Action Alert re Fish Lake/Federal Challenge
by FONV
 Hello all Friends of "Friends of the Nemaiah Valley"; The Sierra Club of B.C. has just issued an "Action Alert" to Save Fish Lake: Save Fish Lake!
C-9: Watered down environmental assessments threaten Canada's northern lakes and ecology.
The B.C. government has given the green light to a huge gold and copper mine that will turn Fish Lake into a toxic tailings pond. Nearly 500 million tonnes of acid tailings from the “Prosperity” mine will be dumped into the lake, which teems with rainbow trout and is sacred to the Tsilhqot’in First Nations.
A federal environmental review is pending. But new federal legislation—legislation that could be passed any day now--threatens to gut this last safeguard. Please take immediate action to save Fish Lake, 125 kilometres west of Williams Lake.
Obscured in the federal budget bill, known as Bill C-9, are provisions aimed at gutting the federal environmental assessment act. Proposed rules will grant the federal environment minister power to reduce the scope of reviews and put particular projects on an exemption list. Most shockingly, they would allow the government to avoid a full environmental assessment by breaking up major projects into smaller pieces – thus sidestepping a Supreme Court of Canada ruling. Learn more.
Please write to Prime Minister Stephen Harper and ask him to remove the provisions aimed at weakening environmental assessment – parts 19 and 20 - from Bill C-9.
There is no time to lose. Please act quickly to save Fish Lake and to ensure we do not seriously weaken our federal environmental assessment act.
It is now just under a month until we hear the recommendations made by the CEAA Panel regarding Fish Lake. The expected date for the release of this information is July 2, 2010.
In the meantime, there is a rapidly growing increase in activity to get more Canadians involved in fighting the threats that are before our lakes, specifically the Federal regulation that allows Fish Lake and 19 other lakes across the country to be used to store waste rock for the economic convenience of corporate mining interests.
At the end of May, Chief Marilyn Baptist and Maude Barlow (Council of Canadians) spoke eloquently in Williams Lake on protecting Fish Lake and this most important issue. Here is a short video clip of that evening: http://thecanadian.org/k2/item/133-maude-barlow-fish-lakeMaude
Today (June 4, 2010) a news release was issued by the Sandy Pond Alliance, a coalition including the Council of Canadians, MiningWatch, the Newfoundland and Labrador Natural History Society, Sierra Club Atlantic, and scientists and activists in Newfoundland, who have just launched a legal challenge against the federal government for allowing the dumping of mining waste into Canadian lakes and rivers.
"The Sandy Pond Alliance will argue in the Federal Court of Canada that a loophole in the Fisheries Act that has led to metal mining companies seeking permission to dump toxic waste into lakes since 2006 should be deemed illegal.
"“We will argue that this regulation violates federal law,” says Newfoundland-based lawyer, Owen Myers. “The principal function of the Fisheries Act is the conservation of fish and aquatic ecosystems. The challenged regulations essentially amend the Act by regulation which is unlawful.”
"While the coalition emerged out of efforts to protect Sandy Pond, a lake near Long Harbour, Newfoundland, the issue is of national significance.
“"Dozens of lakes across the country are currently at risk and we are likely to see many more lakes threatened by this provision,” says Ramsey Hart Canadian Program Coordinator for MiningWatch Canada.
Among the threatened lakes are Fish Lake in British Columbia, in the heart of Tsilhqot’in territory, and Bamoos Lake, just off the northern shore of Lake Superior near Marathon, Ontario.
“By allowing mining companies to use lakes as garbage dumps for toxic waste, the Canadian government is facilitating a cheap corporate resource grab that will result in the draining and destruction of vital freshwater resources,” says Meera Karunananthan, National Water Campaigner for the Council of Canadians.
""The conversion of natural lakes into mining waste dumps is unlawful under the Fisheries Act, and should never have been permitted by federal authorities," says Lynda Collins, Professor with the Environmental Law Group at the University of Ottawa.
"The case is expected to be heard in St. John's Newfoundland and Labrador in the Fall."
|
