May 29 2008 | | North Coast & Skeena MLA Office
Sacred Headwaters Summit Shows Broad Base of Resistance to CBM Plans
MLA Gary Coons & MP Nathan Cullen outside of Summit
HAZELTON— The fact that hundreds of people from throughout the northwest traveled to the Gitanmaax Hall in Old Hazelton on a sunny Saturday afternoon proves that there is a critical groundswell of opposition to coalbed methane development in the Sacred Headwaters say North Coast MLA Gary Coons and Skeena MLA Robin Austin.
“People came to this meeting from every community and every First Nations group in the northwest,” said Coons. “The entire watershed is opposed to Shell’s plans to drill for coalbed methane and the headwaters of the Skeena. There is a real awareness that what happens at the headwaters affects everyone downstream, and no one downstream has been consulted about this development. It’s a real problem.”
Coalbed methane has never been commercially produced in British Columbia, but every jurisdiction where this controversial form of resource extraction has taken place has encountered a litany of negative environmental consequences, the chief amongst them being contamination of water supplies.
“When people are travelling for anywhere from 2 to 6 hours to get to a meeting in opposition to something, that shows that there is real passion around the issue,” said Austin. “And so there should be. Coalbed methane development threatens the Skeena, threatens our salmon, and threatens the economy of the northwest without offering any real benefits in return.”
The meeting, which was organized by Friends of Wild Salmon, and the Skeena Watershed Conservation Coalition, featured a presentation from Jack Stanford, a researcher with the University of Montana; he is an expert on river hydrology who has seen the negative impacts of coalbed methane firsthand in such infamous areas as the Powder River basin.
“The fact that the Liberal government gave Royal Dutch Shell permission to perform potentially disastrous drilling at the headwaters of this region’s three most vital rivers highlights how brown this government really is,” said Coons. “They also did so without meaningful consultations with any of the First Nations peoples that will be affected, and this shows the true face of their so-called new relationship.”
Austin agrees. “Shell and the BC Liberal government are asking us to sacrifice our salmon in return for nothing but a handful of empty promises; you can’t eat a promise, and a promise doesn’t give anyone a job. Salmon are a crucial source of food and jobs for people in the northwest, and we will fight to protect that food, and those jobs.”
Coons and Austin presented more than 500 signatures from people in the northwest opposed to coalbed methane development in the Sacred Headwaters to the legislature this week.
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Jennifer Jones
Constituency Assistant
to Robin Austin, MLA for Skeena
Gary Coons, MLA for North Coast
Charlie Wyse, MLA for Cariboo South
phone: (250) 638 7906
fax: (250) 638 7926