In the 1990s, concern about ground level ozone and carbon monoxide from vehicles was increasing, along with the rising levels of air pollution in large cities. Additives were found to oxygenate gasoline to make it burn better and reduce both the smog forming pollutants (e.g. nitrous oxide) and the toxics (e.g. benzene) in car exhaust. The US Clean Air Act of 1990 required the use of oxygenated gasoline, called reformulated gasoline, in areas with air pollution problems.
One of the additives was methyl tertiary-butyl ether, MTBE. MTBE was initially used to increase the octane of gasoline in the 1980s, and after the Clean Air Act, higher amounts were used to oxygenate gasoline. By 2000 MTBE was the leading gasoline additive in the States.
Water Contamination
MTBE dissolves easily in water and leakage from gasoline storage facilities is common. Since MTBE is a suspected carcinogen, its presence in ground water was worrying. In 1996 MTBE was found in two wellfields that supplied drinking water to Santa Monica California at 618 and 86 ppb. The wellfields were shut down, cutting 50% of the city's water supply and forcing it to purchase water. By 2000, the EPA was sounding alarms about MTBE in ground water, and attempting to have it replaced with ethanol in gasoline.
On April 28th, 2009 as I sat in a Tsolum River Partnership meeting at the Ministry of Environment offices in Nanaimo on Vancouver Island, I let my mind wander back to the beginnings of how we got here.
In 1967, a copper mine on Mt. Washington on Vancouver Island, BC went bankrupt after only four years of operation. The site was abandoned, leaving an open scar on the hillside above the Comox Valley and the Tsolum River.
Through the 1980s, fish stocks declined in the river. The abandoned mine site was generating toxic copper leachate. In 1988, a partial cap was placed over a consolidated pile of volatile rock, at a cost of $1.5 million. Still the river declined in health. The partial cap was declared a failure, and the Tsolum slipped into oblivion.By 1993, the river was barely able to support any fish or other aquatic life. After several years of half-hearted talk and studies, our community rallied around emerging organizations such as Project Watershed and the Watershed Assembly. Community awareness was raised about watershed issues, and in 1997 the Tsolum River Task Force (TRTF) was formed.
* Develop a brilliant website and update it regularly - : it makes your group's information accessible, and is a great recruiting and organizing tool.
* Organize townhall meetings, however quickly, as a great way of generating participation.
* Film public meetings: the footage can be used later in short videos and posted on YouTube.
* Keep all levels of government up to speed about community concerns: municipal; provincial (including MLA, ministers and premier); federal and local First Nations .
* Take breaks, but don't give up.
* All efforts seem to pay off: even small delays in a project could lead to important unforeseen opportunities for a project to change.
In 2002 the federal government, in virtual lockstep with the Bush regime, created a special exemption to federal environmental rules that would turn many of Canada's lakes into toxic waste dumps for mines. At least sixteen lakes across the country are slated to become repositories for waste rock laced with heavy metals like arsenic and mercury. Six of these lakes are in British Columbia.
Tsilhqot'in Rights and Title
One of these lakes is Teztan Biny (Fish Lake) in the Nemiah Valley in the Chilcotin (Tsilhqot'in), 200 km southwest of Williams Lake. The location is of great significance because it is in an area where the Xeni Gwet'in people of the Tsilhqot'in First Nation have proven aboriginal rights "to hunt and trap birds and animals" and "to trade in skins and pelts."
The protection of drinking water sources is an ancient wisdom of the Commons practiced throughout the world. A report to the Albany Institute on June 4, 1872 by New York state senior librarian Henry Home, described how the city of Constantinople's drinking watershed, located along the ridges of the Balkan Range, with its ancient chestnut and oak forests, had been protected for 1,500 years. Home stated that it was a wise "custom and a stringent law" originating from the "edicts of Greek Emperors."
Wars, over-population, corruption, change in ruling authorities, etc., sometimes resulted in the abandonment of these customs to the detriment of the watersheds that provided people with clean, healthy water in Europe, Russia, and Asia. The lessons were well known by the time of the first colonizers' arrival in North America and resulted in some of its earliest legislation.
The BC Tap Water Alliance (BCTWA) has released three more reports in its long-standing campaign to raise the alarm about incursions into community drinking watersheds, and the removal of those watersheds from protected status. Through archival research, the BCTWA has uncovered maps and documents that reveal decades of bureaucratic sleight-of-hand, ignoring the legal protection of watersheds as provincial Land Act Watershed Reserves to the benefit of logging companies. BCTWA's 2006 book, From Wisdom to Tyranny, detailed the scandalous fate of BC's protected drinking watersheds.
In 2002 the federal government, in virtual lockstep with the Bush regime, created a special exemption to federal environmental rules that would turn many of Canada's lakes into toxic waste dumps for mines. At least sixteen lakes across the country are slated to become repositories for waste rock laced with heavy metals like arsenic and mercury. Six of these lakes are in British Columbia.
