Tuesday, February 14, 2012

Terrace Says NO

 After years of sitting on the fence, the City of Terrace finally has an official answer to Northern Gateway...

Meanwhile, the pipe-line project is being credited with bringing First Nations and non-native communities together:

Jen Rice, who sits on the Prince Rupert City Council, stated, “Individuals, commercial and sports fishers and First Nations along the northwest corridor are usually at odds over allocation of fish. But now everyone has checked their baggage at the door. Everyone risks losing wild salmon if the pipeline gets built.”

7 comments:

Robert G. Harvie, Q.C. said...

Well, of course all the salmon will die.

And anyone who opposes the new internet access law is a "child pornographer".

Why is it that politics attracts usupported hyperbole like flies to.. well, a rotting salmon carcass?

Boris said...

Succinctly put, Holly.

Unknown said...

"Everyone risks losing wild salmon" is the quote, Harvey. Let's stick to what was actually said, rather than what you wish was said so you can draw false equivalencies. Which part of it is hyperbole or inaccurate?


WV: fibeans

RG Harvie's steady diet of fibeans keeps him talking out of his ass.

Robert G. Harvie, Q.C. said...

Last time I chequed, following upon a massive oil spill in both the Gulf of Mexico and in Alaska.. wild life hasn't been wiped out.

Does that mean that negative impact risks aren't real and should be avoided?

No.

But - what it means is that the suggestion that there is a risk that Salmon will be wiped out is, well, the product of more, to coin a phrase, "fibeans".

For example - with respect to the Valdez spill:

"In the years preceding the spill, returns of wild pink salmon in Prince William Sound varied from a maximum of 23.5 million fish in 1984 to a minimum of 2.1 million in 1988. Many factors, such as the timing of spring plankton blooms and changes in water circulation patterns throughout the Gulf of Alaska are likely to have a great influence on year-to-year returns in both wild and hatchery stocks of pink salmon. Since the spill, returns of wild pinks have varied from a high of about 12.7 million fish in 1990 to a low of about 1.9 million in 1992. In 2001 the return of wild stock fish was estimated to be 6.7 million fish.

The decade preceding the oil spill was a time of peak productivity for pink salmon in the Sound. In 1991 and 1992, it appears that wild adult pink salmon returns to the Sound’s Southwest District were reduced by 11 percent; however wild salmon returns are naturally highly variable. Furthermore, the methods used to estimate this decrease could not be used to produce reliable injury estimates across multiple generations of salmon. An analysis of escapement data from 1968-2001 did not show any differences in annual escapements between oiled and unoiled parts of the Sound. Therefore, population-level effects from the spill did not impact wild pink salmon or were short-lived. "

See: http://www.evostc.state.ak.us/recovery/status_pinksalmon.cfm

Unknown said...

The only person I see claiming salmon may be rendered extinct by the pipeline, is you.
It's not neccessary for salmon to be completely wiped out in order for the fishery to be destroyed.
If you actually read the article you might also realize that a tanker spill isn't the only risk posed. The pipeline itself has to cross the Skeena and numerous tributaries. It's one thing for a spill to occur at sea in waters pink salmon only pass through during migration, it's quite another for it to occur in the very waters they spawn it.
But Herring do spawn and are resident in the waters affected by the Exxon-Valdez spill. And more than 20 years later they're showing no signs of recovering.

bigcitylib said...

Also, re Lenny's last; the Florida/Texas fisheries were probably not rendered extinct by the recent BP spill. However, quite a lot of fisherman lost a season and, perhaps, their boat and business.

Holly Stick said...

BP spill effects:

http://money.cnn.com/2011/04/11/smallbusiness/bp_oil_spill_one_year_later.moneymag/index.htm

"...Local conditions mattered — the Valdez spill occurred in the relatively compact Prince William Sound, maximizing the impact on birds in the area, while the BP spill spread out over some 1,600 miles (2,580 km) of the Gulf Coast..."

http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,2066031,00.html

So Rob, is "chequed" a Freudian slip?