March/April 2006 Newstand Price $4.50 Environmental News from BC and the World What are you drinking? Vol 16 No 2 ISSN 1188-360X � Watershed Sentinel Back Issues Now available! 15 years of blood, sweat and fears Very limited number of complete sets January 1991 to December 2005 $350 per set Missing an issue? Individual copies $1 each plus $2.50 handling and postage Irreplaceable history Get the story behind the scene Contact [email protected] or Watershed Sentinel, Box 39 Whaletown BC V0P 1Z0 ���������������������� ����������� ������������������������������������������ ��������������������������������������������� ��������������� �������������� � � ������ ������ ����������������������������������������������������� �������������������������������������������������������� ����������������� ����������������������������������������������� ����������������������������������������������������� ������������������������������������������������������������������� ���������������������������������� �������������������� ���������������������������������������������� ������������������������������������������������� ������������������������������������������������������������������ ������������������������������������������������������������������ ���������������������������� ���������������������������� � ��������������������� �������������������� � �������������������� ������������������������������������������������������� ���������������������������� ���������������������������� � ������������ WATERSHED SENTINEL MARCH - APRIL 2006 Watershed Sentinel March/April 2006 The Watershed Sentinel keeps watch and informs. Energy & Climate Climate Change Notebook 5 What’s Green About Nukes? 6 “If there is magic on this planet, it is contained in water... Subtropical British Columbia? 20 “Once in a lifetime, if one is lucky, one so Forests & The Land merges with sunlight and air and running water that Huckleberry Spews Mercury 12 whole eons, the eons that mountains and deserts know, might pass in a single afternoon without A Homesteader’s Nightmare 29 discomfort....one can never quite defi ne this secret, Protection for the Great Bear 30 but it has something to do...with common water. Its substance reaches everywhere; it touches the past Food & Water and prepares the future; it moves under the poles On Today’s Menu 11 and wanders thinly in the heights of air. It can assume News briefs about food forms of exquisite perfection in a snowfl ake, or strip Awaken to Water 14 the living to a single shining bone cast up by the sea.” A Sip of Life 15 —Loren Eiseley, “The Flow of the River,” Port Alberni Boiling 16 The Immense Journey, 1946 Cabin Fever on Shuswap Lake 17 On the Bottle 18 Toxics Malachite Green 3 How BC’s salmon got the poison Society & Technology Do It Yourself Alternative Energy 8 For the home News and Regular Editorial 2 NASA, Visible Earth Letters 4 News Briefs 5,11,13, 25, 28 Subscription Cards are inside. Give a gift, Toxics Ink 10 or make sure you receive the next issue. Wild Times 24 Joe Foy in the Budget Lock Up Subscribe! Thank you! MillWatch on pulp and paper 27 Printed on 100% post-consumer recycled process chlorine-free newsprint, with vegetable inks since 2002. Cover printed on 100% Cover Photos: Water Bottle Ester Strijbos post-consumer recycled process chlorine free coated paper. Waterfall BC Government FROM THE EDITOR Watershed So Many Lies After a while you can see them coming a mile away. “Incoming Sentinel whopper at 6 o’clock, Sir. Everybody duck!” Editor Delores Broten There are so many lies. So many wars. Environmental assessments that Publisher Watershed Sentinel cover up the damage, or just get tossed when the money’s in play. Mining and Educational Society logging companies whose mother lode is the tax payer. Radioactive waste used Associate Editor Don Malcolm as a weapon. Deterrent Attack. Sustainable Profi ts. Cover and Graphic Design Ester Strijbos Now the only really strong legislation in the entire country to protect the Advertising Terri Smith environment, the federal Fisheries Act, is being thrown out the window. Oh it’s just a little amendment – called Schedule 2 of the Metal Mining Effl uent Regu- Special Thanks to Horizon Publications, Wayne McCrory, John Hummel, Hugh lation (MMER). McNab, Chris Hilliar, Maggie Paquet, Schedule 2, which will go to the Canada Gazette sometime soon, enables Jim Cooperman, Norberto Rodriguez any fi sh-bearing water body in Canada to be redefi ned as a Tailings Impound- dela Vega, Gloria Jorg, Susan Yates, ment Area (TIA) for toxic mining waste. Peter Ronald, Clara Broten, Kathy Smail, So a lake is not a lake any more; it’s a tailings pond. Tony Tweedale, the writers, advertisers, Aur Resources, which is opening a mine in central Newfoundland in the distributors, and all who send information, Exploits River watershed at Duck Pond is the fi rst mine to be listed on Sched- photos and ideas. ule 2, but there are many others, notably Red Chris and probably Kemess and Huckleberry in BC, lining up to get their names on the list. Published fi ve times per year Subscriptions $20 one year, And so the lies go on. More water trashed. On our watch. $30 two years Canada, $26 US one year What are we going to tell the future generations? Delores Broten, Whaletown BC, March 2006 Distribution by newsstand sale through Disticor (Toronto), by subscription, and to Continuity of Life for BC members of Friends of Cortes Island and BC keeps pushing “economic progress” as if there were unlimited re- Reach for Unbleached! FreeFree atat VancouverVancouver Island and Vancouver area libraries, sources in the province. These days, Gordon Campbell loves to use the word in BC colleges and universities, and to “sustainability” in his speeches. I wonder what exactly he understands of this sponsoring organizations. word? Member British Columbia Association I propose replacing the sustainability word with an easy-to-understand of Magazine Publishers, Magazines Canada term: continuity. AtAt leastleast thisthis wordword doesdoes notnot needneed anan explanation.explanation. ItIt isis easiereasier toto ISSN 1188-360X say: “...Such and such project will ensure a continuity of services, a continuity For photocopy reproduction rights, contact of quality of life for all,” or “...We cannot guarantee a continuity of the same CANCOPY, 6 Adelaide St. E., Ste. 900, environment for the future if we keep growing at this rate.” Toronto, Ontario M5C 1H6 Perhaps this way Gordon will fi nally understand that “economic progress” is not good when it cannot guarantee a continuity of life to all citizens and eco- systems in BC. In a beautiful book about Ladakh, a small and remote region of the Hima- layas, Helena Norberg-Hodge says: “Ladakh is such a paradise. What a pity it has to be destroyed.” Publication Mail Canada Post Agreement It would be very sad if in a few years people say: “BC used to be such PM 40012720 a beautiful province. What a pity that its citizens failed to understand what Return Undeliverable Canadian Addresses to: continuity is all about.” Watershed Sentinel Norberto Rodriguez, Whaletown BC, March 2006 Box 39, Whaletown, BC, Canada V0P 1Z0 To reach thousands of concerned and active Ph: 250 935-6992 readers, please contact us for our rates and media Email [email protected] kit, at [email protected] or phone 1-877- http://www.watershedsentinel.ca 421-6688. Next issue ad deadline: April 26th. WATERSHED SENTINEL 2 MARCH-APRIL 2006 FISH Malachite Green The Lingering Poison in BC’s Native Salmon and How It Got There by Delores Broten from malachite green. The volunteer told the Watershed Sentinel thatthat hhisis This is a fi shy story. hands continued to turn green when he worked with the eggs for the next 3 Its central character is a vol- years. They should not have. unteer who, in that obsessive way Malachite green is recognised some humans develop, is passionate among all fi sh enthusiasts as one of about fi sh. He volunteers at a coastal only three effective treatments for fi sh hatchery where various kinds of fungi growing on cultured fi sh eggs, native salmon are reared, and traded the other two being high-salt water quite widely around the coast. A fi sh and formalin, itself a toxic, but not is still perfectly legal for other uses, hatchery strips the eggs from salmon persistent in fi sh fl esh. such as dying paper and fabric, as returning to spawn, fertilises them, Unfortunately for fi sh farmers well as for some laboratory testing. It and rears the smolts until they can be and hatchery managers, malachite is also freely available from US aqua- released back to the stream and then green (C23-H25-N2.Cl, also called culture supply stores for about $55 US the ocean. benzaldehyde green or aniline green) for a one lb. bottle. There are many was banned from use In 2005, malachite green was issues surrounding fi sh in aquaculture in Can- found in Canadian farmed salmon hatcheries – do they in- ada in 1992. Health from two farms, one specializing in terfere with the natural Canada set zero toler- organic Chinook, near Tofi no on BC’s genetics of each race ance for its residues in west coast. Neither farm could under- of salmon? Does the food. stand the presence of the contaminant output of the hatcher- It is international- in its product. With great puzzlement, ies lead to a deceptive ly recognised as a car- the fi sh were immediately pulled from overfi shing of the wild cinogen, causing liver the market among assurances that stock? Are they help- tumours in rats. Its levels were
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