungi may be able to survive long enough for the new trees to start growing but in general the burned over area will need to be re-inoculated by spores drifting in from intact forests. Interconnecting the roots of all the trees, as was the case before the fire, may take as much as a century, a few species may take longer. Restoring the essential population of little helpers like mites, nematodes, springtails etc. may take even longer. When this support system has been restored, the time is right for the original forest to return, which happens to be now.

Nature is indomitable and wants to heal. In wet or protected places, clumps of spruce here and there had managed to survive the 150 year carnage and the wind distributed their millions of seeds far and wide. In time, almost everywhere the spruce trees came back as an under-story, growing in the partial shade of the pines and aspen trees, but they will do so only if the mycorrhizal support system has fully recovered.

The pioneer over-story, covering these enormous areas, is now up to 160 years old and becoming decadent, but they are now enormously valuable for the future health of the spruce forest. Over the decades their wood has stored masses of organic matter and nutrients, now desperately needed by the mycorrhiza and the developing crop of spruce and fir, growing up underneath.

So nature engaged the mountain pine beetle to convert the short-lived trees into something the mature white spruce and Interior Douglas fir could utilize. The beetles kill many or all of the pine trees, open up the tree canopy and set the long process in motion to turn the pine wood into a humus layer, thereby restoring normality to the forest. The support system, made up of an endless variety of little fungi and creatures, will make sure that the released nutrients reach the young trees.

The beetle went to work, doing its assigned task, and in the process coloured the fast-aging pine forests a pretty red, ready for the stored-up nutrients to be made available and enriching the soil. No harm is being done anywhere, just nature doing its healing work. But some people see it differently and want to "salvage" the wood. If this is done by horse logging there is little harm, but using anything bigger may well be disastrous.

For one dollar's worth of profit, the machines may destroy one thousand dollars' worth of future benefit. Logging companies don't see those little trees as having commercial value. They don't, but they do have future value. Wake up BC. There is no waste involved in leaving the trees to die, just many benefits for the generations as yet unborn.

The Ecology Action Centre (EAC) of Halifax Nova Scotia, with support from the Sierra Legal Defence Fund, is taking the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) to court. The Centre is proceeding with a legal action to protect Canada's marine fish habitat. They have brought an application for judicial review of a variation order issued by the Regional Director-General of DFO. The variation order would re-open the Canadian side of the highly productive and ecologically sensitive fishing ground called Georges Bank to groundfish draggers.

Under section 35(1) of the Fisheries Act, it is illegal to harmfully alter, disrupt or destroy fish habitat. The Fisheries Act makes the DFO legally responsible for the management and conservation of fisheries, the protection of fish habitat, and the enforcement of the habitat protection provisions. To date, DFO has enforced the act when people seek to alter or disturb a lake, river or stream that contains fish But they typically have ignored any responsibility for fish habitat in the ocean.

Although the Fisheries Act makes it illegal to harmfully alter, disrupt or destroy fish habitat, the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans may authorize this destruction in specific instances, but after an environmental impact assessment. Habitat destruction by draggers has never been authorized by the Minister, and dragging has never been subjected to an environmental assessment.

Dragging or trawling is the towing of heavy fishing gear (nets, cables, rollers, and doors) over the bottom or through the water. Many marine scientists consider the impact of dragging on the ocean floor to be one of the most harmful human activities affecting the ocean today. Scientific literature detailing the damage done has piled up over the past two decades. In some cases studies indicate relatively little damage, for instance where dragging is done on mobile sandy bottoms. In other cases, for example along the outer edge of the Scotian shelf where there are forests of thousand year old corals, the damage is extreme. Dragging reduces species diversity, biomass and structural complexity and tends to homogenize the ocean floor. Many marine invertebrates and fishes, including the juveniles of commercial species, rely on structurally complex features such as corals for protection and food.

There are alternative fishing methods, such as bottom hook and line, which benefit both the environment and the economy. An environmental assessment would demonstrate that hook and line gear does minimal damage to the ocean floor, creates more jobs per pound of fish caught, is less open to abuse, lands a better quality fish and is less likely to over-exploit the stocks.

In spite of years of concerted research and lobbying by EAC and other environmental and (inshore) fishing organizations on the issue of responsible fishing, the Fisheries Management Branch of DFO has never made a concerted effort to encourage the use of less destructive gear types. It is EAC's observation that powerful interests in the fishery ensure that DFO does not change its current policy toward dragging. That leaves the EAC with no option but to go to court.

* Contact the Ecology Action Centre Marine Issues Committee c/o Mark Butler at ar427@chebucto.ns.ca
* Earth Action Weekly Bulletin #20, August 2001

Since long before the invention of clocks and calendars, the rivers sought their courses and gouged their channels from the highlands to the seas, unthinking, sensitive only to the pull of gravity. And time in the highlands and valleys of the watersheds spilled through the phases of the moon, neither noticed nor recorded.

Salmon occurred in the rivers, migrating down from the highlands to the ocean to feed and grow fat, or up from the ocean, egg-heavy, to spawn and die, ensuring continuation of their kind in the completion of their cycles. And the savage innocence of the wilderness was nourished by their carcasses. So it must have been, in time beyond memory.

And people, endowed with many gifts, came to the rivers. They brought with them their gifts of observation, reason, imagination and invention. But, perhaps, the greatest gift they possessed was the gift of memory. In memory they stored their experiences which became traditions, cultures and mythology. And the abundance of the rivers and watersheds gave them livelihood. And time in the river valleys came to be measured by the circles and rhythms of seasons and the cycles of the salmon. So it was, remembered, for uncounted generations, from the beginning of memory.

And strangers came, putting names to continents, rivers, and the people who dwelt there; impatient, heavy- handed newcomers who could not understand circular, cyclical balance, running from memory, crowding hard against the constraints and margins of time. Nor would they recognize ancient cultures and tenure.

In the place that would become known as Canada, in the greater body of North America, the newcomers, from the sixteenth century onward, ascended every river from ocean to wellspring, laying claim to the rivers and all the land they drained. By the beginning of the nineteenth century they would begin the settlement of what is now British Columbia. Their coming would bring great change to the rivers, the land and its aboriginal peoples, and most of the wild creatures in all of the watersheds.

The wilderness must have appeared inexhaustible to the new arrivals. In their haste to exploit the paradise that lay before them, they probably saw no need for caution. They set to work with a zeal to shape the wilderness to their needs and wants. The rivers that first provided access to the upland areas would bear the brunt of their endeavours.

To the original inhabitants, looking out from their river-oriented cultures and traditions of circular sustainability, the newcomers must have appeared madness driven. How they must have despaired as they watched, helplessly, the tearing apart and trampling underfoot of their cultures and ancient traditions, their very livelihood, while one after another, their rivers were despoiled.

The strangers in the land, it seems, had a fear and contempt for the wilderness that surrounded them. They set about to change it, and change it they did. The effect of their heavy footprint is evident wherever they trod, and they trod most heavily in the river valleys.

Without regard for the consequences they tumbled mountain sides into rivers to provide road beds and foundations for their railroads and factories. The cities and towns they would build would pollute the rivers with sewage and industrial chemicals, and even in the farthest reaches of the wilderness mine tailings would foul the salmon spawning beds. Rivers diverted from their ancient channels, their flow impeded behind dams would be directed through tunnels under mountains to turn electricity- producing generators, to discharge, barren and dead to the ocean, hundreds of miles from their natural destinations.

Memory nipped at the heels of the newcomers like a mean hound, goading, harrying, driving. They had come out from cultures and countries that measured sustainability by success at raiding neighbours next-door, next-village or adjacent-country. Most of the population was shut out from property ownership and survived at the whimsy of the land owners. Hunger and poverty linked each generation to the next. In the new land they would build their own security, their own empires. Each accomplishment gave birth to new desires so that the grasp of the heavy hand struggled to keep pace with its reach, while the rivers, compromised, sought the sea.

And yet the salmon, decreased in numbers, struggle upstream in completion of their cycles.

Perhaps, more than any other indicator, the rivers of Canada have become the gauge by which environmental degradation can best be measured. No matter where, everyone lives in a watershed, and water runs downstream bringing both boon and bane.

In recent years many Canadians have become ashamed of the state of our rivers. Throughout the land activists are speaking out, lobbying governments and industry, and, in increasing groups, physically putting their "shoulder to the wheel" in work programs to clean up their particular section of their home river. With imagination and dedication the job can be done. But it will be a generation- spanning endeavour, worthy of time and rivers.

Robert Blakeney is a BC water and sanitation Engineer who has participated in relief missions with Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) in South Sudan and East Timor

Water, the "source of life," has shaped the world's ecosystem, established our political boundaries, and has resulted in the rise and fall of civilizations. As a global issue, none has the potential to affect our society, economy, and our very existence as much as water. However, more and more, we are allowing our most precious commodity to be controlled by private interests and power brokers the world over. Water is increasingly viewed as a powerful commodity to be manipulated, controlled, and even sold; often at the expense of marginalized groups. Water availability has always been a source of social and economic inequality, but today's civilizations recognize that access to water is a fundamental, inalienable individual and collective right.

Presently, 450 million people in 29 countries face water shortage problems. This figure is projected to jump to 2.5 billion people by 2050. Around 1.4 billion people live without clean drinking water. Seven million die every year from water-borne diseases. Half the world's rivers and lakes are seriously polluted, leading to the spread of infectious diseases and epidemics. Water shortage in the world has the potential to create millions of environmental refugees in the years ahead.

Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) is an international humanitarian aid organization that provides emergency medical assistance to populations in danger in more than 80 countries. MSF is primarily concerned with access to health care for marginalized populations. This includes access to safe water, sanitation and hygiene, all of which aid in preventing the onset of water-borne disease. Diseases such as cholera can quickly become an emergency and the provision of safe water, sanitation and hygiene is essential to controlling an outbreak. In fact, 80% of infectious diseases can be linked to poor drinking water and sanitation. For more than thirty years, MSF has been providing water in emergencies for populations displaced by insecurity due to wars or natural disasters. Our emergency services are often the only source of safe water for populations.

Increasingly, though, the efforts of aid agencies have been hampered not by nature, but by man. Most disturbing is the rise in deliberate and organized prevention of access to water, in particular to marginalized groups in developing nations. The increase in water-related wars and terrorism is linked to the belief that water is a powerful instrument that can be wielded to support strategic political and economic interests. Water is a fundamental and irreplaceable "source of life" for our ecosystem, our individual and collective health, and all economic activity. As such, water belongs to all the inhabitants of the Earth in common. No one individual or group can be allowed the right to make it private property.

Just as access to medical aid is guaranteed under the Geneva Convention, so too should access to water be guaranteed under international codes.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) and the Group of Lisbon have established the framework of a "Global Water Treaty" that hopes to address the inequities of water supply in the world. The Group is promoting the development of National Associations to launch initiatives in support of the Global Water Contract at a national level. Canada, France, Italy, Switzerland, USA, Belgium, Brazil and Japan have so far formed associations to advocate the fundamental right of access to water. MSF supports the theme of Water and Health and welcomes the WHO initiative to bring water and health into the domain of human rights.

An equitable water policy calls for decentralized, transparent management and a high degree of representation at the local, national, continental and world level.

This treaty includes wording that excludes water from all international commercial conventions, such as those existing within the framework of the World Trade Organization (WTO). One proposal includes a 10-to-15 year moratorium on the construction of large dams, which have so far created considerable short and long-term problems for the environment and local populations. Another calls for changes to existing intensive irrigation and agriculture practices that threaten the planet's freshwater resources. "Modern" agriculture is the principal consumer of water on the planet, accounting for 70% of total world extraction. Yet, 40% of irrigation water is lost en route through leaky reservoirs and pipes and through evaporation. Industrial agriculture threatens the environment in other ways, by increasing soil salinity and by polluting surface and groundwater sources with pesticides and herbicides.

The integrated approach suggested by the WHO is encouraging and necessary. The greatest progress to ensuring access to water lies in the political arena. The use of appropriate, sustainable technologies for water supply, treatment, and conservation will also go a long way to preserving our precious, finite water source. However, it is beyond policy and technology alone to solve the world's water problems. All users have a key role to play by their choices and practices to ensure environmental, economic and societal sustainability. Creating the conditions necessary to ensure the most effective and sustainable access to water is everyone's responsibility. We all must find ways to use, valorize, protect and conserve water resources in such a way that future generations can enjoy the same freedom of action and choice that we wish for ourselves today. Key to conservation is a re-valuation of the true worth of water. The costs of supplying water are common social costs to be borne by the collective as a whole, including the negative externalities, which are not taken into account by market prices. This principle is relevant at the local, national, and international level.

But it must be recognized that putting a value on water supply could be antithetical to providing unhindered access to clean, affordable water to all of humankind. Fresh water resources are unequally distributed on the Earth, and a policy based on true environmental economics will not address the issue of providing guaranteed access to water to the world's marginalized communities and regions. To ensure equal distribution, financing must be secured through collective redistribution. The WHO proposes implementation of a progressive pricing policy that will allow a true value to be put on water while also ensuring unobstructed access to those who cannot afford to pay. In other words, pricing would apply only to water usage above that considered a vital and indispensable minimum for survival. Beyond the vital minimum, progressive pricing must be a function of the quantity used. All abuses and excesses of usage must be considered illegal and penalized. Above all, the integrated and sustainable management of water belongs in the sphere of democracy and community, not capitalism. We cannot allow the distribution of water and the distribution of wealth to be linked.

We must fight against all privatization of water resources, and against water abuses wherever they occur. Water has the potential to contribute to the strengthening of solidarity among people, communities, countries, genders, and generations - or to its division.

In June, Hydro announced the first phase of a 20-megawatt (MW) green energy demonstration project for Vancouver Island.

Wind, micro hydro and wave energy technologies were selected for the 20 MW demonstration project as having the most near-commercial potential in the near term. Opportunities exist to locate the trials near the existing grid.

While wind and micro hydro technologies are quite well known, wave energy is still relatively unknown in North America. Wave energy technology employs turbines to capture energy from the up and down motion of waves. The 20 MW scale of the project, sufficient to provide energy for up to 20,000 homes, is an appropriate size to test the technologies and their application in BC's diverse terrain.

The first phase of the demonstration involves developing the project scope, and the business case for the green energy resources being explored.

Wrap-up of the first phase is scheduled for November 2001 with the projects coming on line in 2002 and 2003. Hydro says that tidal power is still too experimental to be part of these pilot projects.

BC Hydro's President and CEO Michael Costello said, "Vancouver Island was selected as the first phase for the BC Green Energy Resources Study because new energy and capacity resources are required to meet growing energy demand on the Island."

BC Hydro has committed to becoming a sustainable energy company and is adding green generation to meet its 10 per cent incremental load growth target.

A new US study says that wind power is a cheaper source of electricity than coal when health and environmental costs are considered. The report, published in Science in August, says coal-powered energy costs between 3.5 and 4 cents (US) a kilowatt-hour to generate, but jumps to between 5.5 and 8.3 cents a kilowatt-hour when the costs of smog, global warming and respiratory diseases are included. For example, the US federal black-lung-disease benefits program for miners and others injured by inhalation of coal dust, has cost $35 billion since 1973.

The tidal power company Blue Energy has entered into a partnership with Sonora Island Lodge to place two 250-kw Davis turbines near the lodge. The turbines operate on tidal power, and the company says they would provide sufficient energy to power the lodge and surrounding buildings. According to the company, ocean currents of five knots can provide power equivalent to 390 km/hour winds due to the difference in density of salt water and air. The demonstration site would be moored and provide a spot for the company to bring visitors to see the new power turbines in operation.

The map was developed to show potential high wind areas in exposed sites. The map displays annual average wind speeds at a height of 65 m above the ground, which is the average hub-height of a modern wind turbine.

At least a year of monitoring is now required to determine true wind speeds and Hydro is installing some monitors in at least ten locations. The choice of locations for measuring wind speed is based on a number of criteria, including costs to develop the site, proximity to the transmission grid, site accessibility and compatible adjacent land uses, e.g. avoid erecting wind monitors in sensitive areas such as provincial parks.

BC Hydro wants to increase British Columbia's electricity supply by building a natural gas fuelled generation plant in Port Alberni on Vancouver Island. The plant is part of a strategy to switch Vancouver Island from electricity generated by hydro, to power from the burning of fossil fuels, possibly in order to export excess hydro. The Alberni project is cited as the justification for a second natural gas pipeline to the island, the GSX Crossing, also fiercely contested by those it will impact.

Throughout the 1950s and into the '80s, air quality in Port Alberni, a pulp mill town on Vancouver Island, was horrendous. Because of the valley's geography and airshed characteristics, a major industrial source of air pollution should never have been built here. We all know this in hindsight. Since the community, along with government and industry, pulled together and got water and air emissions from the pulp mill reduced, Port Albernians have enjoyed considerably better air quality.

Now, BC Hydro wants to build a 265-megawatt natural gas-fired electricity generating plant in Port Alberni, the Port Alberni Generation Project (PAGP). Its partner in this project is Calpine, a large California-based merchant power corporation (see sidebar). The proposed location for the plant is on Tebo Avenue, near the top of Johnston Road. Currently, the site is zoned medium industrial. In order for the plant to go there, the city needs to delete the maximum building height regulation for the property and rezone it to utility/heavy industrial.

The city scheduled one evening in early June 2001 for the public to make submissions in the rezoning hearing, in which the city itself is the applicant. Residents were advised to sign up at city hall to be on a speakers list. In no time, over 40 people were on the official list. That night, the community centre was packed to overflowing with hundreds of concerned residents. It took two nights for the people on the list to give their presentations, in spite of a 10 minute time limit.

After registered speakers, all those not on the list but speaking for the first time were also allowed 10 minutes. BC Hydro, on the other hand, had rather unlimited time at the beginning of both evenings to present their case. Shaw Cablevision televised the entire proceedings and broadcast them live. So many people throughout the community were interested in the proceedings, that a third and a fourth night were scheduled, as well as a full daytime session. By the third session, people who had spoken earlier were allowed to speak for a second time, but were limited to 5 minutes. Still, people kept coming to speak for the first time. On any given evening, only two or three people spoke in favour of the rezoning, while the vast majority spoke against it.

People spoke passionately about how much they cared for Port Alberni and the quality of life that is enjoyed here. One after another, they invoked the spectre of the bad old days of air pollution and told city councillors they did not want to go back to those times. One after another, community members said they do not want this industrial, polluting, noisy, unnecessary plant to be built here. Many asked why on Earth would anyone even consider building such a thing in our inversion-prone airshed. Men, women, children, aboriginal and non-aboriginal, housewives, dentists, nurses, local business owners, students, commercial and sport fishermen, loggers, tourism operators, retirees, engineers, schoolteachers, biologists - you name it, all gave their reasons for not wanting the city to allow this plant to be built in the middle of town!

This ground swell of opposition made me think of the tsunami that roared up Alberni Inlet nearly 40 years ago. This was a second tidal wave, only this time, it was comprised of hundreds of Port Alberni residents who wanted to let city council know they don't want to go back to the bad old days of living - and dying - with the "smell of money" wafting through the air.

Amidst all this, Shaw Cable's TV cameras caught the expressions on the faces of city councillors: some sat stone-faced, not giving away any sense of their opinions, while the cameras caught others rolling their eyes in boredom or impatient frustration as members of the public exhorted them for a response. Speaker after speaker asked council to either deny the rezoning right now or adjourn the hearings until more information on any potential environmental effects was available. A number of speakers accused council of being in a conflict of interest since the city stands to gain tax revenue if the project is built in the city and is, at the same time, the applicant for rezoning.

Councillors sat silent, but the more they said nothing, the more animated people got, and the more people watching at home became motivated to come down to the community centre to make their voices heard. In all my 30-odd years of participating in community decision-making, I have never experienced such a tidal wave of opposition to a proposal. Never have I been more proud to be one of those many voices.

The principal concern, of course, is for the health of community members. A group of nurses who worked in the hospital back in the days of the worst of the pulp mill pollution, spoke at every session. They are an "interest group" with some real experience of air pollution. In one of the most heart-rending presentations, a nurse told of children gasping for breath, choking and panic-stricken, lying in oxygen tents throughout the children's ward; she recalled the extreme emotions of parents being asked to leave so nursing staff could calm the youngsters, and the stress everyone went through. Another nurse told of elderly patients either unable to breathe or dying of long-standing lung problems. Many talked about the high number of respiratory diseases and allergies experienced by so many Port Albernians. Some speakers were parents of children with asthma - or had asthma themselves after growing up in Port Alberni - who said their families would have to move away if this plant gets built here.

One woman, whose home for the past 35 years is located a few hundred metres from the proposed plant site, told councillors she had just won her long battle with breast cancer, but that her doctors said she would have to move away if the plant is built because her body wouldn't withstand the onslaught of noise and pollution.

While the issue of rezoning the Tebo Street property is a city matter, the spread of pollution is also a major concern for people in outlying areas. The Chair of the Alberni-Clayoquot Regional District spoke passionately against the rezoning, saying the air pollution will not be confined to city limits.

BC Hydro says they will build a 150-foot stack and that all emissions will "punch through" the Alberni Valley's notorious inversions so any pollution will settle not on town but on the surrounding mountains. This was little comfort for Chief Judith Sayers of the Hupacasath First Nation, who reminded Hydro that those mountain sides are her people's traditional land and food-gathering areas.

Not one of the least concerns is because the site is a wooded piece of property above Roger Creek - an important salmon stream - that also has a small wetland in one corner. A school vice-principal told council that Trumpeter swans use the Roger Creek corridor as a fly way to the Somass estuary. A retired logger said he was speaking on behalf of the wildlife living in the hills surrounding Port Alberni. He said someone had to speak for the shrinking populations of animals that were once common here. He was particularly concerned about amphibians, and said there were very few frogs and salamanders to be seen because of already declining general environmental conditions. He felt that pollution from the proposed plant would probably kill off what remained.

Many people voiced concern for the amount of water that will have to be drawn from Sproat Lake to service this plant and how that might affect fish population, not to mention water levels in a time of drought unprecedented in western Canada.

There were a surprising number of new residents who said they came to the Alberni Valley for a good quality of life. Pointing out that they make good salaries and spend them in town, many said they would move away if the plant is built here. One newcomer chided an engineer for the project who said the emissions would consist primarily of water vapour and bits of "stuff" too small to measure, reminding him that viruses are very small particles, too, yet look how they can devastate people.

A retired engineer commented: "The amount of emissions from the gas burned at this plant will be equivalent to 128,000 taxis idling constantly, or about 15 in front of every house in the valley. What effect will this have on our health?"

As the rationale for this proposal, we are told that the existing transmission lines from the mainland will be unusable in a few years. Since BC Hydro has admitted that the proposed plant depends on a new gas pipeline across Georgia Strait, a number of people wanted to know why Hydro would cross a body of water - particularly one in a high earthquake zone - with a high-pressure gas pipeline instead of producing electricity where the gas originates? Many people asked why Hydro doesn't simply replace the aging underwater electricity transmission line with a new one? A number of people expressed concern about what amounts to disconnecting Vancouver Island from the provincial hydroelectricity grid and instead making us vulnerable to natural gas being delivered through a pipeline coming up from the States that is owned by an American company and subject to North American gas market volatility.

On the fifth day of hearings, city council, in rather an anti-climax, announced it was postponing any further discussion until after the provincial Environmental Assessment process is completed, thus effectively robbing local residents of a say in the decision and instead throwing it into the arena (or should I say circus?) of provincial politics.

Questions from the Alberni Environmental Coalition phone lines:

Why should we risk much higher costs of gas-generated electricity while hydroelectricity is being exported? Why should British Columbians subsidize energy costs for Americans? Is this the first step to privatizing BC Hydro? How will the proposed gas supply and costs be affected by NAFTA?
What are the pollutants and their amounts, including particulate matter, especially PM2.5? How much carbon monoxide? Carbon dioxide? Nitrous and sulphur oxides? Volatile Organic Compounds? Water vapour?
How will ammonia used to scrub the emissions be transported to Alberni? What is the emergency response plan if there is a spill or transport accident involving ammonia?
How will the stack and 6 cooling towers looming over the city affect our efforts to reposition the Alberni Valley as a tourist destination and a residence of choice?
How can we justify the greenhouse gas emissions (750,000 tons per year of CO2) when reducing them is critical to our global and environmental health?

* See the AEC website: www.portaec.net for the entire list.

Clean air is essential to life and good health. Burning fossil fuels to generate electricity is the single greatest source of air pollution in the US, and is the major source of CO2 emissions, a primary contributor to global warming.

Burning natural gas ... produces ... pollutants, including nitrogen oxides [NOx], sulphur oxides [SOx], hydrocarbons, dust, soot, smoke, and other suspended matter ... [which] can cause serious health problems, including asthma, irritation of the lungs, bronchitis, pneumonia, decreased resistance to respiratory infections, and early death. NOx appears as yellowish-brown clouds over many cities. The transportation sector is responsible for close to half of US emissions of nitrogen oxides; power plants produce most of the rest. SOx is produced by oxidization of sulphur in fuel ... NOx and SOx are important constituents of acid rain. These gases combine with water vapor in clouds to form sulphuric and nitric acids, which become part of rain and snow. As the acids accumulate, lakes and rivers become too acidic for plant and animal life. Acid rain also affects crops and buildings. NOx and hydrocarbons combine in the atmosphere to form ground-level ozone, the major constituent of smog.

I would like to begin this evening by telling you that I feel it is a real shame that the Hupacasath First Nation has to address you in a public hearing and is not afforded the opportunity to have a real consultation process with the City of Port Alberni ...

We must design a process that we have the opportunity to talk with one another in a meaningful way on issues of importance to each of us ...

We share many of the same goals, having Port Alberni as a thriving community where there are meaningful jobs, a beautiful environment, and an economic base that can sustain many generations to come. By developing this process and working towards common goals, we will not find ourselves in the position we are in now, where we are at odds with one another on two major economic development projects for Port Alberni.

Port Alberni, the mountains that surround the valley and the watersheds which run into the valley, down to Coleman Creek and Handy Creek comprise the territory of the Hupacasath. Since time immemorial we have inhabited these lands, and not only inhabited these lands, but used every corner of it for our survival and we continue to do so to this day. This area to us is one of the most beautiful places on this earth, we are truly blessed to be given the earth which gives us medicines, foods, and everything that sustains us.

The waters which are so plentiful, bring life, cleansing, and revival. The air which surrounds us gives us our breath, our very life, and brings the winds which control the weather. The mountains are our strength, our protection, our resource.

All of these things are integral to us as First Nations and I dare say all living people. The earth and everything that grows from it, air, and water will be at risk by the proposed generation plant in the proposed location on Tebo.

As First Nations people, we are closely tied to the lands which we inhabit. Our ancestors have walked on these lands, used all the resources, cared for these resources for longer than any of us can envision in our minds. Sometimes it is difficult to convey to people why the land is our life, and whatever affects our environment affects us as a people. We have a duty, a responsibility, a stewardship to look after mother earth, all that grows from her, the waters that run through her and the air that surrounds her.

Everywhere we look on this earth you can see the suffering of the earth, the earth is desperately trying to cleanse herself by fires, floods, earthquakes and other natural disasters. Global warming is a reality we are dealing with every day, people have to wake up and recognize that some of the reversed, but there are some things which we can change, and certainly we can ensure that we do not do any further damage.

We are here today to advocate on behalf of the earth and the environment which sustains all us. When I took this issue to our community, all of our members expressed concern for the natural beauty and environment that would be marred by this plant being placed on the Tebo site. Concern was expressed for the health of our members, and the effect the emissions would have on our communities and our resources which are in such close proximity to the proposed site.

As Hupacasath people, we have aboriginal rights and title to the territory which I have described to you. These rights can become meaningless if the waters are polluted and quality of fish and wildlife are affected. The trees and plants which we rely on can quit growing or be contaminated by the emissions of this plant.

I understand that BC Hydro and Calpine are telling us that these emissions will not land here in town but will be spread out into the mountains. That is little comfort to us who use all areas of our territory and rely on medicines and trees from up in those mountains. Our goal under treaty is to obtain quality resources and lands, and if there are none, then there is no need for a treaty.

I hear people telling us not to be emotional. Let me be clear, this is not about emotion, this is about having a quality of life that we do not have to worry about health concerns. This is about preserving a way of life that relies on certain conditions continuing to exist. This is about living up to our responsibilities as stewards of this land ...

We are hearing that this will be the most state of the art project, the emissions will be below what is required in law, that this is the cleanest method of producing power other than dams, but at what point do you say no? When it is too late? And when do you know that it is too late until after the plant has been in operation for years and the health effects start showing up in our children and grand children?

If all communities said no to generation plants, then BC Hydro would have to look at other options that are not harmful to our environment. Are 20-24 jobs worth the risk? Even if it creates an additional 60-80 related support jobs, is that enough? What does Port Alberni really get from this project? The tax obviously, but the only people who get rich from this project are BC Hydro and Calpine.

These two companies come in, they use our land, our water, our air, and we face the risks. None of us share in the profits, none of us see any benefits, we only face all the risks to the environment because we live here.

Do the benefits outweigh the risks, I submit not. We as Hupacasath are not going anywhere, this is where we have always lived and will always live. How many executives of BC Hydro and Calpine will have to live here and breathe the air we breathe?

We come here today, not as scientists, not as biologists, not as hydrologists, we come here today with our traditional ecological knowledge on how to care for mother earth and with a surety that the earth cannot sustain much more. I implore you to take your responsibilities very seriously and look to what this may look like in 20 years, 50 years and what it will mean to the earth, people's health, and the environment.

... Unfortunately, through colonialistic laws, what we as First Nations like to call legalized theft, shaping the future is within your hands, when it should be in ours, as rightful Stewards of this land.

Without hesitation I know what we would do. I urge you to think carefully think about all of mother earth, for what happens here affects all of mother earth. Hishukishts walk. Everything is one, everything is connected. What you do today, affects tomorrow; will what we have to pass on to future generations be something to be proud of ?

* Judith Sayers, Chief, Hupacasath First Nation, Port Alberni, Ph: 250-724-4041, judiths@island.net

It is becoming stunningly clear that conventional, chemically based agriculture faces a grim future. Organic farming, on the other hand, seems to have blue skies popping up all over.

Typifying the news in store for conventional agriculture are conclusions recently reached by Don Tilman and nine other agroscientists at the University of Minnesota. "The environmental effects of agriculture" they claim, "are on a trajectory soon to rival climate change."

Just as an excess of carbon dioxide is destabilizing the earth's atmosphere, so a surfeit of farm nitrates is, in their view, threatening to destabilize global ecosystems. Nitrogen and pesticide runoff from farms is creating algal blooms in lakes and rivers to such an extent that biologically dead zones are appearing around the estuaries of fifty of the world's rivers. It is poisoning wells and aquifers and in gaseous form is rising as ammonia and coming down as acid rain. A well-run organic farm, of course, produces very little excess nitrogen.

Nor is the outlook good for the chemicals on which conventional agriculture depends. A critical component, for example, is rock phosphate. The main global deposits of phosphorite rock lie in the USA and North Africa. Those in the USA will be exhausted by 2020. Ten years after that the North African reserves will be gone.

Oil and natural gas provide the feed stock for many of chemical agriculture's fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides. Both the US Geological Survey and Colin Campbell, advisor on oil to the British parliament, agree that the amount of recoverable oil still in the earth is in the range of 650 to 700 billion barrels. The US Department of Energy predicts that the world's current annual oil consumption of 25 billion barrels will rise to 40 billion by 2020. Simple arithmetic tells us that by the latter date there won't be much oil left. Natural gas will extend the life of some oil products by a few years, but it is clear that the price of farm chemicals will soon rise and rise until their extinction. The options for chemical agriculture are closing down while those for organic farming are proliferating. Fresh examples of successes are reported almost daily.

In northern India, where the corn borer devastates crops, farmers have been planting alongside the cornstalks a weed which is even tastier to the borer. The latter forsakes the corn for the weed. Result: a 70% rise in yield.

In northwest China the preferred "sticky" rice succumbs easily to a fungal disease. But when fungal-resistant types of rice are planted alongside, losses are reduced by 94%.

These are simply two examples among many. The University of Essex' Jules Pretty studied more than two hundred organic-type projects and found that the average rise in yield was 73%.

Economists describe as "externalities" the costs to society that are not incorporated in the market price of an article. A recent British study found that the externalities attached to agriculture, such as the cost of cleaning up nitrates in drinking water, came to $377 per acre for conventional agriculture and only $130 for organic.

Another of conventional agriculture's externalities is the loss of wildlife consequent on a money-driven ethos which gets rid of anything, such as a hedgerow, which stands in the way of maximizing arable areas. In Britain's case the results have been appalling. Farm flowers have declined 92%. Butterfly species are declining at the rate of 40% per decade. There has been a 3 million decline in the skylark population and a 50% loss of farm animal breeds. Six hundred species of fungus, many of them essential for some ecosystems, are in decline.

But as soon as organic farmers begin to replant hedgerows and leave strips of wild grasses around the edges of fields, those areas begin to teem with life again. In its promotion of biodiversity organic farming is also the antithesis of corporate-scale industrial farming which promotes a dangerous reliance on monocropping.

Industrial-scale farming promotes continual growth in farm size, pushing the small farmer increasingly to the wall. Yet in terms of productivity it is the small farmer who wins hands down. A startling study by the US Department of Agriculture has found that in America the per- acre value of produce from farms of more than 2000 acres was only $21.40, whereas that from farms of under 10 acres was $1902.00. Clearly, when it comes to making the most fruitful use of land it is the small organic farmer who really produces.

And when it comes to conservation of energy, the laurels also go to the small farmer. As many people now know, heavily subsidized corporate agriculture is energy-wasteful to an extravagant degree as it ships food around the world to the point where the average morsel of food reaching the North American dinner plate has travelled 2300 kilometres to get there. By contrast, the organic farmer who supplies his nearby city with fresh rather than travel-stale produce is a paragon of energy conservation.

With Tilman's group predicting that the current methods of industrial farming can only lead to more frequent epidemics of the foot-and-mouth and BSE kind, and with Europeans becoming increasingly panicky about today's agricultural technologies, it is hardly surprising that Germany's new agriculture minister, Renata Kunast is planning to push her country's policies strongly in the organic direction, with the emphasis on quality rather than quantity. Initial responses from the European Community have encouraged her to believe that she can swing other ministers in her direction.

With so many trends stacked against conventional agriculture and so many new ones favouring the organic, and with sales of organic produce growing exponentially year by year, the time may not be distant when supporters of organics are numerically large enough to demand, and get, a switch of some of the huge subsidies currently enjoyed by conventional agriculture to the largely unsubsidized organic sector.

This is a story on how my involvement in mercury began and where it has taken me from a very personal perspective. I call it "my story."

For the past year or so, I have become engulfed, entrenched, immersed and strangely fascinated and horrified by mercury. Whatever information I have uncovered or discovered about mercury, it is never enough and I search for more. This "addiction" started when I got involved, by my own doing I might add, in a Canada-wide process to set standards for mercury emissions. In a typically fragmented way of perceiving the environment, Canadian governments had embarked on a standards-setting exercise for a limited number of priority substances of concern to human health and the environment. They, along with most modern nations, had deemed mercury one such priority substance.

During a telephone conversation that would firm up my involvement as a "stake holder" in the Canada-Wide Standards process for mercury, I was offered a choice: what mercury-emitting sector do you want to be involved in, smelters, incinerators, or electric-power generators? What a dilemma! Choices like these come all too rarely in life. Being the sacrificial environmentalist that I am, I asked where I might be of most value. If the person on the other line knew me at all, the answer would be in an area where the corporate status quo could be challenged. If they didn't know me, I would serve as a slot in the category of a representative from environmental organizations to fulfil the requirements for stake holder representation. The choice became the electric power sector, a rather discrete and polite category that included primarily coal-fired plants.

Knowing full well the limitations of stake holder participation for a volunteer, I engaged in this exercise at first with caution. That didn't last long. I had some knowledge about mercury, that it was a heavy metal, indestructible and extremely toxic. I remembered playing with runaway balls of mercury in physics labs. I was well aware of its effects on fish and wildlife. From a family of "fishers" who generally ate what they caught, I was keenly aware of fish advisories. I knew about Minamata Disease, methylmercury poisoning, in Japan and Grassy Narrows, Ontario. And now I was about to learn more, much more, about mercury, coal-fired plants, and an intransigent industry.

At first, the process was so utterly flawed that I questioned my continuance, a common sentiment felt by environmentalists in "participating" in such consultation exercises. While you are invited as a guest to the table, your mere presence is taken to sanctify the process. In reality, when the time for making decisions arrives, you are summarily dismissed from the table. You have a choice: either go along with the window-dressing and get sucked into the vortex of consultation and leave with minimum impact; OR pull open the blinds with all your might and rattle the patriarchy as hard as you can. I went for the latter. Other than knowing that I needed to understand more, gain more insight, be creative, I was just beginning to delve into mercury and power plants with a hunger and passion that would know no bounds.

The more I inquired, read, and was told, the more I had to know - from the very technical aspect of boilers and scrubbers to the cultural and mythical. It's rather encouraging that after all these years, I still thirst for such knowledge, but then knowledge gives power, and I needed all the power I could muster if I were to engage with the people from the power industry. Everywhere I went I would talk about mercury. Sensing my urgency, people usually had a story to tell about their personal awareness of mercury. Gradually, I was collecting more and more stories and I would spread them around, like "a mercury hot-line," and more stories would surface. Mercury was becoming my mantra, and I couldn't or wouldn't let go. My friends thought that I was overly obsessed and obsessing.

Was I filling a deep void in my life? Was it really as bad as I said? I was beginning to lose dinner invitations and questioning my own sanity and well-being. Mercury, a trickster and trader, elusive and volatile, the messenger of the gods, was becoming my tormenter, as I in turn was becoming its messenger.

In the meantime, I continued to engage in the Canada-Wide Standards consultation process with the electric power sector, but with increasing frustration and impatience. If anything was materializing from the numerous teleconference calls and workshops, it was the solidification of positions or perhaps more appropriately, lack thereof. The consistent inflexibility and reticence of industry was matched by the reluctance of government representatives to demonstrate the fortitude needed to move the discussions to a higher plane, so to speak. The Canada-Wide Standards process was floundering like a ship cast adrift with no captain, no navigator, not even a map or a destination. How could this process ever be expected to accomplish its mission and set a standard that would result in reduction of mercury emissions from coal-fired plants?

Despite my misgivings and better judgement, I resolved to stay in the fray and play my cards the way I best know how. I have no illusions about my role in this process. It would continue to be isolating, demanding and emotionally charged and I would be portrayed as a troublemaking irritant and agitator. But what other avenues are there in Canada that would focus on mercury reductions specifically from coal-fired plants? For so many reasons, it was timely and necessary. So be it! I am not one to give up, nor am I easily dismissed. And with all things considered, "to thine own self be true."

As I poured over numerous articles on mercury and more particularly methylmercury poisoning in Iraq, Guatemala, Brazil, Mexico, Japan and Canada, I became increasingly incensed over the damage that was inflicted on the affected communities, and in particular, on the children, pregnant women, the unborn, the fish and wildlife. So little of this is publicly known in Canada. Once more, it is the so-called sensitive populations with no voice or power who suffer the most who are easily forgotten. I wanted to reveal the injustices that have been done in the past and continue to be done now and I wanted to name those responsible for the unforgivable travesties. And most importantly, I wanted to bring all of this closer to home.

With mercury as the catalyst, I would set out to ignite public indignation. I would defrock the corporate emperors who in their frenzied pursuit of power and profit continue unabated to spew out their self-serving creed hand-in-hand with toxic chemicals like fire from a dragon, while governments bow down in compliance and render themselves powerless. How can I slay the dragon? What can a lone messenger do?

So I started a campaign. I wanted to tell everyone about mercury and the dirty coal-fired plants - dirty in every way. I drew up a Position Paper that said YES to setting standards and NO to buckling in to the industry agenda of denial and business as usual. I asked groups around the country to sign on and endorse the position paper, and so many did, more than 100 health, environment, labour, public interest groups and First Nations. The message was seeping out, but there had to be more, much more happening to have any effect and make an impact.

It was when the Chief of the Deninu Kue Nation and the Inuit in the North West Territories wrote to me with sincerity and trust, endorsing the position paper, that I realized how strong my emotional intensity and personal commitment to this issue was becoming.

No other endorsements could mean as much or affect me to the same degree as from the native communities in the North. It is their way of life, their food source that is so threatened by contamination from mercury and other hazardous chemicals that originate from industries very far away. They are supporting me in this endeavor to continue to keep the pressure on, to publicize the issue, to strive to make a change.

Back to the home front, to comfort, familiarity, friendship and warmth, back to the Oak Ridges Moraine, the hottest political environmental issue in Ontario, hitting the press every day.

Over a beer in Stouffville, talking about anything and everything, Teresa, my pal, in her ever so thoughtful way, said that she wanted to write a story about a woman who is so taken up, so passionate about mercury and why she is so. My god, how dense - she's talking about me! The subject and object have become inseparable. Before I would be able to write more about mercury, I needed to find my way to write my own story and let it seep out from every part of me.

So this is how the story began to wend its way from my most inner core and unconscious to a conscious state, to become "my story."

I met Peter and his wife Sandy at a Save the Oak Ridges Morraine (STORM) meeting in a cold church basement in November. They lived at Preston Lake, a "kettle lake" on the Oak Ridges Moraine. At first they talked about the particular problems that they were encountering, from development pressures, eutrophication of the lake, pesticide use, problems to the communities, the residents, and the lake ... always the lake. The details were there, but there was something more, something that resonated strongly within me.

The details faded from my conscience, and all the while I was drawn to Peter's passion, his connection and attachment to the lake, and how it was intensifying as he spoke, how the struggles that he was engaged in were effecting every aspect of his life. His compassion and commitment were sincere and spiritual - and he was not about to let go. Preston Lake and what it signified to him were to be passed on to his daughter.

His line was drawn in the sand, as is mine. He talked about the fish in the lake, this small body of water, perhaps 35 acres in all on the height of the Moraine, only about 25 kilometres from Toronto. He talked about the huge large mouth bass of over 10 pounds that was caught in the lake over 20 years ago. It is now mounted in his "fish-house" at the lake and remains to this day the record for large mouth bass in Ontario.

The uneasy parallel of our struggles shook me to the core and the connection began to evolve in my mind. In order to get some perspective of the amount of damage that mercury could inflict, I had been toying with a line from a newspaper article that I had come across in researching mercury.

"It takes only 1/70th of a teaspoon, or one gram, of mercury to contaminate a 25 acre lake to the point where the fish are unsafe to eat."

Here was this aged fish, oversized for its species, and caught on a small lake in the vicinity of my home. In all my research and writings on mercury, I have been searching for a way to bring this issue to a scale that people could relate to, and here it was, so close to home.

Peter and Sandy invited us to their home after our meeting to see the mounted fish and the lake. I felt compelled to go that very same day. I headed out to Preston Lake where I found Peter waiting, as I knew that he would.

I took my own time and stood alone at the shore, breathing in the lake through my eyes, mouth, hands, and every conscious part of me. I took a mental photo image of the lake.

Looking upward, I traced the path of the 1/70th of a teaspoon of mercury from its origin, the coal plants on the shore of Lake Ontario to the depths of Preston Lake. The mercury fell with the rain, some settling onto the branches of the trees and the leaves, most splashing playfully onto the surface of the placid lake.

But the enticing game suddenly ceased as the mercury penetrated the surface, gravitating to the bottom, all the while being magically transformed by microbial action into its most dangerous form, methylmercury. The little fish and insects that feed on the microbial life would now fill their gills with methylmercury. In turn, the larger fish, the predators, would feed on the little fish and become infused with methylmercury in their tissue, for the larger the fish, the higher the concentration of methylmercury.

That is the strength and potency of this trickster compound, methylmercury, its "natural and particular" property to bioaccumulate by millions through the food chain. Those fish were now contaminated, poisoned with mercury. Whoever eats the fish here in Preston Lake or in any other body of water contaminated with mercury, be it humans, loons, otters, belugas and seals, will ingest methylmercury which in turn will penetrate through to the very essence of life - the fetuses, the offspring, the females of all species. And methylmercury, ever persistent as it is, does not let go.

From the trance-like state on the shore, I joined up with Peter and went into the fish house to see the "trophy" fish. As I was about to leave, he gave me a poster of a young Cree woman standing on a rock. At the base was written the Cree prophecy

The story would keep working its way through me during the night and I would ingest it as the fish were ingesting methylmercury. It was to become an opening and another beginning that would let me release so much emotion within me ... And I wept uncontrollably for a long time.

It was a beautiful early evening on the lake, Percy Lake, calm and inviting, and fishing time, and a scene that was so typical of that period in my life. The boat was loaded with all the gear and drinks. My 8-year-old daughter Elinor was slicing worms, and then casting, with the relish, freedom and joy of a child in her element. Her dad, her closest fishing buddy, guided the boat as it made its way to the mouth of the river, fishing and trawling all the while. I was there for the ride, a book in hand, glancing from time to time at the lake, knowing that the peaceful moment would not last.

Then, excitement! Elinor feels a strong tug at her line, the rod arches over with the weight of a fish - the dog is jumping up and down, lines are getting tangled, chaos - she's reeling it in, she's got it - the largest small mouth bass she has ever caught! She asks me if we could eat it for supper.

What could surpass eating a fresh catch from one so innocent and young? From one's child? She was not a believer in catch for catch sake. It seemed so cruel to her. We would beach the boat by the rock, make a fire, Elinor would gut and clean the fish and maybe I would cook it over the open fire ... It would be just great!

We look at each other, her dad and I, without a word, aware that not all the fish may be safe to eat. (Is the boat? Likely not.) After all, it is children and pregnant women who are particularly sensitive to mercury-contaminated fish. Is this fish safe to eat? The fish is still alive and we need to decide fast. What do we do?

"Elinor, we're not sure if this fish is safe, fish can be full of a lot of poisons, with something called mercury. It's too bad but you can't simply eat everything you catch any more. We have to check to be sure, particularly for you and me. We can't take a chance."

Elinor was intent - frowning, pouting, disappointed and angry at the same time. No fire, no fun, no guts. But she wasn't quite ready to give up. "Where does this ... mercury come from anyway, how does it get into Percy Lake, and into the fish?"

How do you begin to answer a child who must know, who bears the consequence of the acts of others? She deserves an explanation, that is the very least we can do.

Reluctantly, we throw the fish, still alive, jumping in the boat, back into the lake.

Now, several years later, shifting from past to present as I so often do, fearing the future, thinking about Elinor and her dad, her closest fishing buddy, gone forever, only memories and stories are now left, and so much pain.

As I picture my daughter at 8 years old, I recall my own youth. What did we know about toxic substances? After all, for us, as immigrants from Eastern Europe, Canada was a land so pure, so vast, you could drink the water from the lakes, swim in the rivers, and eat the fish.

In another dream-like state, I recall another earlier scene a number of years ago, on our way to Manitoulin Island. We were at a campsite in Johnny Lake, near Killarney Provincial Park. Such a pretty lake, what a discovery, must be great for fishing.

So once more, we launch the boat, toss in the fishing gear. We're bound to catch something here. The lake was narrow, quiet and almost ghostly, along the shoreline rimmed with steep granite rocks. After several hours had gone by, still no fish had been caught - nor were there any nibbles on the lines. As we headed back to the campsite, the people standing at the dock looked at us with all the fishing gear somewhat bemused, laughing in a mocking way - city slickers, not knowing very much about this lake. "No luck," we say, somewhat surprised. "Of course not," was the chorus from the dock. "Johnny Lake's been dead for years now. Acid Rain. That's what has happened to all the lakes around here. It's coming from the stacks in Sudbury. The fishing is over. Look at the trees, the tops of the maples - not like they used to be."

Today, as I picture Johnny Lake, its stillness and beauty, I laugh at my ignorance, and feel a little ashamed. Despite the movement to bring Acid Rain to the forefront, to the point where governments were forced to act, here we are today, still mired with the effects of acid rain.

Strange beings we are that with all that we know and all that has been ruined over the years, there are those who find it okay to fish in Johnny Lake and catch nothing.

What on earth is going on down in Sydney on beautiful Cape Breton Island? The Sierra Club is sponsoring "Nova Scotia Toxic Tours" of the area around the Sydney tar ponds, activists are pepper-sprayed at "information meetings, and special "made-in-Sydney" levels for judging contamination appear to have been pulled out of thin air. Elizabeth May, one of Canada's best-known environmentalists, went on a 15-day hunger strike this year before the government finally agreed to further testing. The results are dribbling out, with some children even exceeding the special Sydney levels for concern.

Meanwhile the 500 acres around the Sydney Steel mill and the "coke ovens" which produced coke for the steel mill, just go on oozing toxic slime. The coke ovens, built in 1899, cooked 2,735 tonnes of coal per day with arsenic, lead and benzene to 1100 degrees C, until closing in 1988. Every 17 hours, the ovens were vented into the air, and reloaded. The benzene tank leaked for years and benzene, a carcinogen in its own right, is one of the 93 contaminants in the downstream tar ponds.

A report for the federal government in 1985 warned against reopening the coke ovens due to the associated health dangers, saying that the workers were exposed to the toxic equivalent of 35 packs of cigarettes a day. The provincial government, anxious to save the jobs in a poverty-stricken area of the country, proceeded anyway.

About 20,000 people live within 5 kilometres of the site which contains over 700,000 tonnes of sludge, including PCBs. As the Sierra Club comments, "To put the problem in perspective, the tar ponds contain over 35 times the amount of toxic sludge contained in New York's infamous Love Canal."

The tar ponds are not actually a pond at all, but Muggah Creek, a tidal estuary which flushes into the ocean. The area receives leachate from other dump sites. Add to the mix the leachate from a 60 acre municipal garbage dump, and raw sewage.

Cancer rates in Cape Breton are 16% higher than the Canadian average. A 1999 mortality study also said residents live 10 years less than the average Canadian life span of 75 years.

No wonder people want to move, especially with the plug finally pulled on the steel mills which have cost the Canadian taxpayer $3 billion in subsidies to date. The final cost of those jobs has not even begun to be tabulated. The garbage dump will be capped, and the sewage diverted in the next year. The government has moved a handful of families, and offered some cash "buy out" to others, but people want to receive enough money to buy new housing.

Still, as the tests come in, some people are just pulling up and out, for the sake of their children's health. It must be what the governments are waiting for, as they reluctantly do study after study and "try to identify the source of the arsenic."

In the meantime, someone is making sure journalists don't exaggerate the dangers, as this CP Wire correction makes clear:

* Sources: Globe & Mail, Halifax Chronicle Herald, July and August 2001, Nova Scotia Toxic Tours brochure
* Contact Sierra Club-Atlantic Canada Chapter, 1312 Robie St., Halifax NS B3H 3E2; Ph: 902-422-5091, Email: atlantic.canada.chapter@sierraclub.or

If I was told I could only read one book to learn about environmental management and governance in Canada, this is the one I would choose. This book deserves to be a standard text for studies in Canadian history, business and environmental education.

The Sidney tar ponds, still in the media spotlight, are a cesspool of 700,000 tons of toxic industrial waste that was once a pristine Nova Scotia estuary. In 200 pages, two of Canada's most respected environmental and social rights advocates have told the story of this place, the second worst toxic waste site in North America. Considering all the wasted years and lives, co-authors Maude Barlow, of Council of Canadians fame, and Elizabeth May, executive director of the Sierra Club of Canada, have written a monumental book.

Even though I am an avid follower of environmental issues, I still found the carefully presented record in this book astounding. The amount of wanton polluting waste, and the decades of wasteful bad management and wasted government subsidies are astounding. The half century-long abuse of environmental justice and public health is astounding. Not only was the environment squandered, so were generations of people's natural rights, public money and families' hopes.

The way the authors have chosen to section the book makes a multifaceted and complex story quite easy to follow. Reading this book is like watching the best TV documentary. It's hard to look away. The characters speak through the pages and the events have such real drama. The photographs in the middle of the book are a valuable complement to the text. The numbers are all there: the years of 'development', the toxic contamination, the dollars and the cancer incidence. Sidney cancer rates from 1989 to 1995 compared to the rest of Nova Scotia were 45% higher for men and 47% higher for women. The incidence of other chronic degenerative diseases are way higher than the Canadian averages.

The book sensitively covers the concern of parents for their children's health and reports one study on the effects of polluted air on children in the locality. I wish they had gone further to stress the legacy of future health problems from the cumulative toxic burdens on children (children's environmental health). This is important from the perspective of environmental justice, because responsible government in such a case should provide for not just the relocation of those exposed but life long medical surveillance and compensation for attributable disease. Otherwise governments who think in economic and not ethical terms will likely continue to ignore community health risks in favour of 'the smell of money.'

The postscript chapter, titled 'The Canadian Dilemma,' concisely reports on several other national environmental issues the authors have deemed to be badly managed. It's useful for the consideration of corporate government environmental malpractice. However I felt it was hardly needed to underscore the reasons, that the reader can conclude from the account for the Sydney tar ponds. Each incredible episode of corruption and each litany of errors leaves the reader astounded at the next. The repetition of errors and abuses over the decades, by so many arms of different governments and so many different investors and managers, leaves no doubt of the dismal depths of the Canadian dilemma of industrialization.

The real postscript is yet to come. Since the book, angry residents at a public meeting have been treated with pepper spray and the governments are still not releasing their own latest toxicology study.

For any one interested in reasons why Canada must switch to sustainable development principles, and why Canada has not, this book is a must read.

BC's salmon aquaculture industry uses publicly owned coastal waters to support intensive private feedlot operations which pose threats to wild Pacific salmon, the wider marine environment and human health. In February 2001, the Auditor General's annual Report to Parliament called for a full environmental assessment before any decision is made on the expansion of salmon farms. Now, the provincial government appears to be posed to lift the moratorium in place since 1995, on new salmon farms.

What you can do: Please contact Honourable Herb Dhaliwal,. State your concern about the threats to the environment and human health created by open netcage fish farming. Ask him to initiate an environmental assessment and full public enquiry. If you have time, please send a copy of your letter to:

BC Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, John van Dongen, PO Bix 9043, Station Provincial Government, Victoria, BC, V8W 9E2.

Honourable Herb Dhaliwal, Minister of Fisheries & Oceans Canada
Parliament Buildings, Ottawa, Ontario K1A 0A6

"A snake, I saw a snake!" reported five-year-old Asia to her teacher, John. Sure enough, there was a snake. Moments later a second snake appeared. The excited pair yelled to the class, "Two snakes!" Before long the whole class was there and two snakes became three, then four ... Just how many snakes were seen on that day remains a mystery; up to seven were in view at one time. A few days later the headline "Snake Den Surprise!" appeared in the class newspaper. Six-year-old Inanna reported that "too many snakes ... were wriggling around in the wild flowers."

The snake den surprise occurred at a frequently visited Garry Oak Meadow, just a few hundred metres from Oak and Orca Bioregional School, in the heart of Victoria, where I have the fortune to be a teacher. The exploration of this meadow ecosystem and many other natural areas around the city is fundamental to the purpose of the school. Here, understanding grows naturally out of the intertwining of experience and information.

The school's purpose is "to provide an educational alternative that empowers children to bring about fundamental social change towards more fulfilling and ecologically sustainable communities."

This small, affordable independent school is in its third year of operation, with the involvement of approximately twenty families, all committed to helping their kids determine a better future for themselves.

The school has drawn its inspiration from the bioregional movement itself. Bioregionalism is a philosophy of life that incorporates ecological and human needs. It involves learning about the place you live and the people who live there. Bioregionalism means empowering people to act together as a community to better their corner of the planet. It requires that people learn and teach lifestyles that allow us to live within the constraints of local ecosystems.

Oak and Orca School is run as a miniature model of a bioregional community. Rather than prepare children for the society of today, the school aims to prepare them for a sustainable society and to help them develop the tools to change the current situation.

Students act as a community to make and take responsibility for important decisions concerning the school, their learning and their lives. Cooperation is key in participatory communities, so listening skills, negotiation, group facilitation and consensus building are taught and practiced regularly.

Curriculum is built around concepts of place and community - past, present and future - and ecological principles. Other disciplines and the BC curriculum are integrated into this framework.

Lifestyle choices are constantly being discussed and challenged. For instance, all lunch garbage is returned to the home, ensuring that students and parents deal with the consequences of garbage and the benefits of a garbage-free lunch. Through a process of discussion and forethought, children become aware of the many factors, materials, quality, place of manufacture, fair-trade, that should be considered before a purchase is made.

One question that we ponder as bioregional educators is that of responsibility for what is taught/learned and when. How can we expect people to become active participants in creating change in their communities if we teach them as youngsters to do and learn only what we say? Yet children need encouragement to try new things and should be exposed to new ideas even if they resist at first.

School community meetings lead to lively debates about rules, appropriate activities and acceptable behaviour. Everyone learns quickly that in consensus, the group must work to evolve the ideas so that they meet peoples' needs and the basis of unity. These meetings have led to sensible rules and an understanding of why rules must exist for the smooth running of any community. Most importantly, they have led to students deciding for themselves what they want to learn and how they will go about it. The power of young, uncontaminated minds to solve problems without society-imposed restrictions never ceases to amaze me.

Oak and Orca teachers have had to learn anew how to teach. The children have varied interests, but themes tend to emerge allowing students to join together in play. Some of these interests appear on the surface to have little educational value. As teachers, we feel it is our job to make students' interests as educational as possible.

Take for instance the space-ship craze. Who knew that introducing pattern blocks would cause creative minds to go all science-fiction and hold pretend space wars? Jumping at the opportunity, John, their teacher, asked children to describe their ships. The descriptions were limited to the expected array of armaments. So John commented, "You're dead! How are you going to breathe!?" A discussion ensued leading students to produce ships with detailed life support systems. They talked about how the earth provides all that humans need. Since then, students include life support spontaneously in their space creations. Later, John was thinking aloud as he filled out the daily activity report. When he spoke the words, "Science workshop," a student asked "Science Workshop? What Science Workshop?"

We know the kids are learning by what they do spontaneously, rather than by assigning tasks or tests. "Look," a six-year-old child said with bright eyes, showing me two lego blocks side by side, "Sixteen really is a square number!" Informal oral tests are used to check understanding of certain important learning outcomes, but as a bioregional educator, I much prefer to see these real-life indications of learning.

An inspiration to many in the community, the kids peddle their way through the city to explore natural areas, meet members of their community and participate in community events. Their cycling school bus can be seen on the streets of Victoria most Fridays.

Their education is holistic and natural, cooperative, participatory and empowering. These kids are preparing themselves to participate in an active democracy that cares about clean air, fresh water, good soil and biodiversity. They will have a deep understanding and respect for living things and the systems that create and maintain life, locally and globally. These children will be part of the solution.

What Canada does over the next 6 months or so in the water/trade debate will forever define us as a people and as a nation.

At the end of the day, we will either have retained sovereign control over our water resources and from that experience gained a sense of empowerment and validation which fuels Canadian leadership in community and global sustainability.

Or we will have lost control over Canada's water resources, scrabbling into the darkness with a whimper not a bang because we feel powerless to do anything else.

Water is the dividing point; the most critical policy arena of the century. We owe it to our children's children to quickly get up to speed on the issue and be as proactive as we can in the upcoming debate. We must all become involved or Canada's water is, I fear, completely lost.

I personally don't think then-Trade Minister Pat Carney lied about water. I think she was "had" by former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, who had this one cooked ever since he appointed former GRAND (Great Recycling And Northern Diversion) Canal lobbyist Simon Reisman as Canada's trade negotiator in January 1986.

Reisman's appointment came a scant eight months following his statements to the Ontario Economic Council that the price of free trade with the US was massive development of Canadian water exports, that he had "personally" suggested the idea to leaders of government and business on both sides of the border and that he had "been greatly heartened by the initial response."

Following his appointment as Canada's trade negotiator, Reisman said, "In my judgment, water will be the most critical area of Canada-US relations over the next hundred years. How quickly this issue develops and how much attention is paid depends on how critical the American water shortage is."

Reisman's US counterpart at the trade table was Clayton Yeutter, a man with an extensive background in international agriculture, a PhD. in international water law and a long-standing interest in Canada's water. Yeutter was closely associated with Nixon during the US Army Corps of Engineers' covert mapping of Canada's northern water resources and a member of the Committee to Re-elect the President in 1972.

The US House Speaker at the time was Jim Wright, a Texas Democrat and one of the most influential politicians in the US. In his 1966 book The Coming Water Famine, Wright noted: "There is to the north of us a stupendous supply of water . . . enough to satisfy our predictable wants for years to come. We need the water. We need to develop a means of getting that water."

The denials and ridicule that characterized the government's response to the water/trade debate were astounding. Mulroney assured Canadians that when it got down to the negotiations, water wasn't even mentioned at the trade table, but it wasn't until John Crosbie took over as International Trade Minister that the web of deception was spun in earnest.

"Water's not part of the agreement," said Crosbie in the spring of 1988, "and just to assure Canadians of that fact, we have introduced an amendment to the free trade legislation to specifically prohibit bulk water exports."

Slippery words these. The free trade legislation Crosbie was referring to is NOT the Free Trade Agreement but merely the domestic enabling legislation each party to the international treaty had agreed to enact "to give full force and effect" to the terms and conditions of the international treaty. Neither country vetted the other's domestic enabling legislation and nothing in it changed the terms of the international trade treaty. Crosbie's amendment did nothing to address the problem.

In response, 13 well known Canadians and I came together and in six weeks wrote the book Water and Free Trade (Lorimer, Toronto, 1988), released November 1st, two weeks before the federal election.

We were optimistic. But the rhetoric was heavy and the boys from Bay Street (Tom d'Aquino and friends) had money. In the end, Canadians were confused (and could not believe they were being seriously and deliberately misled). The idea of outright lying by politicians was uncomfortable. The Tories won the election. And the FTA was enacted.

Several years later, the NAFTA was signed. Same problems. Same results. This time, the US chimed in. Clayton Yeutter's successor, then-US Trade Representative Mickey Kantor, made his now infamous contribution to the discussion:

What Kantor meant was that each time water becomes a good of commerce and enters into international trade, all terms of the trade agreement apply to each export contract so entered into. For example, trees standing in a forest are not subject to the trade agreements but a wooden chair made in Vancouver and sold to a buyer in Seattle is. If chairs were only manufactured by the provincial government, and if American buyers wanted to purchase chairs, the Canadian government couldn't discriminate against them in favour of a Canadian buyer; we would have to give the Americans equal access to the chairs; that's what national treatment is all about. A simple concept that applies equally to water, particularly so because water licenses (including those for irrigation) are issued by government for compensation.

Yeutter's simple statement spawned the "as long as we don't call water a good it won't become one" and "as long as we don't export the first drop we're ok but once we do all of Canada's water is at risk" silliness by the feds.

Water is "in" the FTA and NAFTA because it's not "out" (not explicitly exempted, as are raw logs and certain species of fish from the Maritimes) and because "water" - all natural water other than sea water, including ice and snow - appears as Item 22.01.9 of the Harmonized Commodity Coding System of the GATT, to which FTA and NAFTA refer for their definition of "goods." The rights are there and the tap is open. In perpetuity. Period.

Eight years ago, a colleague of mine, a lawyer in Alberta, was told by an executive with one of the large pipeline construction companies that they were laying TWO parallel pipelines. "What for?" she asked. "One for natural gas and one for water," was the prompt and candid reply. Several years ago, Alberta Premier Ralph Klein made a special trip to California to promote Alberta resources.

In May, Bill C-6 (An Act to Amend the International Boundary Water's Treaty Act, the federal government's only response to the water/trade crisis) received Second Reading. When implemented, C-6 will establish water export permits at the pleasure of the Minister of International Trade, setting the stage for transcontinental water sharing.

A few days before the G-8 Summit, US President George W. Bush finally said he wanted to talk water. In a Washington interview with the Globe and Mail, Bush said, "I look forward to discussing this with the Prime Minister . . . at any time because water is valuable for a lot of our countries," adding he would be open to "any discussions" about a possible continental water pact - along the lines of the co-operation talks now under way between Canada, the United States and Mexico on energy - to pipe Canadian water to the parched American southwest. At the G-8 Summit, Chretien unexpectedly announced (pre-empting a ruling by the National Energy Board) his support for an "over the top" MacKenzie Delta route for Alaskan natural gas. Why are both men smiling?

The only solution to the water/trade dilemma is for Chretien to stand up to the Americans and demand an exemption for water under the goods, services and investment provisions of the NAFTA. And threaten to walk from the deal if we don't get it. Trust me, the Americans will grant the exemption before they walk from the NAFTA. But only if we make it their only option.

If Canadians cannot resolve this issue, with all the history behind it, we do not live in a democracy. It is the 11th hour, and hard ball is the only game.

Send me your ideas. Become involved. For Canada's sake. Phone (604)947-2893 or email holm@pinc.com.

Nancy Jir, a member of the United Fishermen and Allied Workers Union-CAW (Canadian Auto Workers) who works at Canadian Fishing Company in Vancouver, doesn't usually talk much at meetings. But when she stepped forward at a union environment workshop last year to explain how the commercial cleaning materials she was using at the plant were giving her rashes and chronic eye irritation, she had no idea of the campaign it would spark.

That workshop inspired UFAWU-CAW activist Mae Burrows, the executive director of the Labour Environmental Alliance Society (LEAS), to get going on a unique project that will see workers, their unions and environmentalists working together for change - in the work place and the ecosystem. The project is called Cleaners, Toxins and the Ecosystem, and it's a key example of the kind of work that this labour-environmental organization is doing.

With backing from the UFAWU-CAW, the Hospital Employees Union and CAW Local 3000, the United Food and Commercial Workers, and the UFAWU-CAW, LEAS has begun working with health and safety committee members in fish and food-processing plants as well as janitorial services, a recreational complex and a health care facility, to determine what cleaning products may contain toxins and carcinogens and to replace them with safer, more environmentally-friendly alternatives. The CAW and the BC Federation of Labour, as well as several environmental funders, have provided financial support for the project.

The goal of the campaign is to "green" jobs by eliminating toxins in common cleaning products used in processing plants and other work sites. But it's also aimed at reducing pollution in community watersheds and the Strait of Georgia, since many of the toxic cleaners currently being used discharge into local waters.

For plant workers and janitors, it's an issue about their right to know what substances they're being exposed to in the work place. Occupational health and safety regulations state that Material Safety Data Sheets, which provide handling information on hazardous materials, are supposed to be provided. But in many cases, suppliers don't provide new ones and the sheets quickly become out of date. Often employees haven't been given the training to know how to use them.

"This project is about making people aware of the toxins and carcinogens in their work environment, demonstrating the impact on their health and the environment - and then working with health and safety committees to eliminate those toxins," says Burrows.

The project is one of a number of campaigns initiated by LEAS, all based on the idea that sustainability, the right to a healthy and safe work environment and a socially just society can be complementary goals for trade unionists and environmentalists. That same idea is what prompted a number of trade unionists and leading environmentalists to come together to form LEAS three years ago.

A major inspiration for LEAS was CAW's Prevent Cancer Campaign, which demonstrated the commitment of a major trade union to confront an environmental issue.

And cancer certainly is an issue in the cleaners project. In examining the data sheets for the cleaning materials currently in use at Buchanan Lodge, a long-term care facility in New Westminster, LEAS researchers found two carcinogens.

One was Trisodium nitrilotriacetate, which was found in both a carpet stain remover called Enz-All and a dishwasher detergent called Trump. The chemical is listed as Class 2B (possible human carcinogen) under the ranking system developed by the International Agency for Research on Cancer. Another product, known as Crew Klean and Shine, used by janitorial services in many facilities, contains Cocamide diethanolamine, which has been shown to cause tumours in mice.

Those chemicals are in addition to more than a dozen hazardous ingredients found in the cleaning materials used on the various sites involved in the project. Among them are ethoxylated nonylphenols , endocrine disrupters that continue to wreak damage in the receiving environment after they've been used in the work place. They're frequently found in laundry detergents used in commercial laundries.

Often finding out what's in the cleaners is a real education for workers. Even where the data sheets have been made available, the manufacturing companies don't provide a lot of information about the hazardous materials or their effects.

"I had no idea what was in these products," says Linda Gagnon, a member of the joint CAW-employer health and safety committee at 8-Rinks, a huge recreational complex in Burnaby that is participating in the project. "This has been a real eye-opener for all of us."

The management at the 8-Rinks facility has already made some changes in cleaning products and expects to be making more, based on the committee's work and recommendations.

The project got similar action at Buchanan Lodge where the environment manager immediately contacted his supplier to drop the carcinogenic products after receiving the committee's initial report. He'll also be working with the health and safety activists to review all the cleaning materials used and make further substitutions where necessary.

Health and safety committee member Elizabeth Smith recalled an incident in the past where carpets had been saturated with the carcinogenic stain remover "and residents started getting sick.

LEAS researchers are using a number of benchmarks in assessing the cleaning materials, including checking hazardous ingredients against Scorecard, the ranking system for environmental and occupational health hazards developed by Environmental Defense and the Canadian site, www.pollutionwatch.org. They're also looking at research done by the Canadian Union of Public Employees and the city of Windsor and data bases developed by health and safety departments in several US cities and states. One particularly useful tool in identifying cleaning product toxins is a project that was initiated in California by state and federal environmental agencies called Janitorial Products Pollution Prevention Program, on the Internet at www.westp2net.org/Janitorial/jp4.htm

Providing much of the expertise for the project is an advisory committee that includes health and safety expert Larry Stoffman, a member of both the BC Federation of Labour and Canadian Labour Congress occupational health and safety committees, as well as Jay Ritchlin from Reach for Unbleached!.

Although the project has only been under way for a couple of months, it has already demonstrated a tremendous potential. By bringing the groups together, LEAS has been able to involve workers in an environmental initiative that could see dozens of toxic cleaning products dropped from order lists and the toxic ingredients eliminated from the waste stream.

"Since this project was launched, it has grown more than we imagined, with more sites wanting to take part," said Burrows. "We see it as a template that can be used in dozens of sites, where workers and unions can really make a difference not only in making their work places safer but in reducing environmental toxins."

Researchers have found an incredibly simple way to kill bacteria in drinking water - shaking it and leaving it in the sun. The technique is being tested in three areas of India. The World Health Organization estimates that one person in four around the globe drinks contaminated water, a practice that kills 3.4 million people a year.

Scientists have always speculated that the energy in sunlight might be high enough to deactivate bacteria, but studies have proved inconclusive, until Dr. Robert Reed, from the University of Northumbria, discovered that sunlight could clean up microbes, but only if there was free oxygen in the water. Dr. Reed says that after three or four hours of full-strength sunlight the water would pass the standard United Kingdom or United States tests for bacteria in drinking water.

Although one would expect small islands to be cautious and wise in their use of water, such has not been the case around the world, according to a survey of water management on small islands. Most small islands only institute corrective measures, such as rain water collection, conservation, and quotas after severe shortage has struck or the water is polluted.

"There is growing evidence that the limited water resources of small islands are over utilized and polluted. In relation to quantity, many islands have large populations in relation to their size. In addition, many small islands are popular tourist destinations. As tourists consume, on average, 250-500 litres of water per person per day the toll on water resources is tremendous."

Over-exploitation of groundwater resources and the degradation of water quality are reported from almost all island states. On many islands, especially in the Mediterranean, depletion of the groundwater has led to saltwater intrusion of the aquifers, and even soil salination and ground subsistence.

Water harvesting and storage, including mandatory cisterns, grey water and treated effluent reuse, and import of water from adjacent countries are some of the strategies adapted by small island states. Desalination is only an option for those islands with a high-end tourist trade to pay for it.

* "Sustainable Management of Water Resources in Very Small Islands," N. Kliot, University of Haifa.

It has often been assumed that contaminants left on or under the ground will stay there. This has been shown to be wishful thinking.

Groundwater often spreads the effects of dumps and spills far beyond the site of the original contamination. Groundwater contamination is extremely difficult, and sometimes impossible, to clean up.

Among the more significant point sources are municipal landfills and industrial waste disposal sites. When either of these occur in or near sand and gravel aquifers, the potential for widespread contamination is the greatest.

In Ville Mercier, Quebec, for example, the disposal of industrial wastes into lagoons in an old gravel pit over many years rendered the water supplies of thousands of residents in the region unusable. Water had to be pumped from a well 10 kilometres away to replace the area's supply.

Other point sources are individually less significant, but they occur in large numbers all across the country. Some of these dangerous and widespread sources of contamination are septic tanks, leaks and spills of petroleum products and of dense industrial organic liquids.

Septic systems are designed so that some of the sewage is degraded in the tank and some is degraded and absorbed by the surrounding sand and subsoil. Contaminants that may enter groundwater from septic systems include bacteria, viruses, detergents, and household cleaners.

Contamination can render groundwater unsuitable for use. The overall extent of the problem across Canada is unknown . . .

Contamination problems are increasing in Canada primarily because of the large and growing number of toxic compounds used in industry and agriculture. In rural Canada, scientists suspect that many household wells are contaminated by substances from such common sources as septic systems, underground tanks, used motor oil, road salt, fertilizer, pesticides, and livestock wastes. Scientists also predict that in the next few decades more contaminated aquifers will be discovered, new contaminants will be identified, and more contaminated groundwater will be discharged into wetlands, streams and lakes.

Once an aquifer is contaminated, it may be unusable for decades. The residence time can be anywhere from two weeks to 10,000 years.

* Reproduced from www.safewatergroup.org who credit Environment Canada for this information.

There's a new site in cyberspace and it couldn't be more timely. In the aftermath of last year's tragedy in Walkerton, concerned citizens in rural Ontario have organized around issues concerning the safety, sustainability and delivery of water.

Through the use of independent research, education and advocacy, the Safe Water Group wants to encourage public discussion about how to safely and equitably conserve and protect our aquatic resources. One way of doing this is through the group's new website, at www.safewatergroup.org The site is packed with features and carefully chosen links to a variety of resources. The website is 100% independent and volunteer-run.

Michael Riordon, a member of the Safe Water Group, says, "Water is a litmus test, really, for environmental health. If we can achieve good water quality, we can be more or less certain that our environment is in good shape." The main purpose of the website, he feels, is to facilitate public exploration of key environmental issues in the Quinte region. "Recently, issues we've been focusing on include: the controversy surrounding the spreading of sewage sludge on farmland; public concerns about large-scale factory farms; the need to preserve our agricultural base and ensure farm profitability; energy issues and acid rain; ways of conserving our present water supply; the use of innovative practices in other jurisdictions and the importance of public ownership and control of water resources and delivery."

The second summer for the Cortes Ecoforestry Youth Initiative E-team was an exciting and successful program that focused on environmental inventories and mapping, both in foreshore and stream environments, and included local BC Parks trail maintenance. This year E-team was well funded by Youth Options BC, Tides Foundation USA, and Tides Canada Foundation. Five youth between the ages of 16 and 21 completed the work/training program under the guidance of supervisor Mary Clare Preston. Candace Jordan, Alex Laberge, and Santana Francis were local participants; Lauren Graham and Bronwen Tigar, both from Vancouver, completed the E-team work crew.

Sabina Leader-Mense, resident marine biologist, did an excellent job of incorporating the E-team crew in ongoing FOCI foreshore monitoring. Sabina has twelve sites in different locations on the beach around Cortes. Every year she and a dedicated group of volunteers go to exactly the same sites and record the flora and fauna. Participation in this project results in a better understanding of the intertidal zone and its abundant life as well as its sensitivity to disturbance. Sabina's enthusiasm and wholistic approach was infectious to every team member.

One related project of the summer was the mapping of Manson's Lagoon in all its diverse habitats. Andy Ellingsen once again was a great help in providing the compass and surveying skills training. For the participants, mapping meant learning a whole new set of surveying skills, using compass and chain. The team surveyed around each habitat unit to create polygons. These can then be transferred onto a computer program producing a map delineating each polygon and the habitat feature it represents.

It is possible to use an aerial photo of Manson's Lagoon for mapping, however an aerial photo does not pick up distinct habitats such as the sand dollar beds that exist in the channels, and places where the channel remains saturated at low tide.

Habitat types specific to the lagoon include sand dollar beds, the deep oozing mud flat that exists near where the creek flows into the lagoon, the tide pools that follow the edge of the islets, the gravel bar that the mussels thrive on, and eel grass beds. The Lagoon is teaming with life! Mapping these habitats provided a baseline to record changes over time and, particularly for the E-team participants, was a hands-on opportunity for greater understanding of the complexity of the lagoon ecosystem. The E-team not only collected the necessary polygon data but used the artistic talents of some of the groups members to produce a beautiful biodiversity map of the lagoon, both technically and artistically proficient, that will be on permanent display at Manson's Hall.

Streamkeepers is a province wide project designed to train community members in waterway monitoring, protection, and restoration. In the first week of the program the E-team, and members of the Cortes Elementary School, took a two and a half-day course focusing on the monitoring aspects, the first four modules, of Streamkeepers. The training introduced the fundamentals of stream ecology, monitoring of changes within a stream system including: stream surveying, stream assessment, water quality monitoring, and aquatic invertebrate sampling. Some of the surveying skills the team learned were transferable to the Streamkeepers work.

The team's initial goal was to set up permanent sampling stations in the Hague/Gunflint Lake watershed that would engage the participation of the island school kids. The Gunflint/Hague Lake watershed spills into Manson's Lagoon and provided an amazing opportunity for the E-team to experience the interconnection of stream and foreshore.

Both Cortes Elementary School and Linnaea School expressed interest in incorporating Streamkeepers into their program and so four sites were established; each school having two stations within easy walking distance. To wrap up this portion of the E-team program, Mary Clare and her team produced a booklet for the schools to use; a simplified version of the Streamkeepers modules 1-4, describing the specific sites as well as monitoring methods. The Cortes community was also treated to an evening presentation of the team's accomplishments. Future plans include furthering Streamkeepers into assessment and restoration work as well as expansion into other watersheds and the establishment of a permanent Streamkeepers chapter on Cortes.

Unlike last summer, this year's program emphasis was not on specific forest-related activities or trail building. Trail work involved the team's participation in BC Parks projects: the School to Sea trail maintenance, installation of water bars to deal with erosion problems on the Hague Lake Trail, and a boat trip to Mittlenatch Island Bird Sanctuary to work on trail maintenance and sign post painting.

In relating the focus of this summer to ecoforestry, the water in the forest ecosystem is like the veins of the human body; it is the transportation system for nutrients and integral to forest health and all areas beyond. On Cortes the forests touch the foreshore and are all part of the larger ecosystem. As with all of the Gulf Islands, Cortes faces fresh water, land, and foreshore development issues. The E-team made a significant contribution toward the work that FOCI and the Cortes community face in dealing with these long-term concerns.

A special thanks to each E-team member, the program funders, and all those who contributed their time and expertise to make this a very successful season.

If you wish to contribute to this valuable youth program please donate to Friends of Cortes Island Society and indicate that your support is for Cortes Ecoforestry Youth Initiative.

* Friends of Cortes Island, Box 88, Whaletown BC V0P 1Z0; (250)935-0087; foci@island.net

The first step in hiding agendas is usually euphemizing [call a dog a good name and enthrone it!]. So big unionists trot out "a decent wage." "Decent"? Decoded: enough for a new car every few years, a big house (even most second-worlders find American/Canadian houses big), and a decent percentage of the bribes we've conditioned ourselves to deem essentials. 'Proportional parity' is a key rationalization too. Decoded: our bosses steal a lot, so we deserve to steal less. "For every egg a King appropriates by Royal Right, his soldiers steal a thousand chickens." - Sufi saying. All have entitlement conditions.

Equivalent government verbal sleight-of-hand/spirit: "We merely want private sector parity . . . to ensure the best seek public service." "The best" amuses: as if such were ever so venial as to steal salaries as bloated as the greediest of all, the suits. Citizens don't expect MPs to wear hair shirts but we get peeved when they buy Armani from what they embezzle from us. Our noble leaders voted themselves +20% hikes on salaries of already almost American amounts, this as our environment, health care, and infrastructure rots.

Things that go bump in the day: corporation patents mice gene tweaked to sprout cancers more easily. Horror writers must feel increasingly inadequate.

Strange the separation of media analysts [the Ad Busters bunch] and environmentalists. After all, they both deal in surrounds: one social and one physical. And we all live in both. Am I wrong? Write.

Creativity is resisted for many reasons. We're apes and demand the easiest way. Creativity implies first unlearning. So learning creativity is seen as a major pain. We dimly sense that if we improve how we think, it'll result in discovering what we think, and hide from ourselves; which is to say we sense that thinking creatively will result in admitting to ourselves our destructive appetites and, arg, lead to recognizing need to renounce them.

"We do not err because truth is difficult to see. It is visible at a glance. We err because this is more comfort able." - A. Solzhenitsyn.

All this also explains our hate of paying dues to the biosphere we're part of [the very thought of eco-ruin produces unpleasant emotions, so I'll just feel resentful toward those nasty environmentalists, and ignore it]. The world is cake: we want to have it and eat it too. The world is goose: we want to eat it, but still get our daily golden eggs.

We must change our mind set or undo even our best fixes. It's the catch-22 cookie: make low-fat cookies and most of us just eat more of them. Build more roads and they soon reclog, because open roads attract more drivers. The sickest part, the insistence of most parents that they care for their kids, as they drive them about in cars that destroy the world those very children will have to live in, etc! Technology is an exorbitant neon-flashing cocaine bandaid that's so much fun we don't notice it's addictive and carcinogenic. Call it a temporary side-effect of soon-to-be-perfected technology. Keep faith: just keep eating and buying more kitchen gadgets and we'll be slim, in a silicon Eden! Speaking of neon: "America is a neon sewer." - George Carlin.

Our colonial masters in Ottawa are soliciting bids on Canada's water. Oh sorry, not bids; they say our water is not for sale. They just want to find what it would sell for if it were, which it's not, of course. And it's just a coincidence that they're doing this just as the excrement is interfacing with the air circulation equipment in terms of water, electricity, and gas gaps in our bloated role-model to the south [The Land of the Me]. So relax! Trust your government! After all, they kept their promises with the GST and NAFTA, right? Sleep well!

The BC Greens recently touted their "momentum", a 10% gain. But this was most or all anti-NDP voting [Glen Clark is to the BC NDP as Brian Baloney is to the Conservatives: leprosy]. And rising concern in polls is quoted. But folks fib, it being uncomfortable to admit one doesn't really care enough to do anything. Is it coincidental that eco-group revenues peaked decades ago, with the economy? It then seemed possible to have one's environment and eat it too, so the environment was given lip service. The average citizen does care, enough to recycle and maybe toss $20 to Green peace now and then. But seriously cut back; vote for anybody nuts enough to threaten the slightest slowing of the gravy train? If Greens take these 'gains' as bases for future plans they're planning to move into a dream castle. Better left unsaid? Better left said and planned around.

That's it for my first column, folks. I hope I offended somebody, because if little thinking happens in the presence of anger, even less happens in the presence of comfort. Painless stonewalking compadres . . .

* The EcoCurmudgeon and the Watershed Sentinel beg you to complete the circle: with quotes, images, article & column ideas, bricks n' bouquets, etc. to wss@rfu.org or marinuslutz@hotmail.com. Portions of this column are excerpts from an upcoming book and are copyright.

It is a compliment when readers send us letters and articles for publication. We are sorry we cannot publish all the material we receive. Deciding what to put in/what to leave out is a tough call. In order to present a broad range of topics, many good items are shelved and then become dated. You can help by ensuring that your articles are researched, documented and topical. Don't be discouraged. Your next article may trigger a polar shift.

Reach for Unbleached! started in 1991 as a grass roots organization in British Columbia, Canada in response to fishing closures due to dioxin contamination from chlorine-bleaching kraft pulp mills. We are now a national foundation, and a Canadian registered charity with a focus on consumer education and pulp mill monitoring.

Table 1: Stumpage subsidy to BC Forest Sector (1999-2000)
Estimate	Interior	Coast	British Columbia
Non-competitive sawlog harvest	44,250,985 m³	19,622,861 m³	63,873,846 m³
Stumpage paid	$28.26	$18.74	$25.34
Competitive stumpage in US (adj.)	$63.25	$84.31	$69.72
Subsidy to BC (per cubic meter)	$34.99	$65.57	$44.38
Total subsidy ($Can. millions)	$1,548	$1,286	$2,835

Table 2: Illustrative accounting of total subsidies benefiting the BC forest sector
Subsidy	Low	Medium	High
Tenure subsidy*
Stumpage subsidy	$2,385	$1,417	$3,658
Bailouts and handouts	$9	$61	$113
Waiver of environmental protection subsidy	$447	$702	$956
Aboriginal title subsidy: stumpage compensation required**	n/a	n/a	n/a
Research subsidy*
Marketing	$10	$17	$25
Enhanced silviculture*
Total subsidies addressed in this report	$3,301	$3,986	$4,752
Note: Low and high subsidy are not necessarily the lowest or highest estimate identified, but rather estimates were selected that the authors determined were credibly estimated or were available in sufficient detail to evaluate. The mean estimate is a simple average of the low and high estimate. * = not estimated ** Aboriginal subsidies are related to stumpage subsidies: to include them in the total subsidies would be doubling our counting.

Two Levels
Toxin	National Limits*	Sydney Limits**
Arsenic	12	813
Chromium	646	18,750
Copper	63	20,625
Lead	140	1,473
Molybdenum	10	2,063
Thallium	1	29
Zinc	200	123,750
Benzene	0.5	520
Toluene	0.8	82,500
Xylenes	1	825,000
All measures are in mg/kg
* Existing federal guidelines for safe soil determined by the Canadian Council fo Ministers of the Environment
** New 'Made-for-Sidney' guidelines for 60-day exposures. These values, created for the first time in Canada in June 2001 by federal bureaucrats, will be used to determine whether a cleanup or evacuation occurs.

Watershed Sentinel
Watershed Sentinel Box 39, Whaletown, BC Canada V0P 1Z0 http://www.rfu.org/wss	ph/fax: (250)935-6992 email: wss@rfu.org web master: Yendor yendor@rfu.org
Publisher and Editor Delores Broten Associate Editor Don Malcolm Computer Edition Yendor Editorial and Production Gloria Jorg, Jay Cates, Liza Morris Artwork Lisa Gibbons, Robyn Budd Cover Delores Broten Special Thanks to Horizon Publications, Norberto Rodriguez dela Vega, Mae Burrows, Marinus Lutz, Raja Khuit, Cyndi Gilbert, Pru Moore, Nickie Polson, David Shipway, Guy Dauncey, Colin Graham, Francis Toms, Gloria Jorg, Susan Yates, Peter Ronald, Miranda Holmes, Kathy Smail, the writers, advertisers, distributors, and especially all who send information. This magazine would not happen without you.. Print Run 3500 Circulation est. 7,000 Published six times per year Subscriptions $20 one year, $30 two years Canada, $26 US one year Distribution by news stand sale through Disticor (Toronto), by subscription, and to members of Friends of Cortes Island and Reach for Unbleached! Free at Vancouver Island and Vancouver area libraries. For reproduction rights, contact CANCOPY, 6 Adelaide St. E., Ste. 900, Toronto, Ontario M5C 1H6 Member British Columbia Association of Magazine Publishers Canada Post Agreement No. 1384570 PAP Registration No. 09057 ISSN 1188-360X

Vol.11 Number 4		August/November 2001

Environmental News from Georgia Strait in British Columbia, Canada and from the World