Rivers face multiple threats from pollution

Page 7

Two environmental groups, EarthWild International and Wildcanada.net, released a report in July naming Canada's 10 most endangered rivers.

British Columbia had three of them. The Okanagan River was classified third most endangered, while the Taku and Iskut rivers were tied for fourth on the list.

Number 7 was the Peel River, which flows partly in Yukon and partly in the Northwest Territories.

These rivers are said to need immediate protection from sewage and pesticide leachate, fish farming, mining and logging. Damming waterways to produce hydroelectric power is another major red flag for ecological disaster, according to the watchdog organizations.

Rivers were assessed according to two main criteria, according to Stephen Legault, executive director of Wildcanada.net, based in Canmore, Alta. The first was to identify the level of threat.

He said they also assessed the "national significance" of the river.

David Mackinnon of the Transboundary Watershed Alliance said there has been "piecemeal development" of ecologically important areas with "no thought to meaningful management to sustain ecological and river resources."

Okanagan River

The Okanagan River flows from Okanagan Lake 314 km south to the Columbia River, passing through Canada's only true desert.

The once-plentiful chinook, coho, chum and sockeye salmon runs have disappeared; only a small number of sockeye and chinook remain. Diversion of water to sustain the Okanagan Valley's fruit and wine industries, and urban population pressure is to blame.

As a result of shrinking habitat and the importation of foreign plant and fish species, the Okanagan Valley is the source of 23 nationally threatened species.

The Okanagan Nation Alliance (ONA) is trying to restore the Okanagan River's ecosystem by working in collaboration with conservation-minded individuals and groups, and governments.

Deanna Machin, spokeswoman for the ONA, said, "There is not a lot of federal or provincial funding to do any of the work that we need to do."

She said technically the tribal group has a good working relationship with the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans and provincial ministry staff. "It's that political side that really needs to be forced to do anything. My sense is ... in B.C. a lot of the focus goes to the Fraser River ... a lot of interior fisheries like the Okanagan kind of get pushed to the side."

Most Environment Canada money that does come to the Okanagan Basin "is focused around endangered species," and limited provincial funding goes into the Okanagan Lake action plan, focused on freshwater kokanee sockeye salmon recovery.

The ONA is trying to persuade its partners to get away from the "mindset of single-species management." It is accessing funding from fish and wildlife mitigation programs in Washington state, one funded through a partnership with Colville Confederated Tribes.

Machin said they are trying to combine sockeye and habitat recovery work in the south Okanagan.

"One of the big problems with doing the work is that there is not a lot of land to do the work on."

In 1954, the government "channelized" the river from Penticton to Oliver, with the result that the river lost more than half its length and "90 per cent of its riparian habitat." Machin said that since then, development has occurred almost up to the banks of the river.

"There are some sections of the river (that are diked) pretty much all that way down... So if you could buy or lease the land you might be able to pull out those dykes and you could reconstruct portions of the river."

Machin pointed out that when the river was channeled and shortened, the bends that formerly slowed its flow were removed and replaced with vertical drop structures, basically a low-head dam to slow down the river. "But they don't provide any kind of fish habitat."

Now the concrete is breaking down. Machin said the government will soon have to do something about these vertical drop structures, "becaus it's a huge liability." She thinks there are ways to change the water flow over vertical drop structures that will help them to restore habitat when the work is undertaken.

Reconstructing the entire river, doing something with the drop structures, removing dams and reconnecting oxbow areas would cost "millions" while currently "you would be lucky to get $50,000 or $100,000 to do a project."

That's why they have lost species and only Okanagan sockeye salmon return now, she said, and "they return through the Columbia River." When portions of the Columbia, which originates in British Columbia, were dammed in the United States, "the upper Canadian portion lost all of its salmon." Over-harvesting, loss of habitat and loss of fish at dam sites resulted in just one species returning to Canada.

Taku and Iskut rivers

These northwest British Columbia rivers are in still largely pristine areas, but threatened by mining and oil and gas development.

The Taku watershed, with seven biogeoclimatic zones and a diverse wildlife population, is the largest undeveloped and unprotected watershed on the Pacific shore of North America and one of the most important salmon producing rivers in the transboundary region with Alaska. It's also the home of the Taku River Tlingit who rely on the river for sustenance and who now participate in ecotourism and a commercial wild salmon fishery. That is threatened by a controversial decision by the provincial government to allow operation of the once abandoned Tulsequah Chief mine despite a recent court decision against it.

The mine has been identified as a source of metals contamination, but provincial environmental enforcement is all but non-existent. It is feared if the mine goes ahead, a 160 km access road will enable further mine exploration and contamination of the waterway.

The Tlingit designated spokesman did not return our telephone calls by press time.

The Iskut River flows southwest 240 km from the village of Iskut to the Stikine Rver near the Alaska/British Columbia border. The river supports all five species of Pacific salmon and other fish.

Salmon are the mainstay of the Tahltan First Nation's fishery and an essential link in the food chain.

Yet the Iskut River is said to face threats from jurisdictional disputes over regulation, fish farms, over-harvesting of wild salmon, roads, dams, power generation plants, mining and logging. So far lack of road access has limited commercial timber harvesting, but the incursion of a proposed transboundary road will make it easier.

Local First Nations and their supporters want to subject all development on the Iskut River to a stringent environmental impact assessment.

The Iskut band chief was on holidays at press time and no one else was available to speak about the Iskut River. The Tahltan band council also could not be reached because of telecommunications problems in the remote area.

Jim Bourquin of the organization Cassiar Watch contacted Raven's Eyewhile he and his family were enroute to Vancouver. Bourquin's wife and daughters are Tahltan and the family lives on the Iskut reserve.

"We've been involved in river activities here for years as commercial river rafting guides," he said. "The main threat to the Iskut River is Alaska and U.S. Congress plans to access Canadian resources to benefit the Alaska and the U.S. economy as opposed to letting any resource development go out to Canadian ports of Stewart or Prince Rupert or Kitimat. Our concern is that we don't unduly develop our lower watersheds for the benefit of American economic growth and what we do develop we steer it into the Canadian economy, the B.C. economy, back out out to Highway 37 rather than out through the Alaska Panhandle."

The proposed Alaskan resource road and port project known as the Bradfield Road, cuts through the Craig Headwaters Protected area and threaten sensitive salmon and grizzly bear habitat.

Peel River

The Peel River watershed, home of the Yukon's largest hed of woodland caribou, covers 14 per cent of Yukon Territory and some of the Northwest Territories. The Tetl'it Gwich'in First Nation in the Northwest Territories and the Nacho Nyak Dun in the Yukon live here. But developers are eyeing oil and gas and mining prospects anew now the Mackenzie Valley pipeline project is nearly assured. Consideration is being given to damming the river at the Aberdeen Canyon.

Elaine Alexie of the Tetlit Gwich'in First Nation in Fort MacPherson, N.W.T. has completed her third year of environmental science studies at the University College of the Caribou in Kamloops. She is also a member of the Dene Youth Alliance and this summer was contracted to the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society, a non-profit organization that campaigns for new protected areas and fights for the preservation of the ecological integrity of existing parks.

"I'm really concerned," she said, that industrial proposals and projects are being designed and negotiated "primarily with the Yukon government" without notification and involvement of the affected First Nations.

"We're downstream from these major industrial projects. Particularly they want to build three major coal bed methane strip mines." Also a steel-making plant to create steel for the proposed Mackenzie Valley pipeline in the Northwest Territories, near the headwaters of three major rivers that create the Peel.

Although it may not be possible to halt all development, the solution is to select areas and ensure their protection before development proceeds, and First Nations need to work together on this she said.

"A strong component to that, we could educate about this issue nationally and try to get other support."

She said First Nations should also be talking about "how we can train our own people to help take other people out on the land. How we could be able to set standards of how we could regulate the amount of impact within an area. Another great economic development strategy is to start thinkin