Sandra Finley

2018-04-30 Mueller Has Dozens of Inquiries for Trump in Broad Quest on Russia Ties and Obstruction, New York Times

 Corruption  No Responses »
May 012018
 

By Michael S. Schmidt

 

 

WASHINGTON — Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel investigating Russia’s election interference, has at least four dozen questions on an exhaustive array of subjects he wants to ask President Trump to learn more about his ties to Russia and determine whether he obstructed the inquiry itself, according to a list of the questions obtained by The New York Times.

 

[Read the questions here.]

 

The open-ended queries appear to be an attempt to penetrate the president’s thinking, to get at the motivation behind some of his most combative Twitter posts and to examine his relationships with his family and his closest advisers. They deal chiefly with the president’s high-profile firings of the F.B.I. director and his first national security adviser, his treatment of Attorney General Jeff Sessions and a 2016 Trump Tower meeting between campaign officials and Russians offering dirt on Hillary Clinton.

 

But they also touch on the president’s businesses; any discussions with his longtime personal lawyer, Michael D. Cohen, about a Moscow real estate deal; whether the president knew of any attempt by Mr. Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, to set up a back channel to Russia during the transition; any contacts he had with Roger J. Stone Jr., a longtime adviser who claimed to have inside information about Democratic email hackings; and what happened during Mr. Trump’s 2013 trip to Moscow for the Miss Universe pageant.

 

Mr. Trump said on Twitter on Tuesday that it was “disgraceful” that questions the special counsel would like to ask him were publicly disclosed, and he incorrectly noted that there were no questions about collusion. The president also said collusion was a “phony” crime.

 

The questions provide the most detailed look yet inside Mr. Mueller’s investigation, which has been shrouded in secrecy since he was appointed nearly a year ago. The majority relate to possible obstruction of justice, demonstrating how an investigation into Russia’s election meddling grew to include an examination of the president’s conduct in office. Among them are queries on any discussions Mr. Trump had about his attempts to fire Mr. Mueller himself and what the president knew about possible pardon offers to Mr. Flynn.

 

“What efforts were made to reach out to Mr. Flynn about seeking immunity or possible pardon?” Mr. Mueller planned to ask, according to questions read by the special counsel investigators to the president’s lawyers, who compiled them into a list. That document was provided to The Times by a person outside Mr. Trump’s legal team.

 

A few questions reveal that Mr. Mueller is still investigating possible coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia. In one of the more tantalizing inquiries, Mr. Mueller asks what Mr. Trump knew about campaign aides, including the former chairman Paul Manafort, seeking assistance from Moscow: “What knowledge did you have of any outreach by your campaign, including by Paul Manafort, to Russia about potential assistance to the campaign?” No such outreach has been revealed publicly.

 

Jay Sekulow, a lawyer for Mr. Trump, declined to comment. A spokesman for the special counsel’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

 

The questions serve as a reminder of the chaotic first 15 months of the Trump presidency and the transition and campaign before that. Mr. Mueller wanted to inquire about public threats the president made, conflicting statements from Mr. Trump and White House aides, the president’s private admissions to Russian officials, a secret meeting at an island resort, WikiLeaks, salacious accusations and dramatic congressional testimony.

 

The special counsel also sought information from the president about his relationship with Russia. Mr. Mueller would like to ask Mr. Trump whether he had any discussions during the campaign about any meetings with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and whether he spoke to others about either American sanctions against Russia or meeting with Mr. Putin.

 

Through his questions, Mr. Mueller also tries to tease out Mr. Trump’s views on law enforcement officials and whether he sees them as independent investigators or people who should loyally protect him.

 

For example, when the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, was fired, the White House said he broke with Justice Department policy and spoke publicly about the investigation into Mrs. Clinton’s email server. Mr. Mueller’s questions put that statement to the test. He wants to ask why, time and again, Mr. Trump expressed no concerns with whether Mr. Comey had abided by policy. Rather, in statements in private and on national television, Mr. Trump suggested that Mr. Comey was fired because of the Russia investigation.

 

Many of the questions surround Mr. Trump’s relationship with Mr. Sessions, including the attorney general’s decision to recuse himself from the Russia investigation and whether Mr. Trump told Mr. Sessions he needed him in place for protection.

 

Mr. Mueller appears to be investigating how Mr. Trump took steps last year to fire Mr. Mueller himself. The president relented after the White House counsel, Donald F. McGahn II, threatened to resign, an episode that the special counsel wants to ask about.

 

“What consideration and discussions did you have regarding terminating the special counsel in June of 2017?” Mr. Mueller planned to ask, according to the list of questions. “What did you think and do in reaction to Jan. 25, 2018, story about the termination of the special counsel and Don McGahn backing you off the termination?” he planned to ask, referring to the Times article that broke the news of the confrontation.

 

Mr. Mueller has sought for months to question the president, who has in turn expressed a desire, at times, to be interviewed, viewing it as an avenue to end the inquiry more quickly. His lawyers have been negotiating terms of an interview out of concern that their client — whose exaggerations, half-truths and outright falsehoods are well documented — could provide false statements or easily become distracted. Four people, including Mr. Flynn, have pleaded guilty to lying to investigators in the Russia inquiry.

 

The list of questions grew out of those negotiations. In January, Mr. Trump’s lawyers gave Mr. Mueller several pages of written explanations about the president’s role in the matters the special counsel is investigating. Concerned about putting the president in legal jeopardy, his lead lawyer, John Dowd, was trying to convince Mr. Mueller he did not need to interview Mr. Trump, according to people briefed on the matter.

 

Mr. Mueller was apparently unsatisfied. He told Mr. Dowd in early March that he needed to question the president directly to determine whether he had criminal intent when he fired Mr. Comey, the people said.

 

But Mr. Dowd held firm, and investigators for Mr. Mueller agreed days later to share during a meeting with Mr. Dowd the questions they wanted to ask Mr. Trump.

 

When Mr. Mueller’s team relayed the questions, their tone and detailed nature cemented Mr. Dowd’s view that the president should not sit for an interview. Despite Mr. Dowd’s misgivings, Mr. Trump remained firm in his insistence that he meet with Mr. Mueller. About a week and a half after receiving the questions, Mr. Dowd resigned, concluding that his client was ignoring his advice.

 

Mr. Trump’s new lawyer in the investigation and his longtime confidant, Rudolph W. Giuliani, met with Mr. Mueller last week and said he was trying to determine whether the special counsel and his staff were going to be “truly objective.”

 

Mr. Mueller’s endgame remains a mystery, even if he determines the president broke the law. A longstanding Justice Department legal finding says presidents cannot be charged with a crime while they are in office. The special counsel told Mr. Dowd in March that though the president’s conduct is under scrutiny, he is not a target of the investigation, meaning Mr. Mueller does not expect to charge him.

 

The prospect of pardons is also among Mr. Mueller’s inquiries, and whether Mr. Trump offered them to a pair of former top aides to influence their decisions about whether to cooperate with the special counsel investigation.

 

Mr. Dowd broached the idea with lawyers for both of the advisers, Mr. Flynn and Mr. Manafort, according to people with knowledge of the discussions. Mr. Manafort has pleaded not guilty on charges of money laundering and other financial crimes related to his work for the pro-Russia former president of Ukraine.

 

Mr. Flynn, a retired Army lieutenant general who was ousted from the White House in February 2017 amid revelations about contacts with the Russian ambassador to the United States, ultimately pleaded guilty last December to lying to federal authorities and agreed to cooperate with the special counsel.

 

“After General Flynn resigned, what calls or efforts were made by people associated with you to reach out to General Flynn or to discuss Flynn seeking immunity or possible pardon?” Mr. Mueller planned to ask.

 

Maggie Haberman contributed reporting from New York.

2018-04-29 Chris Turner, author of “The Patch”, interview. Pipelines and Bitumen.

 Climate  No Responses »
Apr 302018
 

A half-hour interview.  Michael Enright has a large audience.   CBC Radio, “The Sunday Edition”.

This author Chris Turner is presented as an authority.    His book, The Patch.

The interview is  . . .        http://www.cbc.ca/radio/thesundayedition/a-primer-on-the-kinder-morgan-pipeline-1.4638118

– – – – – – – – – –

  1.   Sent to The Sunday Edition:

I believe I heard Chris Turner say that there is no planned expansion of tar sands development.  But I can’t believe he would have said that.  Not if he’s researched and published a book on “The Patch”.

Please see Financial Post article, Feb 27, 2018.  “Canada’s largest integrated energy company has filed an application for a massive new oilsands project defying expectations of slowing growth in the oilsands”

Suncor Energy files application for 160,000-bpd Lewis oilsands project

If I heard Chris Turner right, is this some kind of Post Truth?    (INSERT:  Post Truth was addressed in an interview later in the programme.)

– – – – – – – – – –

2. a.   Sent to the CBC Ombudsperson:   See 2.b.  I withdrew the complaint, at least for the time being.

April 29.
Among other statements,  misinformation from author Chris Turner that went unchallenged,  was wording along the lines “no expansion in oilsands production”.

How about this, from the Financial Post (Feb 2018), which puts the lie to the test:
“Canada’s largest integrated energy company has filed an application for a massive new oilsands project defying expectations of slowing growth in the oilsands”
Suncor Energy files application for 160,000-bpd Lewis oilsands project

I am going to do a statement-by-statement refutation of the serious propaganda spewed in the half-hour interview, the preceding is one example among many.

In order to provide unbiased journalism, you HAVE TO know something about what you are talking about.  Otherwise you don’t know the questions to ask.   All you do is to nod your head in agreement.   You are a dupe.

If the CBC team responsible for the Sunday Edition know nothing about a subject, they have no business including it in their programming.

Chris Turner makes the point that just because someone writes a book on a particular topic, it does not mean that the information they present is reliable, or that they are to be trusted without incisive questioning.

– – – – – – – – – –

2.  b.  Sent to the CBC Ombudsperson:

I submitted a complaint a short while ago.
I wish to withdraw it.
Please acknowledge that you have done so.
I may submit a revised statement later.

As I am transcribing the interview, I recognize that I most likely interpreted what I heard, from an invested viewpoint.  I have long experience with the o&g industry, the consolidation and sell-off of Canadian producers to Transnational Corporate bodies, the corrupting influence of the industry, the public subsidies, the poisoning of water.

The industry creates paupers of local people, driving them from their homes – – the example of the Ogoni in the Niger Delta, of the Aamjiwnaang in Sarnia ON next to the Suncor refineries,  the Chipewyan downstream Ft McMurray and so on.

I live on the West Coast now.  As it happens,  cholera and norovirus are in our offshore waters – – from the failure to regulate and protect against human sewage going into the marine environment  (let alone dilbit.)

You in Ontario are not exempt from what happens here.  Our oysters are shipped to you; norovirus.

The vector for cholera in Canadian waters?   Follow the Haiti outbreak (first ever cholera in Haiti) after the hurricane in 2010.  UN peacekeepers carry cholera in their bodies from Afghanistan and other assignment locations in the Far East, and elsewhere, to Haiti.  The toilets on the UN base are next to a tributary and not properly contained.   The cholera bacteria are carried in feces to the local population.  It spreads to the Dominican Republic and to Cuba.  Venezuaelans  (and Canadians?) visit, pick up the cholera and transport it to their countries.   Where it enters the Water because we are ineffective at Regulation and Enforcement.   How do you know that your diarrhea, vomiting, and dehydration are from a “flu” bug, and not norovirus or cholera?  The symptoms are very similar if not the same, and we all have different immune system capabilities.

It seems to me that Michael Enright, others in the media, others who are not “Directly Affected” (the name of a new documentary), are too eager to make light of a serious situation.   They do not actually comprehend what many First Nations people understand:   we cannot put MORE poisons into the water.  Surely to God we have received sufficient feedback.  We know enough about the propaganda, REASSURANCES around “most heavily regulated” , “emergency response teams” – – we can’t even keep human sewage out of the water.  Did they tell you – cholera?

May we all Eat our oysters and herring roe with iron stomach.

 

2018-04-30 Weedkiller found in granola and crackers, internal FDA emails show, The Guardian, by Carey Gillam

 Food, Genetically Modified, Health  No Responses »
Apr 302018
 

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/apr/30/fda-weedkiller-glyphosate-in-food-internal-emails

US government scientists have detected a weedkiller linked to cancer in an array of commonly consumed foods, emails obtained through a freedom of information request show.
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has been testing food samples for residues of glyphosate, the active ingredient in hundreds of widely used herbicide products, for two years, but has not yet released any official results.
The internal documents obtained by the Guardian show the FDA has had trouble finding any food that does not carry traces of the pesticide.

 

“I have brought wheat crackers, granola cereal and corn meal from home and there’s a fair amount in all of them,” FDA chemist Richard Thompson wrote to colleagues in an email last year regarding glyphosate. Thompson, who is based in an FDA regional laboratory in Arkansas, wrote that broccoli was the only food he had “on hand” that he found to be glyphosate-free.

 

That internal FDA email, dated January 2017, is part of a string of FDA communications that detail agency efforts to ascertain how much of the popular weedkiller is showing up in American food. The tests mark the agency’s first-ever such examination.

 

“People care about what contaminants are in their food. If there is scientific information about these residues in the food, the FDA should release it,” said Tracey Woodruff, a professor in the University of California San Francisco School of Medicine. “It helps people make informed decisions. Taxpayers paid for the government to do this work, they should get to see the information.”

 

The FDA is charged with annually testing food samples for pesticide residues to monitor for illegally high residue levels. The fact that the agency only recently started testing for glyphosate, a chemical that has been used for over 40 years in food production, has led to criticism from consumer groups and the Government Accountability Office (GAO). Calls for testing grew after the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) classified glyphosate as a probable human carcinogen in 2015.

Glyphosate is best known as the main ingredient in Monsanto Co’s Roundup brand. More than 200m pounds are used annually by US farmers on their fields. The weedkiller is sprayed directly over some crops, including corn, soybeans, wheat and oats. Many farmers also use it on fields before the growing season, including spinach growers and almond producers.

 

Thompson’s detection of glyphosate was made as he was validating his analytical methods, meaning those residues will probably not be included in any official report.

Separately, FDA chemist Narong Chamkasem found “over-the-tolerance” levels of glyphosate in corn, detected at 6.5 parts per million, an FDA email states. The legal limit is 5.0 ppm. An illegal level would normally be reported to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), but an FDA supervisor wrote to an EPA official that the corn was not considered an “official sample”.

 

When asked about the emails and the agency’s testing, an FDA spokesman said only that the FDA had not found any illegal levels in corn, soy, milk or eggs, the four commodities it considers part of its glyphosate “special assignment”. He did not address the unofficial findings revealed in the emails.

 

The FDA’s official findings should be released later this year or early in 2019 as part of its 2016 annual residue report. The reports typically are released two to two and a half years after the data is collected.

Along with glyphosate, the agency has been trying to measure residues of the herbicides 2,4-D and dicamba because of projected increased use of these weedkillers on new genetically engineered crops. The FDA spokesman said that the agency has “expanded capacity” for testing foods for those herbicides this year.

 

Other findings detailed in the FDA documents show that in 2016 Chamkasem found glyphosate in numerous samples of honey. Chamkasem also found glyphosate in oatmeal products. The FDA temporarily suspended testing after those findings, and Chamkasem’s lab was “reassigned to other programs”, the FDA documents show. The FDA has said those tests were not part of its official glyphosate residue assignment.

 

Pesticide exposure through diet is considered a potential health risk. Regulators, Monsanto and agrochemical industry interests say pesticide residues in food are not harmful if they are under legal limits. But many scientists dispute that, saying prolonged dietary exposure to combinations of pesticides can be harmful.

 

Toxicologist Linda Birnbaum, who is director of the US National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), said that current regulatory analysis of pesticide dangers does not account for low levels of dietary exposures.

 

“Even with low levels of pesticides, we’re exposed to so many and we don’t count the fact that we have cumulative exposures,” Birnbaum said.

 

The US Department of Agriculture was to start its own testing of foods for glyphosate residues in 2017 but dropped the plan.

 

The lack of government residue data comes as Monsanto attempts to bar evidence about glyphosate food residues from being introduced in court where the company is fighting off allegations its Roundup products cause cancer.

 

In a case set for trial on 18 June, San Francisco superior court judge Curtis Karnow recently denied the company’s motion to keep the jury from hearing about residues in food. The judge said that although Monsanto worries the information “will inflame the jury against Monsanto based on their own fear that they may have been exposed”, such information “should not be excluded”.

– – – – – – —

Carey Gillam is a journalist and author, and a public interest researcher for US Right to Know

2018-04-29 Re pipeline, the Spill Regulations, my input to public consultations

 Climate  No Responses »
Apr 292018
 

Public consultations, BC residents   (https://news.gov.bc.ca/releases/2018ENV0003-000298# )

All feedback will be summarized into a public ‘What We Heard’ report that will be posted to this site in summer 2018. New spill regulations are anticipated in 2019.

From the Govt website,  http://engage.gov.bc.ca/spillsregulation:

. . .   Email your written submission to SpillResponse@gov.bc.ca before April 30, 2018.  Written submissions will not be posted online but a list of organizations and individuals who submitted will be included in the final ‘What We Heard Report’.

Please do not include any personally identifiable information about yourself or others in your responses.  . . .
 
Thank you for your interest and participation in the development of enhanced spill regulations in BC.

MY INPUT:

 

TO:  Dept of Environment and Climate Change Strategy,  BC Govt
CC:   Premier John Horgan

There are many issues tangled up in one.   Some of the inter-relationships have to be addressed, if we are to have right outcomes.

We have to be tougher than tough in the Spills Regulations – – and in the ENFORCEMENT of such Regulations, regardless of who the “spillers” may be, and what they are spilling.

“Spill” regulations is in the CONTEXT of:

We now have cholera and norovirus in the waters off Vancouver Island.   To date, in spite of rhetoric,  our REAL WORLD ability to protect against unsafe water (poisons, pollution going into the marine environment, whether of First Nations OR non-native communities) is one-way – – down.   There are huge economic consequences, let alone health consequences, not only for local people.   But for the unsuspecting people to whom food from those waters is exported.    Please see    http://sandrafinley.ca/?p=21002.   The link in item #1 is to  “spills in the context of”.

 

Point #2 at  http://sandrafinley.ca/?p=21002  addresses, through specific example,  the REASSURANCES we are always given.   Why we continue to fall for them, I do not know.   All the bradaggio, hubris and outright lies about “rapid response to emergency” professionalism that will SAVE US is farcical when you pull back the curtain.   The perpetrators of the propaganda are . . .  (I will spare your ears the word that comes to mind).   What’s behind the curtain, is again, the REAL WORLD.   Believing in fairy tales can get you into serious trouble.

In closing,

I recall the 2001 Supreme Court decision about the right of municipalities (Hudson, Quebec) to regulate in defence of the safety of their citizens.   As I understand, the Supreme Court said:

Local government has NOT ONLY the RIGHT,  but the          RESPONSIBILITY to regulate to protect their people.

That was a ground-breaking decision of the Supreme Court.   The right and DUTY would  extend to Provincial Governments.

Thank-you for the opportunity to provide input.   I hope it will actually be considered.

Best wishes,
Sandra Finley

2018-04-27 Maybe this can be of assistance re the pipeline? Chief Maureen Thomas

 Climate, Nuclear  6 Responses »
Apr 282018
 

Chief Maureen Thomas said:

Short clip, 2016, Chief Maureen Thomas (National Observer).

Transcribed,  (29 second marker):

At the end of the day, it comes right down to   water,  food. 

For us, a number of our community members have fallen ill because the shellfish is so poisoned.  They continue to eat it.

When you keep depleting all the natural resources, the health of them, it’s going to gradually flow out to everything else and that is really dangerous for our community and the surrounding area.  And we keep working at trying to rehabilitate it, to the best of our ability and with the help of the Government on that. 

But, at the end of the day, if there is a huge oil spill there, where are we left to go?  That is our home.  Our ancestors lie there.  It’s who we are.  We are tied to our land.   And if we don’t have the ability to be tied to that land, it really will destroy us.

– – – – – – – – – –

“Thomas”, a B.C. resident,  describes the current strategy:  Close the water and food source down, hope nobody else gets sick. . . .    

I would add: . . .    Or, as in the Aamjiwnaang and other REAL WORLD examples,  are forced to leave, to vacate their homes.  The Aamjiwnaang have resided – – I don’t know – – forever? along the River in Sarnia, ON, next door to where the Suncor refineries were built (Suncor is the major player behind the EXPANSION that drives the Kindermorgan pipeline).   “Search” this blog with Aamjiwnaang for what happens.   And then repeat the words of Chief Thomas:

When you keep depleting all the natural resources, the health of them, it’s going to gradually flow out to everything else and that is really dangerous for our community and the surrounding area.  And we keep working at trying to rehabilitate it, to the best of our ability and with the help of the Government on that.   But, at the end of the day, . . .

 

At the end of the day,  poisons in our water,  kill.  They kill health, they will kill the economy.   I remember when my cousins from Windsor, ON, sold with sadness their cabin on Lake Erie because the water had become so polluted.    They were fortunate, they had another “home” that was still theirs.

Whether it’s a vacation property, or your home you are forced to leave because of poisons (“pollution”) in the water,  you know that you and others in your community will take a large financial hit, as the word spreads.   Your best bet is the arrival of unsuspecting purchasers, and the persuasive ability of glossy brochures.  It will be best if you keep your mouth shut about the real reason you are leaving.   If you react quickly enough,  you might get enough of your equity out, that you can still buy a home somewhere else.

The alternative is to do as others are doing:  join in “the good fight”.   You will be rewarded.

– – – – – – – – – –

Perhaps these 2 items can be helpful to Chief Thomas and others?

  1.  Poisons in Water, cholera, norovirus, Vancouver Island (French Creek, Qualicum Bay, Deep Bay, Denman Island)

In 2005 when I received a phone call requesting me to report to TB Control (after being very sick),  I almost said,  “The test results must have been mixed up.   I’m white, middle-class”.   I also thought that TB had been eradicated from Canada, by aggressive programs in the 1950’s.   I remember the TB van that came to every small town;  it was foreign and a bit scary when I was young.

I learned in 2005 that there is TB in Canada,  we just don’t hear about it – – it’s in First Nations communities and in many of the places that provide over-night shelter for those who don’t have homes.   Some choose not to use the shelters for that reason.

Conclude:  it doesn’t make sense NOT to look after the people in our communities, if only for one reason – –  you are dreaming if you think dis-ease can be confined, any more than wild Water with the poisons we put into it, can be confined.

Dawn Martin-Hill, a First Nations professor, was interviewed about the water situation on the Six Nations Reserve not far from Hamilton, ON.   How long do you think we can hear about water issues in First Nations communities before we start hearing about serious water issues in “our” water?

I think it’s damn serious when there’s cholera in Canadian waters, and therefore in food that comes from that water.   Lots of people swim, fish, ride paddle boards, in that water.   The idea may be foreign to City dwellers,  to those who only know chlorinated pools:  there are actually people who immerse in real water and take sustenance from it.

I can’t swim without getting water in at least one of eyes, ears, nose, mouth.  Nor can you.  The “most plausible” cause of the cholera and the norovirus offshore Vancouver Island, BC, is “human sewage in the marine environment“.   See Poisons in Water, cholera, norovirus.  

Chief Maureen Thomas says it simply and well, better than I’ve heard from any university-trained hydrologist or toxicologist or doctor.

When you keep depleting all the natural resources, the health of them, it’s going to gradually flow out to everything else and that is really dangerous for our community and the surrounding area. 

I choose leaders who are wise.  I would like to claim Maureen Thomas as my leader.

 

  1.  You’ll have a good laugh over this one.  You know the shtick:  “Why! we are THE most heavily regulated industry . . .  ”,  “Our highly-trained emergency teams . . .”,  “deliver rapid response to emergency”.  Rah, rah.

Take a look at the posting, Nuclear: In support of Grand Chief Patrick Madahbee.  It contains what the rhetoric conceals about the real world, in actual fact – –  if you can read it without falling into laughter,  I will be surprised.   In this instance,  and still about WATER, the poison is high-level radioactive waste.  In the Kindermorgan expansion example, it’s dilbit, oil, bitumen – – a seven-fold increase in super-sized tanker traffic.

 

With the announcement that Canada is aggressively pursuing Nuclear as an answer to Climate Change at the Bonn, Germany meetings May 2018, Canadians are being set up to be further hosed by the uranium/nuclear industry.   It’s not too hard to figure out,  if you have the information.   I hope the posting makes clear the enormity of the actual dollars involved.  It’s an economic argument – – you don’t even need to include health costs to make the case.

What you do need is the detail regarding corruption, included in the posting.  There is a very good reason for what happens.

Our network has information that was missing from the CBC interview.  Chief Madahbee did a great job.  The additional documentation should be helpful to him,  to the CBC, and to others.

The story is the same, regardless of the natural resource sector we are talking about.

 

The work of Chief Madahbee in Ontario and of Chief Maureen Thomas in BC is the protection of homeland against poisoning.   Their feet are firmly planted in reality.   Their brains are not housed in shtick.

If other Government and Business leadership in Canada

are not capable of understanding the role of  Water and Food in Life – – in actual LIVING,

then I hope that the information in  In support of Grand Chief Patrick Madahbee 

makes clear the enormity of the ECONOMIC COSTS

that Canadians will be required to cover,

if we do not rise in revolt against our collective ignorance and dysfunction.

 

We are all in this together.       /Sandra

P.S.   There is a new film out, “Directly Affected:  Pipeline Under Pressure“.   Because of high turn-outs, additional showings have been added in Vancouver.   See Directly Affected  for where and when to see the film.   It will be showing in Ottawa.   I am hopeful that maybe it will be downloadable by everyone,  maybe for free through UPLOAD TV?   More later.  /S

 

2018-04-26 New book, “Moving Beyond: Neo-liberalism in Saskatchewan”, by Jim Harding. 58 pages, available as a free download.

 Economy / Political Economy, Nuclear, Sustainability, Water  No Responses »
Apr 262018
 

Jim Harding’s new book (Jan 2018),  Moving Beyond: Neo-liberalism in Saskatchewan

Jim writes:

See our new website at  QVEA.CA

Also I have a new short book out which looks back at our Saskatchewan political history from a “green” perspective.

You can download at my webpage: crowsnestecology.wordpress.com

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

Many thanks to Jim for making his work so easily available.   It downloads quickly – – approximately 60 pages.

Words fall short.  Jim is an extraordinany fellow, on many different levels.

DEDICATION  (Moving Beyond: Neo-liberalism in Saskatchewan)
This publication is dedicated to the memory of peace and environmental
warrior Lynn Hainsworth who recently died after a long struggle with
cancer. Lynn was always there to help move progressive issues forward.
We mourn and celebrate her good life.

 

2018-04-23 Nuclear: In support of Grand Chief Patrick Madahbee, email to CBC (The Current).

 Climate, Radioactive waste  No Responses »
Apr 252018
 

My appreciation to Grand Council Chief Patrick Madahbee for his patience in the CBC interview of him, and for taking the nuclear waste issue to the United Nations.

http://www.cbc.ca/radio/thecurrent/nuclear-waste-disposal-in-canada-is-an-accident-waiting-to-happen-says-indigenous-leader-1.4629258

Nuclear waste disposal in Canada is ‘an accident waiting to happen,’ says Indigenous leader

‘People are gambling with people’s lives,’ says grand council chief of the Anishinabek Nation

 

The following information may be useful to the Chief, and to the CBC. It comes from 3 separate attempts by the industry to obtain community support for transport of high-level radioactive waste to northern Saskatchewan for burial.   (The information applies, regardless of the location and means of “storage”.)

In 2009 the industry’s own estimates for the number of truckloads of accumulated waste that would cross from central Canada to northern Saskatchewan was 20,000.   By the time the repository would be constructed and operational, because of continuing production, there would be 30,000 truckloads of high level radioactive waste to move.

Transport vehicles are transport vehicles, regardless of their cargo, as Chief Madahbee insisted.

There is only one cross-Canada corridor that the waste could be legally transported along, the Trans Canada Highway.  It’s the only roadway along which there is  Emergency Response to Hazardous Waste capability (required).  In Saskatchewan the waste would go north, off the Trans-Canada, passing through Saskatoon.

Selected persons were invited to attend a demonstration by the Saskatoon City Fire Dept., of its response capability.  With hoopla, costumed in bulky Hazardous Waste mask and regalia, they quickly and efficiently attended the pretend location of an accidental spill of high level radioactive waste.  Trusty fire hoses rolled out.   The roadway was cleared with volumes of water that swept the pretend radioactive particles  – – – where?   Down a storm sewer and thereby into the South Saskatchewan River.

In 2011, the National Academy of Science (NAS) (U.S.) came to Saskatchewan to collect information.  The state of Virginia was under petition to lift its 30-year moratorium on uranium/nuclear.  Saskatchewan has a lot of experience the NAS wished to draw upon.

Presentations in Saskatoon, by the industry to the delegation from the NAS, relied on the NAS not knowing:

when you look behind the rhetoric of “rapid response”, “highly-trained emergency teams”, “most heavily regulated industry“, to “the real world” what you find is farcical (washing high-level radioactive waste into any water supply, let alone a River that is the water supply for 40% of the province’s people).

The NAS, similarily would not know, and of course was not told, the reality behind intended “transportation corridors”, especially under winter driving conditions in Canada.  This speaks, with facts, to Chief Madahbee’s “accident waiting to happen” – – remember, 30,000 truckloads:

The highway accidents at ONE place, Nov – Dec 2010 (when the reassurances of safety were being expounded), on the TransCanada Highway, the border crossing between Manitoba and Saskatchewan, where the town of Moosomin is located:

  • November 2010 collision,  6 people dead
  • December 2010, a Moosomin woman killed on the Trans Canada in collision with a semi
  • Saltcoats (nearby) collision killed 3 people.

The news reports are posted at http://sandrafinley.ca/?p=2567.

 

Nuclear waste comes with the building of nuclear reactors. In the period 2007-11, Albertans and Saskatchewanians fought down proposals for reactors in their respective provinces (Peace River, North Saskatchewan River).

Economic arguments, once they become known to citizens, win the day.

  • The reactors are boondoggles, but
  • a few well-placed people in the industry, the Government, selected local government and the University, are enriched
  • The industry is a Ponzi scheme:  the industry’s own estimate in 2009-2011, the cost of building a deep geological repository, was $24 billion (not including the costs of 30,000 transport trucks, to the deep geological repository site, return).

Tell me what bona fide business undertaking can shoulder an existing liability for waste disposal of more than $24 billion? How do they plan to do it?

The last new reactor in Canada went into construction in the mid-eighties, there is a fleet of even older reactors – – all have to be de-commissioned at some point, which will add to the 30,000 truckloads.

I’d say the industry is in desperate need of new customers to create a revenue stream.  To pay for

  • continuance of the multi-million dollar salaries for the “1%”
  • the cost of new reactors   (no investment fund or insurance fund will touch them, if they aren’t in on the Ponzi)
  • disposal of 40-50 years of accumulated radioactive waste  (no investment fund or insurance fund will touch that)
  • de-commissioning of the old reactors and disposal of the associated radioactive waste

In a Ponzi scheme, the last man in, gets left holding the bag.

What happens if the industry can’t find, in Canada, a jurisdiction whose citizens want very expensive electricity?  (  Who wants to be the last man in?

 

The only sane person who would invest in the Industry is one from whom information is withheld.  Or one who is on the inside of the scheme.

How likely is it that the citizens of Canada will agree not to revolt, if they are required to foot the bills, especially for new reactors?   that no Investment or Insurance Company will touch?  That some community of Canadians was irresponsible enough to agree to, because they believed the industry, government and university propaganda that nuclear energy is “green” or cost-effective?

By promoting nuclear as an answer to climate change (which it is not),  the Government and Industry are DELIBERATELY running up even higher, the costs that (realistically speaking) will eventually fall to citizens to pay.   Meanwhile those smart people will continue to collect their multi-million-dollar salaries and perks.

It is all dependent on an uninformed citizenry,  propaganda, and serious corruption – – extinction – –  of the public interest.   It is dependent upon the impotency of Elected Representatives, the existence of a “not-democracy”.

A few years ago, the industry was required to start putting money aside to deal with the accumulating waste. Ask them how much they have in that fund today, to address the estimated total waste liability on their hands.  And what is the current estimate of the liability?

 

I wrote to Environment Minister Catherine McKenna when I heard that Canada is pushing hard for nuclear reactors as part of the answer to climate change, at the Copenhagen Meetings in May.  I tackled the corruption issue in the letter.  You might want to take a look at that.

Please see http://sandrafinley.ca/?p=20712. (2018-03-19  Does Environment Minister McKenna KNOW that Natural Resources Minister Carr is pushing nuclear energy in the climate talks, Copenhagen, May?)

 

ASIDE:  Very troubling:  the industry’s proposed move to “SMRs” – – SMALL, MODULAR, NUCLEAR REACTORS.   Good luck stopping radioactive contamination of land and waterways if nuclear reactors are dispersed to isolated communities and mining locations, which is the intent. Remember the industry’s plans for washing away a large truckload of radioactive waste if an accident occurs in Saskatoon.   Down the storm sewer;  out of sight, out of mind.  Drama – farcical comedy.

Your assistance in moving the information to the right places will be greatly appreciated by everyone.
/Sandra Finley

2018-04-21 Poisons in Water, cholera, norovirus: Out In The Open, CBC Radio, Letter to host Piya Chattopadhyay.

 Water Bowser BC Sewage Treatment Plant  No Responses »
Apr 232018
 

RE:   Why so few people on Six Nations reserve have clean running water, unlike their neighbours   ( http://www.cbc.ca/radio/outintheopen/why-so-few-people-on-six-nations-reserve-have-clean-running-water-unlike-their-neighbours-1.4618968)

 

EXCERPT from the program:

. . .   communities suffering from disease and death thanks to long-neglected water quality.

Martin-Hill . . . “I think we all know at some level that the environment has a lot to do with this. We just don’t have the data,” she said. “So my goal is ‘Let’s just … see if we can get a clearer picture of what’s happening.'”

= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =

Dear Piya,

Thank-you to you, your team, and to Dawn Martin-Hill  for “Out in the Open“, April 21, specifically for raising the issue of clean water.

(Clarify:  I am not First Nations.)

Monday, 16th April,  I made a presentation to my local Town Council regarding the cases of cholera and norovirus contracted from food harvested from Georgia Strait, offshore the east coast of Vancouver Island.

The association with human sewage is down-played.   However, the reports from the

  • BC Centre for Disease Control and from
  • the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO)

both cite human waste in the marine environment as the likely cause.

 “long-neglected water quality” is absolutely a serious issue, thanks to Dawn Martin-Hill for speaking up.

The cholera in the offshore water came to light after a First Nations (Cowichan Band, Vancouver Island) harvest of herring eggs, a centuries old cultural practice.  Information in the submission to Council describes how cholera spreads.  The symptoms are similar to norovirus – –  severe diarrhea, vomiting, rapid dehydration.

Please see

to Town Council, Cholera cases, originating French Creek and Qualicum Bay. And April 9th report of norovirus. Human sewage a plausible factor in both.

The posting includes an update received after I made the presentation:   40 cases of norovirus is now 126 cases of norovirus.

I have come across no estimate of how many cases of either water-borne illness (cholera or norovirus) go UNreported.

(Aside:  I find it ironic that some people believe Canadians can protect the West Coast from oil spills associated with a seven-fold increase in super-sized tanker traffic, when we can’t even regulate and innovate to stop the entry of sewage into waterways.  It has the look of coming back to bite us in the ass – – very serious diseases.

Dawn Martin-Hill says,  We just don’t have the data.   In my experience with university research  (e.g. Hydrology, Toxicology, Medicine (cancers), Dentistry (mercury poisoning)),  they staunchly do not conduct research that might lead to true prevention of disease (actual removal of cause.   You can live “healthy”, exercise and all that good stuff.   But that won’t save you from the accumulating poisons in water.   If you don’t know we’re in trouble when it gets to cholera, let alone the diseases that Dawn Martin-Hill is addressing, you know the level of subservience by influential people to economic – corporate interests, without doubt.)

 

I hope the information in my presentation to Council may be useful in some way.  Anyone is free to copy and paste.  From my perspective, information and knowledge are part of “The Commons”, upon which we are all dependent for survival.

Best wishes,

Sandra Finley

2018-04-14 What’s really criminal in Canada’s Kinder Morgan pipeline debacle, by Martyn Brown, in the “straight”

 Climate, Corporatocracy or Democracy or Administrative State or WHAT?  1 Response »
Apr 142018
 

Re the author   Martyn Brown was former B.C. premier Gordon Campbell’s long-serving chief of staff, the top strategic adviser to three provincial party leaders, and a former deputy minister of tourism, trade, and investment. He also served as the B.C. Liberals’ public campaign director in 2001, 2005, and 2009, and in addition to his other extensive campaign experience, he was the principal author of four election platforms. Contact him via email at bcpundit@gmail.com.

 

I “commented” on a Comment:

Markko Caldo, Re your last para:  

I know that Big Oil pays people to use on-line commentary and social media to attack those who challenge their financial interests. And that fake on-line identities are routinely created – – Big Oil has no scruples. They know that many people are ethical and believe in the goodness of others. Put another way: they believe that citizens can be duped. They know that political parties can be bought. I wonder: which of the attack Comments on this article are bona fide?

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

Take advantage of the pictures and video, read the article at, with thanks to straight:   https://www.straight.com/news/1058116/martyn-brown-whats-really-criminal-canadas-kinder-morgan-pipeline-debacle

 

What’s really criminal in Canada’s Kinder Morgan pipeline debacle, back-up copy and,

for those who don’t go to unfamiliar websites:

 

“The commitment to build a pipeline in 2018 when we are in climate crisis is a crime against future generations and I will not be part of it.”

—Green party Leader Elizabeth May, as she was being arrested for civil contempt, in protest of the Kinder Morgan pipeline project.

 

“Trudeau’s Kinder Morgan fiasco is a crime against future generations.”

How eloquently those words sum up the appalling failure in leadership on climate action, ocean protection, Indigenous rights, and national unity that is quickly becoming Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s sorry legacy.

His Trans Mountain pipeline debacle is so much more than a filthy line in the sand that has divided Canadians on both sides of Alberta’s world-reviled tarsands.

It is an ugly scar on the face of our nation; one that threatens to forever mark Canada as a climate outlaw and as a patently dishonest country that has no serious plan to meet its Paris Agreement greenhouse gas reduction commitment to cut its carbon emissions by 30 percent by 2030.

It is an environmental crime against future generations, born of gross negligence, undue risk, scientific ignorance, and willful disregard for the life-ending consequences of heavy oil spills and human-induced global warming.

It is a crime against Aboriginal peoples that now threatens to drive a knife in the heart of Canada’s collective search for a new relationship rooted in mutual respect and reconciliation.

One that is newly alienating First Nations. One that Aboriginal leaders warn may set “Canada up for another catastrophic crisis on the same level as Oka.” One that Trudeau is unwittingly inviting.

This video explains the 1990 Oka crisis in five minutes.

Thousands have marched in solidarity to try to communicate that message, as others have confronted Trudeau in public forums. All for naught. Their concerns have fallen on deaf ears.

His pipeline “strategy” is anything but a climate trade-off for a carbon tax in the national interest. It is a prescription for national schism, for ongoing conflict, and for environmental ruin.

It is a breach of public trust, perpetrated through acts of political duplicity and morally bankrupt processes, in contempt of evidentiary standards and of the prime minister’s own election promise.

Over 200 Canadians felt so strongly about that fact, they chose to make a political statement of defiance, aimed at heightening national awareness. They are otherwise wholly law-abiding citizens from all walks of life — teachers, seniors, community leaders, former employees of Kinder Morgan, students, environmentalists, artists, First Nations leaders, and parents of every demographic and political description.

The courage of their conviction is beyond humbling: it is a testament to their faith in democracy and to the time-honoured tradition of peaceful civil disobedience.

It is a measure of their moral mettle and of their resolve to act in conscientious objection. To right an egregious state-sanctioned wrong. Not out of flagrant disregard for the rule of law, per se. But rather, out of profound reverence for all life on Earth and out of concern for their children, for future generations, and for others besides themselves.

They were not motivated by selfish or pecuniary interest. On the contrary.

They stood their ground when, where, and how they did—not to disparage the rule of law—but to not cede an inch to a project that millions of Canadians also deeply oppose on legal, moral, environmental, economic, and procedural grounds.

They wanted to formally register their deep civic concern and personal commitment to an issue so much bigger than themselves, through a site-specific, time-limited, politically coordinated, democratic testament to the importance they vest in this vital public policy issue.

And for that, Elizabeth May, Burnaby South NDP MP Kennedy Stewart, and so many others may now see their initial charges of civil contempt elevated to criminal contempt, if Crown prosecutors accede to the presiding judge’s request, based on his interpretation of the nature of the acts at issue.

Demonstrators outside Kinder Morgan's tank farm are not motivated by pecuniary interests; they just want to preserve human life on Earth. Demonstrators outside Kinder Morgan’s tank farm are not motivated by pecuniary interests; they just want to preserve human life on Earth.Protect the Inlet

 

If only the courts took as dim a view of the so much more truly harmful conduct that has has been imposed on our nation by those elected leaders in Ottawa and Edmonton who have arguably flouted the law to do the bidding of Big Oil.

They have abused the National Energy Board review process and ignored countless issues and arguments that should have been material to any decision on this environmentally irresponsible project.

They have dismissed the concerns of the cities and citizens who are ardently opposed to turning Metro Vancouver into a major export hub for Canada’s dirtiest, unrefined, heavy crude, with a seven-fold increase in oil tanker traffic through Burrard Inlet.

They bent the laws and rules in ways that discounted Aboriginal rights and title, that ignored British Columbia’s legitimate interests in oil-spill protection, and that will mostly serve to increase the risks of further poisoning our oceans and atmosphere.

All for the love of Big Oil and Big Money. Or if one is stupid enough to take Trudeau at his word, to cut a deal with Alberta, to gain its buy-in to impose a national price on carbon aimed at curbing greenhouse gas emissions— if only by first increasing Canada’s tarsands emissions.

Almost lost in the whole controversy is the massive impact that the Trans Mountain pipeline project will have on Canada’s greenhouse gas reduction targets.

That alone represents a travesty of justice for which Justin Trudeau bears full responsibility.

The Climate Action Tracker website has given Canada a

The Climate Action Tracker website has given Canada a “highly insufficient” rating when it comes to meeting its commitments under the Paris Agreement.Climate Action Tracker

Consider this.

Environment and Climate Change Canada found that the “twinned” Trans Mountain pipeline stands to generate 21 to 26 million tonnes (Mt) of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) every year in associated upstream greenhouse gases.

That is a huge problem, considering that Canada’s latest GHG emissions inventory report shows that our country’s total emissions grew by that same amount—21 million tonnes—from 701 Mt in 2010, to 722 Mt in 2015.

Despite all the ballyhooed “climate action” measures undertaken by Canada in recent years, its total carbon emissions only fell by a third of that amount—a mere 7 Mt—since 2013.

Yet the new pipeline would itself account for an additional 13 to 15 million tonnes of added yearly emissions.

And those amounts do not even include related indirect upstream emissions, such as those created through land-use changes and generated during the production of “purchased inputs”, such as equipment, electricity, and external fuels.

Nor do they include the estimated one million tonnes in CO2e from the pipeline’s construction, which the National Energy Board (NEB) required must be offset.

Nor do they include the further 407,000 tonnes per year of CO2e in direct emissions that new pipeline would generate, excluding those additional upstream and downstream emissions.

Nor do they include the estimated 100 million tonnes of annual downstream emissions that would result from shipping, refining, and burning that exported tar sands oil around the world.

Worse, those downstream emissions will be so much greater than need be.

In his “wisdom”, Trudeau opted not to insist on at least refining that heavy crude at home, with all the jobs that would have entailed, instead of shipping that unrefined product to Asian importers.

Even now, he could choose to go that route, rather than partnering with Alberta to invest in the Trans Mountain pipeline, in a bid to reduce its shareholders’ investment risks or to let that company unload that “white elephant”, if that is its real plan and/or preference.

Trudeau opted not to invest in enhancing Canada’s rapidly diminishing refining capacity, or to avoid the untenable risks of diluted bitumen spills by processing that heavy crude in Canada, instead of shipping it abroad to be refined by countries with much lower environmental standards.

Photographer Edward Burtynsky's <em>Alberta Oil Sands #1</em> shows the magnitude of bitumen extraction taking place.
Photographer Edward Burtynsky’s Alberta Oil Sands #1 shows the magnitude of bitumen extraction taking place.

 

The federal government itself notes that “emissions of GHGs from the oil and gas sector have increased 76 per cent, from 108 Mt CO2e in 1990 to 189 Mt CO2e in 2015.

This increase is mostly attributable to the increased production of crude oil and the expansion of the oil sands industry.” [Emphasis added.]

Under its laughable “climate action” emissions “cap”, Alberta’s NDP government actually plans to grow those tar sands emissions by more than 42 percent—from 70 Mt annually to a new maximum of 100 Mt a year.

That increase of 30 million tonnes of annual carbon emissions is equivalent to 6.4 million passenger vehicles driven for a year, or nearly 3.4 billion gallons of gasoline consumed.

The estimated 100 million tonnes of added annual downstream emissions that will result from the expanded Trans Mountain pipeline alone is even greater.

As that heavy oil is refined and burned in Asia’s already polluted cities, it will generate the equivalent of another 21.4 million cars on the road, or almost 42.8 billion litres of gasoline consumed per year.

All of that diluted tar sands “bitumen” and synthetic crude is especially dirty.

A study by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory found that gasoline and diesel refined from those products have a significantly higher carbon impact than fuels derived from conventional domestic crude sources.

That is indeed a climate crime against future generations.

 

Vancouver filmmaker Charles Wilkinson's <em>Oil Sands Karaoke</em> featured truck driver Brandy Williams (above) speaking about how her job made her feel conflicted. Vancouver filmmaker Charles Wilkinson’s Oil Sands Karaoke featured truck driver Brandy Williams (above) speaking about how her job made her feel conflicted.

 

While other jurisdictions are actually suing Big Oil companies for their harmful impacts on human health and the environment, our Canadian governments are going the opposite way, and actually subsidizing their efforts to profit from their pollution.

Are protestors desperate about that fact? You bet. And rightly so.

Consider these facts, culled and quoted below from the International Energy Agency’s just-released Global Energy & CO2 Status Report 2017:

Global energy-related CO2 emissions rose by 1.4 percent in 2017, an increase of 460 million tonnes (Mt), and reached a historic high of 32.5 gigatonnes (Gt).

Last year’s growth came after three years of flat emissions and contrasts with the sharp reduction needed to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement on climate change.

The increase in carbon emissions, equivalent to the emissions of 170 million additional cars, was the result of robust global economic growth of 3.7 percent, lower fossil-fuel prices, and weaker energy efficiency efforts.

The growth in energy-related carbon dioxide emissions in 2017 is a strong warning for global efforts to combat climate change, and demonstrates that current efforts are insufficient to meet the objectives of the Paris Agreement.

Global energy intensity … in 2017 fell by only 1.7 percent, much less than the 2.3 percent registered on average over the last three years, and half of what is required to remain on track with the Paris Agreement.

 

The IEA’s Sustainable Development Scenario charts a path toward meeting long-term climate goals. Under this scenario, global emissions need to peak soon and decline steeply to 2020; this decline will now need to be even greater given the increase in emissions in 2017.

Global energy demand grew by 2.1 percent in 2017, according to IEA preliminary estimates, more than twice the growth rate in 2016. Global energy demand in 2017 reached an estimated 14,050 million tonnes of oil equivalent (Mtoe), compared with 10,035 Mtoe in 2000.

Fossil-fuels met 70 percent of the growth in energy demand around the world.

The overall share of fossil fuels in global energy demand in 2017 remained at 81 percent, a level that has stayed stable for more than three decades despite strong growth in renewables.

That is not “sustainable” in any way, shape, or form.

Yet it is a problem that Trudeau and his Liberal lickspittles all want to compound for the world, even as they dishonestly claim they have a plan to reduce Canada’s carbon emissions by first massively increasing its oil sand emissions.

That is what his tarsands pipeline vision is really all about: digging and steaming more tar out of the ground, to wish that filthy fossil fuel on a world that is already choking itself to death.

 

Justin Trudeau has defined himself in the eyes of many B.C. voters through his handling of the Kinder Morgan controversy. Justin Trudeau has defined himself in the eyes of many B.C. voters through his handling of the Kinder Morgan controversy.

Why?

To command higher prices and larger profits for Big Oil.

To expedite that enterprise, in contempt of Aboriginal rights and title, and in contempt of the wishes of British Columbia and of that pipeline’s most directly impacted “host” communities.

To flow that diluted bitumen from Alberta to the Salish Sea and across the Pacific, threatening the species and their life-supporting terrestrial and marine ecosystems along the way.

This Sunday, Trudeau will be ganging up in Ottawa with Alberta premier Rachel Notley to read the riot act to B.C. premier John Horgan.

What is Horgan’s supposed “crime” that is supposedly frustrating Kinder Morgan’s project and has now brought that company to the brink of walking away on its risky investment?

In a word, it is that Horgan is using the law to try to protect British Columbia’s environment, coastal communities, and Aboriginal rights. That and nothing more.

His government has joined with all those First Nations and environmental organizations that have legally challenged the abysmal National Energy Board review process in court.

It joined the City of Burnaby in trying to uphold that municipality’s right to enforce its bylaws. An unsuccessful endeavour on first attempt, but one that may yet be appealed to the Supreme Court of Canada.

The Horgan government is also intent on seeking direction from the courts through a reference on the constitutional limits of the province’s shared jurisdiction over environmental protection. Specifically, in respect of oil spills and the transportation of heavy oil products through its territory.

Outrageous. A crime against our economy. Sabotage. Unconstitutional. An attack on Canada’s “national interest”.

That is, according to Canada’s corporate and political apologists for Big Oil.

Such recourse to the courts must be punished, in their view.

Nothing should be allowed to further delay a pipeline that its American-based owners now command must be provided unprecedented legal, regulatory, and political certainty. And all by May 31, if Alberta’s most beloved pet project is not to die the immediate death it deserves.

I will admit, Horgan may not be quite as motivated as I would hope he would be by that project’s impact on carbon emissions, hypocritical as he surely is in also hoping to develop B.C.’s highly subsidized natural gas industry.

But he is fighting for what is right in standing up for B.C.’s constitutional rights.

He is fighting for what is right in trying to protect the health of the Salish Sea and its already endangered species, and in trying to protect our province and its economy from the very real threat of heavy oil spills that the Trans Mountain pipeline poses.

He is standing up for First Nations who have once again been relegated to second-class citizens in how their constitutional rights and interests have been subordinated to the monied wishes of Big Oil and their handmaidens in the Alberta legislature.

Premier John Horgan recently welcomed former U.S. vice president and Nobel Prize-winning climate-change educator Al Gore to Vancouver. Premier John Horgan recently welcomed former U.S. vice president and Nobel Prize-winning climate-change educator Al Gore to Vancouver.John Horgan

 

He is fighting for due process, within the law indeed, through the courts—to also stand up for all those whose voices have been silenced or ignored by Canada’s feckless prime minister.

A faux climate warrior and phony environmental champion, who sold out his supposed “home” province of British Columbia by approving a pipeline that was predicated on a review process he vowed to redo and reprocess before making any decisions.

How dare the Trudeau government threaten British Columbians as it is now doing, with all of the speculated “sanctions” that are now supposedly “all on the table”.

How dare he suggest that Horgan has anything whatsoever for which to apologize, relent, or abandon.

How dare he try to bully B.C. into pushing through a pipeline that its current owners might well abandon as uneconomic without massive new injections of risk capital from Canadian taxpayers.

How dare he even intimate that British Columbians might face sanctions from Ottawa, be it reduced transfer payments or withheld federal investments. Or worse, the unthinkable use of constitutional and military thuggery, perhaps even invoking the Emergencies Act, to ram through a pipeline that is being duly challenged in court.

Trudeau would never do that to Quebec or Ontario. Never in a million years. To even consider any of those measures is a disgrace that only proves he is as shallow and untrusworthty as most Canadians suspect.

As he said, when Quebec’s opposition to the Energy East pipeline led to that project’s well-deserved demise, “governments grant permits, communities grant permission.”

B.C.’s most directly impacted communities do not grant that permission.

They insist on the same standard of consideration and respect for due process and provincial autonomy that has been repeatedly accorded to the people of Quebec, including in respect of the Energy East project.

If Trudeau’s and Notley’s unpardonable threats against B.C. on this issue don’t set off the separatists’ alarm bells in Quebec, they will certainly make the topic of separatism a newly burning live issue in British Columbia.

If the federal government acts like an outright enemy of B.C., aided and abetted by an Alberta government that threatens unconscionable trade sanctions to terrorize its western neighbour, many British Columbians will soon come to see both governments in that light.

It will deeply rip at the fabric of Confederation in prolonged and unpredictable ways that no one should want, least of all Canada’s sitting prime minister.

The actions that Alberta is promising—restricting the flow of gasoline through the very same pipeline that it asserts B.C. should have no capacity whatsoever to environmentally regulate—are hypocritical in the extreme.

They will also be challenged in court, as violations of section 92(a) of the Canadian constitution. That will only prolong the uncertainty that those trade-terrorist-tactics are ostensibly aimed at minimizing, however much Notley imagines that it will serve her province’s interests to mimic Donald Trump.

The coercive actions that the federal government is said to be contemplating to bring B.C. to “heel” are even more reprehensible.

They, too, will be challenged in court by B.C. as unlawful measures—perhaps joined by Quebec and other provinces, as intervenors that wish to preserve their own provincial autonomy.

All of that could be avoided if the Trudeau and Notley governments only had the good sense to accept Horgan’s offer for a joint reference to the Supreme Court of Canada on the jurisdictional questions that B.C. is rightly looking to legally clarify.

It is a sensible recourse that federal NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh has also advocated, better late than never.

All Canadians should know, we are on a one-way track to more turmoil, new trade wars, more protracted legal battles, and very likely, the real prospect of physical violence on the front lines of physical resistance, led by First Nations leaders.

They should be under no delusion, the course Trudeau seems bound and determined to follow is a train wreck of incalculable proportions.

Carrying on that course would be the ultimate crime against future generations.

Especially for an oil pipeline that is only intended to deepen Canada’s dependency on fossil-fueled growth, to reap higher prices and greater global demand for carbon-intensive products that are rapidly killing our planet.

Not that we will hear or read a word to that effect from Canada’s mainstream media.  It is lock, stock, and barrel captured by that very same industry that pays its bills and pads its pockets.

Sadly, what’s really criminal in Canada’s Kinder Morgan pipeline debacle is all that Canada’s innately conflicted fourth estate has promulgated in defence of the oil sands industry.

It is the crime of subverting lawful actions that are responsibly undertaken in the public interest, to support a false narrative of lawlessness that needs to be “punished” by bullies in Ottawa and Edmonton.

It is the crime of undermining the national public interest in its own namesake, for the sake of political expediency, short-term economic benefits, and above all, corporate greed.

It is the crime against future generations that must be stopped and that its proponents are so determined to impose, come climate hell and high water.

2018-04-16 Verbal version of Water, Submission to Town Council, Cholera cases, originating French Creek and Qualicum Bay. And April 9th report of norovirus. Human sewage a plausible factor in both.

 Health, Water Bowser BC Sewage Treatment Plant  Comments Off on 2018-04-16 Verbal version of Water, Submission to Town Council, Cholera cases, originating French Creek and Qualicum Bay. And April 9th report of norovirus. Human sewage a plausible factor in both.
Apr 122018
 

TO:   Town Council          FOR:    Council Meeting, April 16th, 2018
(Written version submitted April 11th)

SPEAKER:   Sandra Finley, resident

SUBJECT:   Cholera cases, originating French Creek and Qualicum Bay.  And April 9th report of norovirus.  Human sewage a plausible factor in both.

 

Thank-you for the opportunity to share information in support of my request.  I am requesting the establishment of a local working group on the issue of cholera, norovirus and human sewage in our offshore water.

These are serious matters.

I will present critical pieces of information, and not the detail that is in my written submission to you.

 

  1. VIHA (the Vancouver Island Health Authority) and the First Nations Health Authority jointly issued an update 10 days ago. On April 6th.  (#1 appended).  It is confirmed:

the cholera bacteria was found

  • in the water samples, and
  • in the herring eggs
  1. Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) online information related to the cholera cases (URL), tells that the herring eggs are
  • not safe for eating (you can get cholera) if harvested from the environment at French Creek and Qualicum Bay.
  • it IS safe to eat roe taken directly from the herring

In other words,

  1. the herring eggs picked up the cholera from the water or rocks or beach. 
  1. From the DFO report, March 23, 2018, quote (#2 appended):

marine water sampling results from March 6 (show) elevated fecal coliform levels in this area.

  1. A week ago, Monday April 9th, we received news that two oyster farms have been closed after a norovirus outbreak associated with  Deep Bay and Denman Island.     From the CBC Report:

. . .  human sewage in the marine environment is currently believed to be the most plausible cause of shellfish contamination, according to BCCDC epidemiologist Marsha Taylor.

(BCCDC is the BC Centre for Disease Control.)     2018-04-09   2 B.C. oyster farms closed after norovirus outbreak, CBC

Pre-covid,  norovirus outbreaks were routine in the area;  the outbreaks were happening earlier and earlier in the season.

  1. There is another factor, I suspect. I have not found it anywhere in the recent discussions;  Cruise Ships – Marine Vessels are another source of human sewage in Georgia Strait (the Salish Sea).  Quote (#6 appended)

. . .    the ship’s owners admitted fouling Canadian waters three times. The infractions cost Celebrity Cruises $100,000 in fines in Washington. In Canada, it paid nothing.

Beware,  that information is dated (2007). 

(UPDATE:  I have not posted a report from a couple months ago that compares the American regulation of cruise ships in comparison with the Canadian (a joke;  Toadies).  Enforcement is another matter.

There is the question of how many people who ply the waters employ “marine disposal” of their waste,  the funding and strength of enforcement of regulations.

  1. My experience is consistent with what DFO and the BC Centre for Disease Control are saying:

A couple of years ago, swimming with a friend parallel to the QB shoreline, going in the direction of French Creek, we encountered serious sewage contamination.  The vegetation growth and condition of the water indicated to both of us that we were in long term effects, not a one-time accidental release.   We beat a hasty and frightened retreat to our respective homes, for a hot bath with disinfectant. 

Those are pieces of information that will be of concern to all of us.

8.  UPDATE   The morning after I made the presentation to Council, a news update: 126 cases of norovirus in 3 provinces (BC, Alberta, Ontario)  linked to BC oysters  – –   see below, under NOROVIRUS.

Moving on:   historical information on cholera in Canada,  quote:   (#5 appended)   

The annual number of reported cases of cholera in Canada during 1995 to 2004 ranged from 1 to 8.  Most cases in Canada result from international travel to an affected region. 

Analysis of the outbreak of CHOLERA in Haiti after the hurricane in 2010 (#4 appended) is helpful for understanding the disease.

Important factors:

  • It is thought that this was the first-ever cholera in Haiti.
  • By 2018 it is pretty well accepted that the cholera was introduced by UN Peace-keeping Troops who went to Haiti to help.
  • As with many disease organisms, people can carry the bug and be unaware. They are “asymptomatic”.  If their feces enters a water supply, or a food supply by way of the water, it can be equally devastating.
  • Originally, the cholera was attributed to peacekeepers who had been in Nepal. But DNA analysis of the bacteria established that there were strains of cholera from other countries where cholera is also endemic, where UN workers had also been.
  • The UN military base was on a tributary that fed into a main River. Proper sanitation was not practiced.  Outhouses were placed close to the tributary.  The sewage was not properly controlled.
  • By 2017-18, ten thousand Haitians are dead from the introduced cholera. That does not include the numbers of people who became very sick but survived.  The cholera spread to the adjacent Dominican Republic, and to Cuba.  20 Venezuelans who visited the Dominican Republic then transported the vibrio cholerae bacteria to Venezuela.

It will be interesting to know the DNA of the cholera from the water and herring eggs, French Creek and Qualicum Bay.   From where did this local cholera originate?

In general, transmission of cholera is rarely from person-to-person.  It is typically introduced from the feces of an infected person.  As mentioned, some people are host to the bacteria without knowing (asymptomatic).

The BC CDC can test the DNA of the cholera, the same as they did in Haiti, in order to determine origin).   But it doesn’t matter.  The money would be better spent Maybe it doesn’t matter – – the cholera was in human sewage that entered the Salish Sea, was subsequently transferred to humans from oysters or herring roe,  harvested from the Sea.

NOROVIRUS

Regarding the 40 cases of norovirus from contaminated oysters during the past month:  the symptoms of cholera and of norovirus are very similar, diarrhea and vomiting, rapid dehydration.

As noted earlier, the BCCDC attributed human sewage as plausible cause of the recent norovirus outbreak.   The CBC Report on the outbreak (URL),

In late 2016 and early 2017, more than 400 norovirus cases associated with raw or undercooked B.C. oysters led to the closure of 13 farms.

That outbreak was declared over in April 2017. Human sewage was also suspected as the cause.

“Is there a solution? Yes, we need to pay more attention to what we are putting into the ocean,” said Pocock.

UPDATE:

Investigation into norovirus outbreak linked to raw BC oysters expands to three provinces

– – – – – – – – – – – – – –

A local resident with 20 years of sailing in local coastal waters records her observations, including

No doubt the French Creek outflow has a lot to do with it but the government will blame private septic tanks.  This is simply not true with few exceptions.  There are sufficient regulations that government could use, if this was really the problem.

In September 2017 I sent a copy to Town Council, of the submission I made to Provincial Government officials re  The proposed Bowser Sewage Treatment Plant, submission to the BC Government  (2017-09-12).   I will skip the details, you have them.

I explained the steps in Sequencing Batch Reactor Sewage Treatment with UV radiation, tertiary filtering, and marine disposal of liquid effluent.    And why none of the steps do, or can, remove many of the poisons that are in liquid effluent.  Nor does the process remove plastic microfibers that enter our water sources from the millions of washing machines (laundered clothing) that discharge “waste water” into sewage lines.

INSERT:   The presentation (April 16th) was time limited.  I did not make the points, hoping that Staff, Mayor and Councillors would read my full submission:  

  • building a sewage treatment plant at one location, Bowser, is not going to address all the various sources of human sewage going into the marine environment (Salish Sea).
  • The economic analysis for the Bowser Plant is quite funny and simultaneously illuminating.  (Tax-payers will pay HOW MUCH money, for a plant for a community of HOW MANY people?!   And HOW MANY such communities are there in Canada, in bad need of sewage plants?  HOW MUCH money would it all cost?   When there are new, much less expensive alternatives that do not involved “marine disposal” of effluent?   See  The proposed Bowser Sewage Treatment Plant, submission to the BC Government

Continuing – – – the end of my presentation to Council  . . .

The question I ask is:  what strategy is most likely to open people’s minds, so that they can hear, contemplate, and do actual problem-solving?   Denial, reassurances, don’t cut it.   . . . I am sure that, citizens and officials alike, take the situation seriously.   So then I think we must diverge on how to address the problem.   I see “more of the same” as the reason that the hole we’re in, is deep.

Thomas describes the current strategy as:  Close the water and food source down, hope nobody else gets sick.

I am requesting that the Town establish a Working Group to bring our community together in creative problem-solving on the serious feedback, cholera and norovirus, both related to human sewage in the water;  French Creek, Qualicum Bay, Deep Bay, Denman Island; repeated annual occurrences of the norovirus.

Thank-you for your consideration,  (truthfully speaking, I am swearing under my breath.   Our level of group stupidity is frightening.)

Sandra Finley

APPENDED

  1. April 6, 2018 Update from Health Authorities.  (FNHA and VIHA)

The First Nations Health Authority and Island Health would like to confirm that Vibrio cholerae bacteria has been found in both herring eggs and water samples collected in the French Creek area and Qualicum Bay closure areas.

http://www.fnha.ca/about/news-and-events/news/illness-associated-with-herring-eggs-vancouver-island  

  1. Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) report, March 23:

This closure is in effect based on advice received from Vancouver Island Health Authority regarding concern for human health with multiple reports of diarrheal illness associated with herring egg consumption from product harvested on substrate in this area.  

There are three lab confirmed cases of diarrheal illness after herring egg consumption for Vibrio cholera, an unusual organism not normally found in water in this region or country. 

There are a number of existing sanitary closures for shellfish harvest in these areas and 

marine water sampling results from March 6, 2018 showing elevated fecal coliform levels in this area.  

Primary harvest is First Nations Food, Social and Ceremonial harvest, however recreational harvest could occur as well. 

. . .  Illness may include mild to severe nausea, vomiting, and very severe watery diarrhea.  Some people don’t become ill and don’t know they have been infected.

http://notices.dfo-mpo.gc.ca/fns-sap/index-eng.cfm?pg=view_notice&DOC_ID=206365&ID=all

  1. Vibrio cholerae bacteria: symptoms, how acquired, how it spreads (Wikipedia, excerpts)

cholerae was first isolated as the cause of cholera in 1854.

During infection, V. cholerae secretes cholera toxin, a protein that causes profuse, watery diarrhea (known as “rice-water stool”). . . .  V. cholerae can cause syndromes ranging from asymptomatic to cholera gravis.[4] In endemic areas, 75% of cases are asymptomatic, 20% are mild to moderate, and 2-5% are severe forms such as cholera gravis.[4] Symptoms include abrupt onset of watery diarrhea (a grey and cloudy liquid), occasional vomiting, and abdominal cramps.[1][4] Dehydration ensues, with symptoms and signs such as thirst, dry mucous membranes, decreased skin turgor, sunken eyes, hypotension, weak or absent radial pulse, tachycardia, tachypnea, hoarse voice, oliguria, cramps, renal failure, seizures, somnolence, coma, and death.[1] Death due to dehydration can occur in a few hours to days in untreated children. The disease is also particularly dangerous for pregnant women and their fetuses during late pregnancy, as it may cause premature labor and fetal death.[4][5][6] In cases of cholera gravis involving severe dehydration, up to 60% of patients can die; however, less than 1% of cases treated with rehydration therapy are fatal. The disease typically lasts 4–6 days.[4][7] Worldwide, diarrhoeal disease, caused by cholera and many other pathogens, is the second-leading cause of death for children under the age of 5 and at least 120,000 deaths are estimated to be caused by cholera each year.[8][9] In 2002, the WHO deemed that the case fatality ratio for cholera was about 3.95%.[4]

When visiting areas with epidemic cholera, the following precautions should be observed: drink and use bottled water; frequently wash hands with soap and safe water; use chemical toilets or bury feces if no restroom is available; do not defecate in any body of water and cook food thoroughly. . . .

The main reservoirs of V. cholerae are people and aquatic sources such as brackish water and estuaries, often in association with copepods or other zooplankton, shellfish, and aquatic plants.[14]

Cholera infections are most commonly acquired from drinking water in which V. cholerae is found naturally or into which it has been introduced from the feces of an infected person. Other common vehicles include contaminated fish and shellfish, produce, or leftover cooked grains that have not been properly reheated. Transmission from person to person, even to health care workers during epidemics, is rarely documented. V. cholerae thrives in an aquatic environment, particularly in surface water. The primary connection between humans and pathogenic strains is through water, particularly in economically reduced areas that do not have good water purification systems.[9]

 

  1. The 2010-2017 Haitian cholera outbreak. excerpts 

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010s_Haiti_cholera_outbreak) was the first modern large scale outbreak of cholera, once considered a beaten back disease with a preventative vaccine, yet now resurgent, having spread across Haiti from October 2010 to May 2017, waxing and waning with eradication effort and climate variability. The outbreak has connections to the political and sanitary conditions post-quake as well as UN peacekeeping. In terms of total infections, the outbreak since been surpassed by the war-fueled 2016–17 Yemen cholera outbreak, although the Haiti outbreak is still the most deadly modern outbreak.[5]

By March 2017, it had killed 9,985 Haitians and others and sickened several hundred thousand persons while spreading to the neighboring countries of the Dominican Republic and Cuba.[6]

. . .   Before the outbreak, Haiti suffered from relatively poor public health and sanitation infrastructure. As of 2008, 37% of Haiti’s population lacked access to adequate drinking water, and 83% lacked improved sanitation facilities.[18] This made Haiti particularly vulnerable to an outbreak of waterborne disease. In January, 2010, a massive earthquake hit Haiti, killing over 100,000 people and further disrupting healthcare and sanitation infrastructure in the country.[19][20] In the aftermath of the earthquake, international workers from many countries arrived in Haiti to assist in the rebuilding effort, including a number of workers from countries where cholera was endemic. This presented an opportunity for cholera to spread to Haiti.[21] Furthermore, Haiti had likely never suffered an outbreak of cholera previously; as such the population of Haiti had little to no immunity to cholera.[22]

. . .  In late January 2011, more than 20 Venezuelans were reported to have been taken to hospital after contracting cholera after visiting the Dominican Republic.[39][40

 

  1. The Canadian Encyclopedia offers a history of cholera in Canada. Excerpt  (http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/cholera/ )

Cholera first reached Canada in 1832, brought by immigrants from Britain.  . . .  Cholera was fairly common around the world prior to the advent of modern sanitation methods developed in the 20th century. Familiarity with the disease reduced the fear in later epidemics and a better understanding of how it spreads has made more effective prevention possible.

In the modern world cholera becomes endemic due to a lack of infrastructure and weak health care systems that lower the effectiveness of sanitation and contribute to conditions that allow the bacteria to thrive. The disease is common in refugee camps because of crowded and unsanitary conditions. South America had outbreaks of cholera in the 1990s and outbreaks continue to occur sporadically in southern Africa. Cholera is endemic in Malawi, Zambia and Mozambique. In Zimbabwe, deteriorating political conditions have also affected the social system and cholera is becoming endemic even in the nation’s capital, Harare, where modern sanitation formerly helped prevent cholera. Medical professionals are attempting to improve public education about cholera prevention in regions prone to it, but without government investment in sanitation infrastructure, only limited success can be achieved.

The annual number of reported cases of cholera in Canada during 1995 to 2004 ranged from 1 to 8. Most cases in Canada result from international travel to an affected region. Cholera is considered a “reportable disease,” which means that local, national and international health authorities must be notified upon discovery. Reporting diseases is an important practice for epidemiology, which allows for disease monitoring and establishes patterns of occurrence around the globe.

 

  1. Sewage from Cruise Ships   (and other marine craft)

Excerpt from   2017-08-16   Water: Bowser votes on sewage treatment. ($11 million for 188 population? What am I missing?)

RAW SEWAGE, WEST COAST WATERS  (a couple of examples):

  • Cruise on down to our dumping ground   (Be Aware of the date of this article:  April 18, 2007, Straight)

UPDATE:   At close of meeting, I was approached by a person from whom I am to receive a link to on-line current info re this issue.   I will post it when I have it.   /Sandra

https://www.straight.com/article-86446/cruise-on-down-to-our-dumping-ground

. . .    the ship’s owners admitted fouling Canadian waters three times. The infractions cost Celebrity Cruises $100,000 in fines in Washington. In Canada, it paid nothing.

“The excuse was, ‘We’ll pay the fine in Washington but we won’t pay the fine in Canada because Canada doesn’t care,’” said Ross Klein, a social-work professor at Memorial University in St. John’s, Newfoundland, and a leading critic of the cruise industry. “Even if you’re brain-dead, it’s obvious if you’ve got to follow regulations in California, Washington, and Alaska, and you don’t in Canada, what are you going to do in Canada? That in itself speaks volumes.”

The Mercury’s inconsistent treatment is indicative of how the cruise industry has evolved on the Pacific coast, with each jurisdiction applying its own standards to the ships. At one end of the run is Alaska, which, thanks to an August 2006 referendum, has by far the toughest laws. At the other end is Washington state, which has a memorandum of understanding with the industry that is at least strong enough to allow the state to fine ships like the Mercury when they dump in Washington waters.

In the middle is B.C., which depends on its federal government to protect the coast. Canada has never fined a cruise ship for a violation and is unlikely to do so under current guidelines. “It’s a green light to empty your holding tank between Washington state and Alaska,” Klein said. Canada’s weak guidelines and lack of enforcement send a clear message to cruise-ship owners about how they are to regard B.C., he said. “It means it’s the toilet bowl.”

THE MERCURY IS JUST one of 33 Vancouver-based cruise ships that will be churning through B.C. on the Alaska run this summer, which actually kicked off on April 8 with the arrival of the Zaandam. Altogether, they will make about 300 trips and carry an estimated 930,000 passengers, each paying an average of $1,500, up the coast and back. Many of the ships carry more than 2,000 people, making them the equivalent of floating cities, with all the consumer needs and wastes you would expect from a luxury resort of that size. (The next generation of ships, the first of which will be ready in 2009, will carry more than 8,000 passengers. Besides the liquid waste, each person on a cruise produces 3.5 kilograms of garbage per day, Klein said, much more than they would in their land-based lives.) Much of the ships’ time in the province will be in the confined waters of Hecate Strait, the Inside Passage, and between Vancouver Island and the mainland.

“There is a great concern that Canada could become a dumping ground,” said Fred Felleman, a Seattle-based researcher who consults on cruise-ship issues for the Bluewater Network, a national organization fighting marine pollution. With the relatively contained waters and vulnerable whale populations, he said, that’s a worry. “I don’t believe there’s any place we should be dumping sewage sludges, but if you have to dump sludges, you don’t want to do it in the Inside Passage.”

But the current rules are likely making it more and more attractive for the cruise companies to do just that. “It’s going to be Haro Strait, Georgia Strait, or Queen Charlotte Sound, would be my guess.”

 

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