Puip mills, oil spitis and fish
kiills.,
Those' were the three tapics
for three groups of Grade 10
students ina class at Thornhill
Jr. Secondary school,
© But. these weren’t garden-
variety group essays. Teacher
Linda Lee says the 20 students
spent. six to eight weeks resear-
ching the projects, interviewing
people. —. even travelling to
‘Kitimat to-observe the heavy in-
dustry there.
‘After presenting their fin-
dings, each group’s repart was
sent-on. to provincial coor-
dinators of a project called Vi-
_ Sion’ 2020, The joint venture
between B.C. educators and
Corporate sponsors resulted. in
the publication of a book incor-
(porating. the work of the Thor-.-
_ mhill students, some counter-:
‘parts at. Caledonia, and 5,000.
_ Other studenis from around. the
province.

‘<The: students find it really
exciting, and that has all kinds
‘of great side effects, ” Lee says. :
“They ask more questions, It
teaches them how to figure out

what's important.”

"To mark Earth Day, April 22,
the. Standard reprints the
students writings on this page.

THORNHILL Junior Secondary School students Scatt Johnston and
Greg Rinaldi were on teams of students from a class there that
wrote articles on halting the degradation of the environment. The

articles were published in a book that compiled the work of 5,000
B.C. students.

Terrace Standard, Wednesday, April 22, 1992 — Page AS

It’s time to-
a ~ tighten oll —
transport: rules

Oil spills are worldwide. How can we prevent them?
‘Ships cross our ocean everyday. Some of these ships are
oil tankers which carry millions of gallons of oil in each
_ vessel. When an accident happens and an oil tanker is
- damaged, oil is lost from the ships, causing a spill!

Oil spills are harder to clean up than to make. Major oil
spills can never be cleaned up, coritrolled or contained. This
valuable substance otherwise known as_ black gold, that
takes millions of years to make, becomes lost in our oceans.
_ Oil that is on the surface of the oceans is washed ashore.
On the shoreline the oil pollutes not only the creatures of the
. land, but of the water too. When the oil is in the water, it

different species,of fishin our OCEANS. ye tt,

«This killing. of life in the oceans destroys the marine
ecosystem Eventually, nature will biodegrade the oil. This

’ -will not happen for many years.

As of 1977, 9000 tankers load at the Valdez Alaska ter-

a minal. Because of this, there is higher tanker traffic on the
.- -West.coast. Therefore, there’s a higher risk of spilling oil in

~- gur oceans. It is a fact that the more oil shipped, the more
- Spilled. ,

~. The. wildlife and natural habitat of our coast line are being
destroyed. The shores are being contaminated and water is

--being polluted. Money is being constantly lost i in the clean-
up of the oil spills.

mo

- We depend upon all of nature for survival. Our
economic wellbeing would be inconceivable
without the resources the environment provides.
‘Yet we don’t know how to value our environment —

we take it for granted.

_.. The Exxon Valdez oil spill was one of the world's worst.

- This spill, one of many that happened all over the world,

was caused by a navigation error by the third captain of the
‘ship, in dangerous waters. Eleven million gallons of oil was
spilled along the western coast of Alaska.

. dards were introduced to all oil companies. Most oii spills
can be avoided, but they still will happen. If standards are
‘enforced, most spills can be eliminated.
_. We depend upon all of nature for survival, Our economic
wellbeing would be inconceivable without the resources the
. environment provides. Yet, we don’t know how to value our
environment — we take it for granted, ,
-.~ Qur’ goal is to enforce the standards which the govern-
“ment has already passed but not really cared a great deal
about.
Enforcing standards for British Columbia would
‘minimize oil spills on the west coast. This would decrease
the environmental harm. An example of this would be less
harm to ali water and land animals, such as our many
- species of fish. As well less damage will occur to the shore
and coastlines of our great oceans, Therefore, with less oil
spilled, more money will be saved from-doing less clean up,
and can be spent on more important subject matters.
“fe — By Adam Hill, Heather Albright, Woniya Wrubel,
“| Autumn Richard, Greg Rinaldi, Lana Derrick, Jenice Kin-
ney and Arjunna Delport.

not only floats but sinks to the bottom of the ocean. in.
globes., These glabes ‘smother the ; plant life as. well, as many,:

Save our fish today

Fish are in trouble, because of declining
habitat conditions in North America’s rivers,
lakes, and streams. The Wildlife Management
Institute reports that 62 species of fish are en-
dangered and another 84 are threatened.

In the United States, Canada, and Mexico, the
number of species warranting special attention
increased 45 percent during the 1980s.

Habitats can be’ changed and that can
devastate an entire species of fish, in obvious or
subtle ways. From a massive hydro-electric dam,
to a poorly installed culvert, fish habitats have
been damaged in Canada. In the Great Lakes,
municipal and industrial. waste has polluted
waters.

In B.C., our steelhead salmon are becoming
_ less and less every year and something has to be
done. Each year’ there’ are fewer sieelnend. 80
Stille “are: fewer Spawners; ‘The pr

values, depending on who catches them. .

To commercial fishermen, steelhead are by-
products caught in nets while persuing other fish.
To anglers, steelhead are worth their weight in
gold. For both local anglers and visitors to B.C.,
steelhead salmon provide recreation. However,
this genuine recreational activity defies evalua-
tion in dollars.

Unfortunately for salmon stocks, as govern-
ment regulators seem preoccupied with commer-
cial fishers, this industry carries on- with little

constraint and less surveillance.

Natives have their culture, traditions, and
history which includes fish, especially salmon.
Native communities have been asserting their
aboriginal rights to fish, as confirmed in recent
Supreme Courts of Canada decisions.

Each of these groups believe it should have ac-

cess to more and more fish. But the resource does ~

not keep pace with the steadily increasing com-
mercial’ capacity, rapidly growing recreational
activity and court-affirmed demands of the
native communities.

The interests of each group | are in. conflict,
threatening social relations and, through over-

' harvesting, the resource itself, The problem per-

sists with conflicting ‘jurisdictions. Commercial
fishing boats are controlled by federal fisheries,
but river systems come under provincial authori-

Uélem™ starts:

when the f fish are being ‘piven’ ‘different economic. we . Qur goal is to create a new set of guidelines on.

‘ail “commercial, sports, and native fisheries for
the protection of the remaining wild steelhead
‘within B.C.

This would help sustain existing wild steelhead

stocks and allow tourism through sports fisheries —

to expand, Native Fisheries could ‘sustain the
amount of wild fish caught. Commercial
fisheries could increase fish production and
reduce the amount of unwanted steelhead caught
in gillnets.

‘— By Erik Hansen, Lorissa Mattheis, Janis

Walters, Ann Compton and Jason Horsburgh.

LETTERS

_ TO THE TERRACE STANDARD

This event could have been avoided if international stan-:

Put pressure on polluters

Over the last fifty years pollu-

tion has become one of the most.

serious problems facing our
society. :

Pollution kills. It chokes
rivers and oceans, killing their
inhabitants. It poisons the air
and spoils the land.

Though we may not realize it,
every time-the pollution from
our money-making industries

kills.a fish, we lose — not just .

another fish — but we are
another step closer to a total en-
vironmental catastrophe. Pollu-
tion is the price the world pays
for rapid industrial develop-
ment without consideration of
its efforts on our environment.

Pollution is often due to ig-
norance, carelessness, or just at-
tempts to save money at the cost
of our fragile environment, The
results of today’s industrial
pollution will most likely not be
felt by the polluters. It will more
likely be felt by their children
and their childrens’ children
when they go fishing and they
either catch nothing or what

they do catch is so polluted it
can’t be eaten.

Our industries are dumping
harmful chemicals into our
waters whenever they can, and
the reason is it costs to take care
of them properly or omit their
production in the first place,

We need these pulp
mills for our economy.
We need a sensible solu-
tion that can be used to-
day before it is to late.

In the end, after the
pollutants kill or damage fish,
we won’t have anyone to blame
except ourselves.

The long term plans that
governments are making are a
step in the right direction, but

‘by the time these plans are in

place we will have lost many of
the species of fish we are trying
to save today. We have to act
now!

Everyday pulp mills in our
local area are dumping poisons

in our water supplies, killing

our fish. But we need these pulp
mills for our economy. We need
a sensible solution that can be
used today before it is to late.

Our goal is to get people to
realize what pulp mills are dum-
ping in. our water. If people
know and don’t like it there will
be demands on the government
10 change laws regarding: pulp
mill pollution.

If enough people get invoiv-
ed, the government will stiffen
pollution laws on pulp ‘mills,
mines, elc., which are dumping

,their pollutants into our water

and our fishes’ environment, If
we are harder on offenders and
increase work on getting pollu-
tion laws together that will
come into effect soon, we may
get results before all hope for
our environment is lost.

— «By Dallas Wiebe, Scott
Johnston, Rachel Charbon-
neau, Fay Campbell, Clint
Hartman and Nola Haselmeyer.

Hip hop
along

THESE. KIDS are getting
ready to hop. They go to the
Terrace Montessorl
Children's. House Pre-
Schaol. They were hopping

~ “to raise money for other
children who are sick. The
‘sick children have a disease
called muscular dystrophy.

os othe , Start is for ‘people ‘
: learning how to read.

The great
water hunt

City workers are try-
ing to find water.

The city is running
out of water. The dam
that stored water is
broken.

Now they must find a
place to drill a well.

So far the drilling
hasn’t worked.

Resort plan
questioned

An onen letter to Art Bates,
Seven Sisters Ventures Inc.
Dear Sir:
We keep reading about
your plans to build a mullti-
million doflar wilderness hik-
ing resort. Some of us were
born and raised here and this
area has been home to most
of us — especially in the
village of Cedarvale. Some
people live here specifically
for the quiet and solitude
here.
We do know the volume of
the tourists coming into this [
area by highway and we are
in favour of tourism.
We welcome the govern-
ment’s decision to put the
Seven Sisters Ventures pro-
posals out for public review.
Please include the village of
Cedarvale in the meetings as
we are the ones who will be
most affected.
Fiddler Creek, Insect
Mountain and our beautiful
Seven Sisters Mountains are
directly within the Cedarvale
area, What impact are your
proposals going to have on
us? What will the noise
volume of the helicopters
and traffic do to this village?

Logging is the local peo-
ple’s livelihood and we have
- to take care af our own first.
We have never been denied
the privilege of hiking into:
these mountains whenever
we want. Is your society go-
ing to change our way of life
for the few who are going to
.come-from the States and:
Europe?

Mary G. Dalen,
Cedarvale, B.C.

Spiritualists
targeted

Dear Sir:

In the past when we have
had out of town workshops
we, have made, posigt¢? and
put them up” on'” public
bulletin boards to publicize
the events. People have come
behind us and taken them
down — we. assume —
because they do not agree
with the workshop.

It has happened again and
even in our own college. We
had permission from the of-
fice to put up our poster for
the upcoming Spiritual
Awareness Weekend and
within the hour someone
took it down. This was'only
the first one and when we
again checked with the office
we were informed they had
not taken it down.

Our students spend a lot of
creative energy and time on
these posters and we are not
attempting to offend anyone.
We are simply advertising an
event others may or may not
be interested in — just like
other organizations and
societies. We do not go
around taking other notices
down or making judgment
on their events.

If you do not agree with
what we are doing or what
you think we are doing, that
is your right. But where are
our rights? This is
discrimination. “I hope you
can honestly look in the mir-
ror -every. morning and say
you sent all beings on. this
Earth love and light. I can
and do — even to the ones
that continue to violate our
tights as members of this
universe.

Laurel Gregg,
Msc.D
Nirvana
Metaphysic
Healing Centre
Terrace, B.C.

The Terrace Standard
welcomes letters to the editor
on all topics. All letters must
be signed and carry an ad-
dress and focal telephone
number. Addresses or phone
numbers won't be printed,
but are needed to verify the
letter’s: authenticity, The
writer’s name will be publish-
‘Ped, All letters are run on a

. space-available basis, with

| shorter letters likely to be
published soonest.