Feature

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mills. Of Canada’s 122 pulp and paper
mills, three of the worst polluters are on the
Strait, according to a 1988 Environment
Canada study leaked to Greenpeace:
MacMillan Bloedel’s mill in Powell River
and Fletcher Challenge’s mills at Elk Falls
and Crofton.

The Department of Fisheries and Oceans
has now closed shellfish fisheries around
those three pulp mills as well as the three
others emptying into the Strait at Nanaimo
and Howe Sound. The closures are
expected to last for many years due to the
toxins’ resistance to breakdown.

“Instead of closing fisheries, they should
be cleaning up the polluters,” says Bob
Grant, Vancouver Island organizer for the
United Fishermen and Allied Workers’
Union. The government should be creating
pollution-free zones, not fish-free zones.”

The provincial government plans to limit
organo-chlorine discharge to 2.5 kg per
tonne of pulp by the end of 1991 (about half
the level now discharged by most mills),
with a further cut to 1.5 kg per tonne by the
end of 1994. The Woodfibre pulp mill on
Howe Sound has already indicated it will
need a one-year extension to meet the 1991
regulations.

Alliance members say zero discharge is
the only sensible goal. They argue that the
proposed regulations do nothing to curb
other toxins discharged by pulp mills. And
by linking the organo-chlorine level to the
level of production, the regulations allow:
the biggest producers to be the biggest pol-
luters.

“We have to start taking an anticipatory
approach,” says alliance member Rozlynne
Mitchell of the Save Howe Sound Society.
“We can no longer release organo-chlorines
into the environment. We have to get to

zero discharge.”
_ Mitchell and others are calling on pulp
mills to switch to a non-chlorine-based
technology for processing pulp, and to doit
sooner rather than later.

“Companies can either wait until they’re
forced to do it, and at added expense to the
environment, or they can do it now,” she
says.

Municipal sewage

Sewage treatment by B.C.’s major cities
is among the poorest in the world — com-
parable to Bombay and Mozambique, says
Bob Lyons of Greenpeace Canada.

Sewage contamination in the Georgia
Strait has closed 650 km of coast to shell-
fishing, and combined with pulp mill efflu-
ent, accounts for 80 per cent of the pollution
in the Strait.

May Day Greetings

from the
Tenants Rights
Coalition

Chon Sete ae

Pillay 4
SS cs: lin: ti, st. sc al

Wastes, nuke vessels threaten Strait

A protest flotilla of vessels from the Uni-
ted Fishermen and Allied Workers Union
demands action against pollution of
Howe Sound by the Woodfibre pulp mill.
L to r, Laurie McBride, Bob Grant and
Bob Bossin.

The Greater Vancouver Regional Dis-
trict pumps approximately 2.6 million cubic
metres of primary treated sewage into sur-
rounding waters daily. Primary treatment
involves settling and/or filtering sewage to
remove large floating particles — a process
that has no effect on the 200 toxic chemicals
found at the Iona Point sewage outfall.

“Vancouver’s sewage washes directly
back onto local beaches and is used for
agricultural irrigation,” Lyons says in his
1989 report Dire Straits released by Green-
peace. “We directly swim in and eat our
Own poisons.”

The Capital Regional District in and
around Victoria doesn’t even bother with
primary treatment — a decision which has
led to routine beach closures due to high
levels of human excrement. Contrary to the
CRD’s belief that salt water will sanitize
human waste, a U.S. report on ocean
dumpsites used by New York and Philadel-
phia found that more than 100 dangerous
human viruses in sewage were surviving in
seawater for up to 17 months.

Vancouver intends to upgrade to a
secondary treatment system, and Victoria
to a primary one. Lyons and other alliance
backers are calling for additional measures
such as a surcharge on toxins put into the
system and developing bio-degradable

alternatives to toxic chemicals now used in .

industries and homes.

Solidarity with all working people and
May Day Greetings from

Surrey-COPE

.. planning for people and a safe environment.

Nuclear vessels

Once every nine days; the Georgia Strait
is turned into a nuclear facility, says alliance
member Laurie MacBride of the Nanoose
Conversion Campaign. MacBride is refer-
ring to the nuclear-powered and/or nuclear
weapons-capable vessels of the U.S. Navy
which frequently ply the Strait enroute to
CFB Esquimalt, Vancouver harbour or the
Nanoose underwater weapons testing range
north of Nanaimo.

Contrary to government assurances,
nuclear vessels do have accidents, MacBride
says. A 1989 report issued by Greenpeace
and the U.S. Institute for Policy Studies
revealed than since 1945, the major navies
of the world have suffered more than 1,200
accidents, resulting in 2,800 direct deaths
and 50 nuclear warheads and nine nuclear
reactors lying somewhere on the ocean
floor.

No less than 16 of the nuclear vessels
visiting Nanoose have been involved in
naval accidents somewhere around the
globe.

A 1987 study commissioned by several
Victoria peace groups determined that a
nuclear weapons accident aboard one of the
U.S. warships at CFB Esquimalt would
produce “medically and environmentally
significant doses of radiation ... up to 100
km from the accident site.”

Aside from the possibility of a catastro-
phic accident, “we could have a leakage of
radioactive coolant (from a naval nuclear
reactor) into the Strait,” MacBride says.
“Even marine collisions are a real problem
when nuclear weapons or nuclear reactors
are involved.”

The nuclear-powered vessels at Nanoose
share the bay with a commercial fish farm
and oyster beds. Although water samples
taken from the bay show no abnormal radi-
see GEORGIA page 20

f

aca (hi

May Day Greetings
to Coquitlam residents

rom
Trustees Anne Kachmar and George Porges,
Alderman Eunice Parker and the ACE Executive

ASSOCIATION OF COQUITLAM ELECTORS
ASSOCIATION COQUITLAMAISE DES ELECTEURS

Pacific Tribune, April 30, 1990 « 3