It’s a girl

in a row \NEWS A9

Property assessments out:

Terrace housing assessments
have dropped for the second year |

First time parents welcomed the
arrival of their baby girl New
Year’s Day \COMMUNITY B1

Swift swimmer

Check out which Biueback |
swimmer nearly posted an Olympic
qualifying time\SPORTS B5

WEDNESDAY
January 12, 2000

Just one more year

of restrictions likely
By CHRISTIANA WIENS
TOUGH fishing restrictions have put
the Skeena River’s threatened coho
stocks well on their way to recovery.
North coast salmon biologistLes
Jantz says the sheer number of coho
returning to the Skeena River last
summer was so high, that barring any
natural disasters, he expects a Skeena
River coho fishery in just two years.
Although federal fish estimates are
still preliminary, Janiz estimates
50,000 ta 100,000 coho, including at
least 25,000 upper Skeena coho count-
ed at Toboggan Creek and the Babine

fence, entered the Skeena river system

in 1999,

That’s almost five times 1998 es-
capement levels.

Fisheries biologists use escapement

STA

— the quantity of salmon that “escape”
ocean predators and return to the
mouth of the river system they
spawned from — to determine the size
of annual salmon runs.

In 1998, Skeena coho escapement
was approximately 20,500, just short
of the eight-year average.

In 1997, when just 6,000 coho re-
tumed to the Skeena, fishery managers
responded by ordering drastic fishing
restrictions the following year.

Because imost coho return on a
three-year cycle, not many are expect-
ed to come back this summer.

So, Jantz said, anglers and com-
mercial fishers should expect con-
tinued time and gear limitations.

“There will be one more year of
serious restrictions,” Jantz said. “But
if Mother Nature cooperates, we could
be out of danger on the Skeena in just
one cycle.”

Jantz said unless something drastic

NDARD

Coho heading for early recovery

happens to next year’s coho ocean sur-
vival rate, federal fisheries managers
should open some sort of coho fishery
in 2001.

That’s much earlier than projected
for Fraser River coho, Jantz said.

The focus now, he added, is on de-
veloping an early warning system to
determine the number of salmon re-
turning from the ocean before they
enter the Skeena.

The news is not so good for com-
mercial fleets on the north coast
which, for years, have seen sockeye as
their most profitable catch.

Even with extreme limitations on

commercial fishing and fleet reduction’

through ‘a federal licence buyback in
the last two years, escapement levels
continue to hover well below average.

The number of sockeye entering the
Skeena River system in 1999. was
650,000 fish, which is 125,000 more
sockeye than 1998 but still 250,000

less fish than the estimated gual last
year.

1999 sockeye numbers are signifi-
cantly lower than the eight-year aver-
age because of a parasite called white
spot disease which killed brood or out-
going stocks of 1994 and 1995 sockeye
salmon. :

Jantz said Skeena pink escapement
levels are still uncertain, but it looks
as though at least two million pinks
returned to northwest spawning
grounds, :

That’s double the one million pinks
estimated to return last year despite
the catch of 250,000:to 300,000 pinks
by selective seine fisheries in ocean
waters near the river mouth.

And while 1999 chingok escape-

“ments came in about average at

45,000 to 50,000 fish, last year’s chum
tun, which has little or no commercial
value, was-rated poor with only 5,000
to 10,000 salmon.

Dealer
gets six

$1.00 PLUS 7¢ GST
($3.10 plus B¢ GST outside of tha
Terrace area).

VOL, 12 NO, 40_-

“That's not all that good,” said
Jantz. “But there’s not much interest
for chum.”

In 1998, chum salmon returned at
abnormally high levels with about
20,000 salmon returning to the Skeena.
Prince Rupert biologists expected less
than 10,000 chum in 1998.

In a preliminary outlook released
Jan. 4, federal fisheries managers pre-
dicted that fishing restrictions for abo-
riginal and recreational fisheries here
will be similar to those in place last
summer. .

They also said Nass and Skeena
commercial sockeye fishers should ex-
pect continued limitations this sum-
mer. ae

Jantz said more detailed restrictions -
on this year’s commercial, aboriginal
and recreational fisheries aren’t ex-
pected until May after the federal fish- -
eties minister’s annual meeting with
his U.S. counterparts.

Letters fue
health furor

months

By CHRISTIANA WIENS
IT TOOK almost four years

By ALEX HAMILTON
A LOCAL group pushing for better health care in Ter-
race says it’s being backed up by dozens of letiers from
citizens concerned about the quality of patient care at

to puta Terracecotaine

dealer behind bars, but it
could take him as little 4s
two months to pet out.

David Harry Edwardsen,
of Terrace, was sentenced
Jan. 6 to six months in jail
for importing a kilogram of
cocaine here Oct. 6, 1996.

Edwardsen may see just
two months in jail if he’s
granted parole after serving
a third of his sentence.

If he is still in jail after
four months, Edwardsen is
eligible for earned remis-

sions, or time off for good

behaviour.

Edwardsen was arrested
after North District RCMP
in Prince Rupert monitored
six months of taped conver-
sations between Edwardsen
and a second man named
Brien Burchell.

The pair had arranged
for Burchell to stash co-
caine in the back seat of a
rental truck and deliver the

cocaine to Edwardsen in

Terrace.
Edwardsen was arrested
when RCMP nabbed

Burchell on Hwy16 west of
Smithers with the cocaine.

After a lengthy prelimi-
nary hearing in Smithers,
their case was moved to
Vancouver for trial.

At one point, the case
was in danger of being dis-
missed because of lime de-
lays and a deal had to be
struck to secure a guilty
plea, said prosecutor Brian
Sedgewick after the trial.

Edwardsen and Burchell
pleaded guilty in February
last year to possession
charges while charges
against a third man, Stanley
Homeniuk were stayed,

Edwardsen’s sentence
ended up being three
months shorter - than
Burchell’s, who pled. guilty
Feb. 10, 1999,

Edwardsen, who eventu-
ally represented himself in
at his sentencing hearing,
drew criticism from local
RCMP for “delay tactics”
when he fired two Vancou-
ver-based lawyers.

The hearing was re-
scheduled three times -last
year while Edwardsen

worked as a logger in the —

northwest to earn money to

pay child support arrears, °

UNUSUALLY warm winter weather
is playing havoc with efforts to keep
area highways safe,

“It’s been so mild, we're not get-
ting a traditional freeze-up,” says
John Ryan, president of Nechako
Northcoast Construction Services,
the area’s road maintenance con-
tractor. :

Temperatures have often been
above freezing during the day and
then dipping to freezing overnight or
in areas with pockets of colder air,
Ryan said. re
_ That adds up to. a perfect recipe
for black ice, that unseen. menace to

“motorists. : :

All crews can do is try to find
black ice and put sand on it.

What makes it more difficult is
that a patch of road can be merely
wet as a sand truck goes by, and
then a few minutes later ~ as tem-
peratures fall — it turns to ice.

“It’s really been a challenge to
keep up with these icy conditions,”
Ryan said. .

Nechako Northcoast's 35 em-
ployees battle the winter weather
with 13 plow trucks and four graders.

Ryan said te flow of air from the
southwest Pacific ~ called the Pine-
apple Express ~ has been responsible
for the watmer temperatures...

feat

Ryan says what’s really needed —
at least from a highway safety per-
spective — is colder, more traditional
winter weather,

“A frozen surface is much more
reliable to deal with,” he noted.

Even. in a normal winter, Ryan
added, this area means unique chal-
lenges for road maintenance crews.

“You can get extreme snowfall
rates,” he said, noting the record
snowfall of last February.

“Once or twice a year you can

Mills Memorial Hospital.

Ida Mohler, spokesperson for the the Terrace Area

’ Health Watch Group, said she’s got more than 30 letters
from Terrace locals worried about the shortage of nurses
and restrictions on hospital beds at Mills.

“It’s incredible the things
I've been reading. The tet-
ters are really sad. There’s
lives that are really being

m@ Health council
responds to its

lost because of the lack of Critics, Page A2

funding at Mills,” Mohier

said.

She said many people have approached her to talk
about the treatment they’ve received at the hospital, but
they refuse to write letters condemning Mills since it
forces them to relive their tragedics.

“People come to me in tears who have lost their
wives and sons because the administration is in a hurry
to get people out of ICU {intensive care unit),” she

said.

What needs to be done, Mohler said, is straighten out

~ the hospital’s budget.

“The finances are the number one problem. More
nurses and more beds hinges on finances.”
“While all this political stuff is going on with the

money, people are dying.”

When she was at the hospital at 9:30 a.m. January 6,
tending to her son who was ill, Mohler said there was a
total of 29 patients on the main ward (including five in
ICU), with only three nurses to care for them.

Mohler said the nurses were overworked and stressed

out.

“Something’s got to change,” she said. “I can see the

Continued Page A2

By ROLFE HARRISON
BUILDING a railway
tunnel underneath the
Bering Strait would cost
in the neighbourhood of
$50 billion.

Well then, Bill Gates
could afford to build two,

jokes David Cohoe, a Ca- "

nadian financier himself.
Linking Alaska and Si-
beria may seem like a
joke, but Cohoe isn’!
laughing. He and his com-
pany, Pacific and Inter-
continental, have joined
other ultra-rich capitalists
from around the world on a
seven-year mission to be-
gin drilling a tunnel
through frozen arctic gran-
ite.
However unrealistic,
these sorts of deadlines
have been laid out on the

get seven centimetres. an hour - : corporate table since be-

which is huge,” he said. “Visibility .

fore the Bolshevik Revolu-

_becomes very difficult for our drivets"> tion, which, coincidental-
“and the travelling public”.

~_ ly, Cohoe blames for side-

| Railway to Russia
dream rekindled

tracking early plans to tie
together Russia and the
States with a rai tunnel.

What makes the seven-
year plan seem unrealistic
is that the Bering Strait
Tunnel Project is waiting
on smaller projects, also
with deadlines, to first link
Alaska with British Col-
umbia — gateway to the
rest of the continent.

That would bring in Da-
vid Broadbent, the con-
struction manager who su-
pervised the initial cut of a
rail bed from Prince
George nearly all the way
to Dease Lake in the
1970s, but was cut shg
with a change of
ment.

Broadbent has had a
lifelong dream of continu-
ing that project to the Yu-
kon and Alaska, which he
plans to do with his own
company, Canadian Arctic
Railway.

Continued Page A8