Fisheries

Crews fighting to contain fuel leaking from a sunken tug near Bella Bella, B.C., have had to deal with just the kind of conditions predicted in a spill response analysis filed with the National Energy Board in the Trans Mountain pipeline hearings.

That analysis warned that if an oil spill occurred on the West Coast during winter months, high winds, turbulent seas and delays in response time could combine to make it impossible for crews to recover more than 15 per cent of spilled oil.

For Immediate Release

October 26, 2016 (Bella Bella) – A statement just released by Canada’s fisheries minister has left Heiltsuk Chief Councillor Marilyn Slett angered and dismayed.

For Immediate Release

October 26, 2016 (Bella Bella) – A statement just released by Canada’s fisheries minister has left Heiltsuk Chief Councillor Marilyn Slett angered and dismayed.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Booms leaking diesel, contaminating beaches in Heiltsuk Territory

October 25, 2016 (Bella Bella) – Crews continue to attempt to recover spilled diesel from contaminated beaches near Gale Creek/'Qvúqvái today as diesel has been discovered leaking from booms that broke Saturday and washed ashore.

Cleanup and salvage efforts have been hampered by storms on the British Columbia coast, where a sunken tug continues to leak fuel 11 days after it ran aground near Bella Bella, in the Great Bear Rainforest.

Matt Woodruff, information officer with the industry-funded unified command group that is handling the operation, said fuel spill containment booms failed at one point, allowing slicks to escape from around the grounded tug, Nathan E. Stewart.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

HEILTSUK IN SHOCK AS CRITICAL BARRIER
CONTAINING SPILL BREAKS FREE

Bella Bella (October 22, 2016) –– Heiltsuk Chief Marilyn Slett says her community is in a state of shock today as spilled diesel oil has broken free of barriers to contain it and weather worsens.

A little more than a year ago, B.C. activist Ingmar Lee told a reporter that the petroleum-hauling vessel Nathan E. Stewart was a “disaster waiting to happen.”

Early Wednesday morning, that fear was realized when the American-owned articulated tug and barge ran aground near Bella Bella. Although the barge was empty after dropping off its cargo in Alaska, the tugboat began leaking fuel into the water, threatening the traditional clam fisheries of the Heiltsuk First Nation. 

“It’s unfortunately a terrible thing to see it sunk there,” Lee said Thursday.

The site where the Pacheedaht people originated — their Garden of Eden — is stunning.

The Jordan River exits a 500-metre-deep canyon, then tumbles toward the sea through a jumble of immense boulders polished as smooth as beach pebbles.

It was here, about 70 kilometres west of Victoria, in a past so ancient it predates legends of a great flood that inundated the world, that the Pacheedaht took their name from foam on the river.

Today, there’s still foam on the river. It signals not the birth of a people, but the death of their river.

From: Eddie Gardner [mailto:singingbear@telus.net]
Sent: Friday, September 23, 2016 10:31 AM
Subject: Letter of Solidarity with Musgamagw Dzawada’enuxw Eviction of Fish Farms

Hi All,

Your assistance in circulating this to the mass media would be greatly appreciated.  We are encouraging others to send messages of support and solidarity with Musgamagw Dzawada’enuxw to Dominic LeBlanc as Chief Michelle Lee Edwards did.

All the best,

Eddie