Transcript: Chris Zimmer on a River Ethic /257
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Hello and welcome to For the Wild podcast. I'm Ayana Young. Today I'm speaking with Chris Zimmer.
Chris Zimmer So we have an ocean that's turning hostile. On the other hand, climate change really does not seem to have affected the nature of the Taku yet. The Taku has a lot of ice in its upper ends. It's got a lot of cold water inputs up high in the river. So from one perspective, you could look at the Taku is kind of a refuge for fish, given the changes we're seeing in the ocean and the changes we're seeing due to climate change.
Ayana Young Chris Zimmer is the Alaska campaign director for Rivers without Borders based in Juneau. Chris has been with Rivers without Borders since 2001. He has worked on environmental issues for over 30 years in Washington DC, Washington State, Montana and Alaska, including nuclear weapons testing, Columbia River dams and salmon, forest campaigns and transborder mining issues. Chris enjoys fishing and hunting in the watersheds he helps to protect.
Well, Chris, thank you so much for joining us. What we're about to speak to is by far one of my favorite topics. I'm really looking forward to diving in.
Chris Zimmer Oh, thanks for having us here. And yeah, talking about rivers and fish. Two of my favorite topics as well.
Ayana Young Well, I’d like to begin our conversation with an introduction to place. The Taku watershed is considered to be the largest intact wilderness river system on the Pacific Coast of North America. For listeners joining us from afar, can you describe this watershed and the many inhabitants that are dependent upon it?
Chris Zimmer The Taku is an amazing watershed. It's just a world class river system. Its headwaters are up in northwest British Columbia. The closest town would probably be Atlin, which is a very small town in Northwest BC. And then the river flows down across the border, and then it reaches the ocean about eight miles south of Juneau. You can almost see the mouth of the river from downtown Juneau. It's incredibly diverse. It has glaciers, rock, and ice. It has rain forest. It has boreal forests, up high. It's got an amazing amount of fish and critters, we have bears, mountain goats, sheep, moose, mountain goats, all kinds of the big kind of mega critters. We got all the Pacific salmon, we have steelhead, we have cutthroat trout, bald and stellar eagles. There are whales and seals in the inlet. I mean from top to bottom, you can see all kinds of different landscapes and different critters and different habitats. And there are literally thousands of people on both sides of the border that depend on the watershed. The BC side of the river is the traditional territory of a first nation in BC, which is called the Taku River Tlingit First Nation. And they are based in Atlin. I mean, their entire culture is tied to the river. The Tlingit people in Juneau are represented by a tribe called the Douglas Indian Association. And they have the same ties to the landscape. A number of Douglas Indian Association members are still alive that were born and raised on the river. And they have some amazing stories going back decades. You also have very significant sport and commercial fisheries supported by the river, and that brings in some of the best food on earth, wild salmon, and also jobs and dollars to hundreds of families up and down the coast here. It supports the processors who process and sell the fish. There is hunting guiding in the watershed, there is a significant out of tourism, by boat, by air, and hiking. I mean it is an incredibly diverse watershed in its nature and the economies, cultures and recreation it supports, and there really isn't really not much like this on earth with the transboundary nature of it, the Indigenous peoples, the fish runs. I mean it's a world-class, unique river system. And I can't say enough about it, but I should probably stop there.
Ayana Young Well, I can hear your love for such a spectacular place. I’d like to ask you about these beloved transboundary rivers in context to our globally changing climate. Amidst ecological changes and additional stressors, what do you think these watersheds and rivers will look like in the coming decades?
Chris Zimmer Well, that's an excellent question, because we're facing actually a couple fairly significant changes up here, which are probably linked. We have climate change and its changes on weather patterns, temperatures, water temperatures, how much rainfall and snow we get. We also are having, you know, the ocean is kind of turning hostile on us, it is likely due to temperature or climate change as well. The pH of the ocean is changing, the temperature is changing, the patterns of where fish move, the patterns of where predators are, is really changing. And what we're seeing in the Taku, and in some of these other trans boundary rivers, is that the king salmon are getting hammered in the ocean. Something is killing them in their first couple years in the ocean, and they're not coming back to freshwater to spawn. And those runs are really decreasing. I think this year could have been one of the worst years ever coming up for king salmon runs. So we have an ocean that's turning hostile.
On the other hand, climate change really does not seem to have affected the nature of the Taku yet. The Taku has a lot of ice in its upper ends, it's got a lot of cold water inputs up high in the river. So from one perspective, you could look at the Taku is kind of a refuge for fish. Given the changes we're seeing in the ocean, and the changes we're seeing due to climate change. And the Taku is essentially pristine, it's fish habitat is nearly perfect. And one of our main points is that you have got to maintain that habitat. Because given that the ocean is turning bad on us, if the freshwater habitat also becomes unfriendly to fish, then the fish are getting hit with a double whammy out in the ocean and in the freshwater. So right now, the Taku is a very healthy river system, we need to maintain that so at least the fish aren't taking another hit. And then as the ocean hopefully changes back to being more normal, then hopefully we'll see the fish pick up there. But our main task is to maintain the habitat and the productivity of the Taku in general, and specifically in the face of climate change and changing ocean conditions. And we're seeing similar dynamics and the other transboundary rivers like the Stikine and the Unuk where those king salmon runs are way, way below what would be the minimum escapement, the fishing has been shut off on them, we're seeing massive fishing closures. So maintaining the freshwater habitat, it'd be good for the fish, it'll certainly help the fishing industry here as the fish recover. And everything in the watershed is based on the fish. The bears eat the fish. The dying salmon come back and die in the freshwater. The bodies decay. The nitrogen feeds the plants and the trees. I mean the salmon hold everything together and without the fish, the Taku wouldn't be the Taku here.
Ayana Young Now before we delve into conversation on mining threats - I wonder if you can clarify what transboundary rivers mean in relationship to international advocacy, pollution, and responsibility, as well as the Boundary Waters Treaty of 1909. Particularly thinking about the Taku, Stikine, and Unuk - does consent exist when it comes to the downstream ramifications of mines that are developed in British Columbia? What are the limitations of the 1909 Treaty?
Chris Zimmer Well, that's an excellent set of questions there. One of the things that really makes these transboundary watersheds unique from a management perspective, is the fact that they start in one country, and they end up in another country, the Stikine, the Unuk, the Taku all have their headwaters up in British Columbia, and then they flow across the border through Alaska to the sea. So you have a provincial and a state government, you have two federal governments, you have several local governments, and then you have the Tribal and First Nations governments. So you have kind of a complex picture there of the different entities that are in charge of regulating different aspects of rivers. So it's not just one or two governments here, it's pretty complex. The Boundary Waters Treaty is one of the few things we have to try to hold British Columbia accountable. Most of the spawning areas in these rivers are on the British Columbia side. So we are dependent on them to maintain that habitat. Whereas once those juvenile salmon are born, they tend to come down and rear or grow up on the Alaska side, and in general, the Alaska habitat is good. The Unuk River flows through Misty Fjords National Monument. The Stikine on the US side is in a wilderness area. And the Taku is essentially pristine. So on the Alaska side, these habitats are in great shape. But on the other hand, we have BC, moving forward with a very aggressive mining agenda in the headwaters, and mining and salmon essentially are a combination that really has never worked together.
So the Boundary Waters Treaty of 1909 was signed by Canada and the US. And that says neither country can pollute the waters flowing between the two countries in a way that would negatively affect that country. So the simple version is it says you can't pollute a transboundary river that would affect your neighbor, you know, it's kind of a good neighbor agreement. But you know, it's up to the level of enforcement and political will on each side of the border. The biggest problem with the Boundary Waters Treaty, though, is that both sides really have to agree on taking strong measures there. And the main mechanism would be to create an international Joint Commission made up of Canadians and Americans that would investigate a particular issue, whether it's a mine, whether it's water use, whether it's a dam, the problem is both sides have to agree. And we have a lot of groups and individuals on the Alaska side saying we need an international joint commission to address issues in the transboundary. BC and Canada have said no. So it doesn't go anywhere. That's the biggest flaw there is– you have to have agreement from both sides. When you look at the way BC regulates and does its mining, they do I think consult is too heavy of a word, but they do they have talked to Alaskans, they've talked to the tribes. But you know, we don't really have much of a vote, we certainly don't have a veto. And at the end of the day BC can essentially do what it wants. And its regulatory regime is very weak, it doesn't have the proper bonding you need like in Alaska, when a mine is proposed and built, the company has to put a full bond in the bank to where if something bad happens, if they go bankrupt, that bond kicks in to pay for cleanup and mine reclamation. BC doesn't have that policy. And we're actually seeing that they have a massive underfunded liability of a couple billion dollars in mine cleanup costs that have not been paid for by bonding. And what that means is the taxpayers probably going to have to pay for that– that the companies end up getting off the hook. So as a downstreamer here in Alaska, I think we've got a lot to worry about, given how aggressive BC's plans are the track record we've seen from the mining industry, things like the Mount Polley Tailings Dam disaster, the Tulsequah Chief been polluting the Taku for 60 years, the lack of decent bonding, and there's no way to compensate Alaskans if BC ruins any of our fisheries. So there are a host of things to worry about here in Alaska. And what we're pushing for is much stronger mechanisms, some kind of agreement between the US and Canada that addresses the BC mining exploration, addresses our need for fish here, creates compensation and other regulatory mechanisms, and it gives Alaskans a voice here in the development going on upstream of us. Because right now we're at what one of my fishing friends called the dirty end of the river. Everything flows downstream. If these rivers flow the other direction, you know, I think we might be having a different conversation and seeing a different attitude from BC. But everything that happens up in the BC side is going to end up on the Alaska side and could seriously impact our fish and fisheries. And there just isn't a mechanism really to deal with that. And the Boundary Waters treaty is helpful, but it is certainly not enough. And it's difficult to trigger that treaty.
Ayana Young Well, I want to go back to British Columbia's abandoned Tulsequah Chief Mine that's been polluting downstream watersheds for over 60 years…. Which is really an unfathomably long period of time. So can you share with us the history of this mine, particularly in terms of resources and ownership, and why it's been allowed to leech acid and heavy metals completely unchecked, since its time of abandonment in 1957?
Chris Zimmer Let me talk a little bit quickly about the acid mine drainage which is really one of the biggest problems that we have with these mines, given their proximity to fish and fish habitat. A lot of these mines are mining what are called sulphide deposits. And that's often where they find the gold and the silver and the copper and minerals like that. What happens when you dig up that deposit and expose the sulfide bearing or to water in air, is you get a reaction that forms sulfuric acid. That's bad enough for the fish and the water quality in the fish habitat. But that sulfuric acid also leeches heavy metals out of the rock,and eventually then flows into the river. So you have toxic heavy metals like arsenic, lead, copper zinc, in a highly acidic discharge that eventually gets into the, into the rivers. And if it's toxic enough, it can kill fish outright, but it also can have these very subtle insidious effects where it may not kill a fish outright but it will severely inhibit that fish's ability to find its home spawning grounds to find mates, to find food, to avoid predators, eventually, meaning that that fish will likely not spawn so you don't get the next generation there. And a lot of the sulphide deposits that BC is looking at are right in the headwaters of these rivers. You know, some of them like the Tulsequah Chief are literally yards from the river itself. So this combination of sulphide deposits and acid mine drainage and salmon is a bad combination, it usually does not work out well for the fish. And here we have an example that with the Tulsequah Chief where the mine was closed in the 50s, the company just walked away and left it there. Since then it's out of the mine shafts themselves is coming this polluted water, the highly acidic discharge with all the heavy metals. And it flows out of the mine down the hill and right into the river. This big orange stain, it really is quite obnoxious and kind of disturbing when you see it that just looks so unnatural. One of the reasons why that happened in the 50s is there weren't really any decent mining laws back then, and the company really was able to walk away and the province didn't do anything about it. But in the late 1990s a company did buy the mine and try to develop it and they went bankrupt. In 2010, another company came in and tried to do it and they went bankrupt, and they didn't do really anything about the acid mine drainage. Their position was "we bought this mine, we're gonna develop it when we're done mining, it we'll then clean it up." And our response was, you know, the common sense responses, as well: my mom always told me, you got to clean up one mess before you make another one. So our push was alright, if you're gonna redevelop this mine, you got to clean it up first. That never happened. You still have this orange, poisonous water flowing right into the river. And BC, over the last couple years has taken some enforcement measures and is now moving to take responsibility for cleanup. But for a couple decades BC bought the company line, which is we're gonna operate the mine and eventually we'll clean it up. Their enforcement was weak, they didn't put anybody in jail, they didn't fine the company, they didn't fine any of the company directors, they essentially said, "Okay, we're gonna give you a pass and allow you to pollute the river until you make enough money to, to stop the pollution." It was a pretty poor way of regulating the rivers. But now with two mining companies gone bankrupt, I think BC finally realized that this mine isn't viable economically, politically, socially, culturally. They're just a bad mine in the wrong place. And BC has now taken steps to take over the mine, take responsibility for cleanup, and clean up and close it down in a way that would forbid future development in the region. And we think that's great, we clean up this eyesore, and then we create a regime here where it doesn't happen again, that the lower Taku watershed here is protected from that kind of mining. But the Tulsequah Chief was really the first mine like this, the first issue in the transboundary about 20 years ago. But what it's become it's become kind of the poster child for BC mining. It created all the issues and concerns we have in the other watersheds and about the other mines. Because we don't want to see the same dynamic happen in other rivers that we're seeing now at the Tulsequah Chief.
So the Tulsequah Chief is really the warning, it was a shot across the bow, it was an educational experience, and it showed Alaskans that we've really got to step up and, and deal with BC and their mining activities in the headwaters, or we're going to very possible in the future here see problems for fish and water quality as BC moves, moves ahead here. So the Tulsequah Chief really is, you know, the poster child of what can go wrong here.
Ayana Young Yeah, I think holding the government and corporations accountable is such an important job and a job that takes a lot of energy and effort. And I'I’d like to make sure listeners fully understand what acidic runoff entails in terms of the ramifications it has on river inhabitants and the surrounding community. What are the physiological impacts of these heavy metals in terms of the immediate impact, as well as the cumulative effects since this has been going on for decades?
Chris Zimmer So we have a couple really nasty heavy metals that kind of rise to the top for their worry. Copper is one of the big ones, because copper in incredibly small quantities, and in quantities well below water quality standards can have what we call these sub-lethal effects on fish, especially juvenile and young salmon, that the copper unless it's concentrated is extremely high, it doesn't kill the fish outright or quickly, but what it does is it can essentially impact that fish's system to where it is essentially just unhealthy to where that fish will have trouble finding mates, it will interrupt the fish's homing instinct, which brings it back to its spawning grounds, so who knows where that fish will end up, it can impact its ability to find mates and escape predators. So essentially what it does is it may not kill that fish outright, but it will make it much much less likely that fish will grow to adulthood and spawn, so you won't have that fish contributing to the next generation.
There's another metal called selenium which is also in a lot of these deposits. The biggest issue, the biggest problem with Selenium right now is there are a number of BC coal mines up upstream of Montana. In the Elk Flathead drainage. Those mines are pouring out tons of selenium into the BC side of the river, which is then flowing across the border into the Montana rivers, and they've documented very high levels of selenium. One of its main effects is it can lead to fish deformities. We've seen fish with two jaws, fish with bent spines, fish that just look like some kind of franken-fish. They just don't develop naturally, normally, and again, they're very less likely to get back to their spawning areas. We're talking trout in these Montana rivers, not salmon and steelhead, but the Elk Valley and the Flathead Valley are amazing wilderness rivers, they have incredible fish populations. But right now they have very high selenium levels because these upstream coal mines, and BC continues to try to bend over backwards to work with a company and give them as much kind of wiggle room as they can, instead of simply setting a standard of "Okay, this level of selenium is bad. If you exceed this, you’ve got to stop." But they haven't put a halt to the activities, the Selenium still pouring into the river. So again, you have a complex enforcement regime here that's not really working. Some of the other metals, whether it's arsenic or lead, can also create problems with the fish. And again, it's these sub lethal effects that can inhibit the fish's ability to spawn. And again, a lot of these metals levels are below water quality standards, so even under the existing law, the law says this level is okay. But the biology of the fish says it's not. It's very insidious at these levels because you don't see a lot of fish floating belly up, you don't see these big fish kills. What you'll see eventually is less spawning and drops in populations, but it's hard to monitor. It takes a lot of water quality testing and fish testing. And then it takes the political will to go out and enforce the laws based on this testing and reduce the metal loading. So acid mine drainage is an incredible problem for water quality for fish. It can impact the bugs and insects and the little critters that live on the bottom of the river that then feed the bigger critters. Once you get that amount of acid mine drainage into the systems, you can really start impacting the life at all levels here and once it's happening, it's very difficult to stop and clean up as the Tulsequah chief is showing us.
Ayana Young Yeah. Thank you for sharing those details with us. And I’ve heard that BC has since selected a contractor to develop a clean-up plan, and I’m curious to hear more about the scale of this plan because I think it is really vital for us to understand what is required for this type of reclamation in terms of resources; and that there is some urgency to ensuring that reclamation happens while we are still able to do so...Can you elaborate on what you know about BC’s clean up plan?
Chris Zimmer Yes, BC has produced a draft cleanup plan with a contractor. And it's really, it's not a specific plan that says we're gonna do X, Y, and Z. And we will get ABC results, it kind of is a list of options and questions, it's like a plan to plan because the site is so complex. They still don't understand how water moves around the site. Where it's groundwater is upwelling, how the snow melt behaves, what's happening in the underground, this is an underground mine, not an open pit, how water is moving around underground. And then what you can do to essentially stop that water movement. And then you stop the reaction creating the acid mine drainage. And when you look at the Tulsequah Chief, it's a very small mine, it was talking about mining about 1500 or 2000 tonnes of ore a day. Some of the mines being proposed in the other drainages are orders of magnitude bigger than that 50,000, 100,000 tonnes a day vastly bigger, meaning the problems are going to be bigger. So Tulsequah, despite its small size, is actually showing how difficult and expensive it is to deal with acid mine drainage. And we haven't seen, you know, a mine the scale of Pebble or KSM in the Unuk be built and operated yet. But we are pretty fearful that essentially we'd see a Tulsequah Chief situation that's vastly bigger ,more expensive, and more difficult to clean up. So the reclamation plan has this list of options of "Okay, how are we going to try to stop water flowing in and out of the mine and stop this reaction. And given that you can't stop it 100%? What are we going to do with the existing polluted water that's still going to come out of the mine." There are water treatment technologies, you can treat the water, but they're expensive, they have to operate forever. You have to have staff come and maintain them. And in a remote area like the Taku that's difficult. The other strategy, sometimes they look at is essentially dilution, build a big holding pond by the side of the river, the polluted water flows into that the pond eventually fills up and then starts flowing into the river. So the pollution is still getting into the river, but it's diluted. And you know, there's a host of reasons to be concerned about that because although it's diluted, you know, you're still getting the same amount of heavy metals and pollution into the river. It's just mixed in with a lot more water. So the question is, does that reduce the effects on water quality and fish, and if so, where? A mile downstream? 100 yards downstream?
So it is likely that there is still going to be polluted water coming out of this mine essentially forever, but hopefully massively reduced amounts. So we're looking at a cleanup effort right now though, probably taking five to 10 years at least and that is going to have to be monitored essentially forever to make sure it worked. Looking at a cost of 50 to $100 million. And the bond that the two companies had when they were in existence before they went bankrupt, was on the order of about a million and a half dollars that's already been spent, ao any further cleanup activities at Tulsequah Chief are going to be have to be paid either by the taxpayer which is a bad precedent and calls into question BC's polluter pay principle, or you have to go back to the original owner, which was Teck Cominco. now known as Teck. They were the original owner, and so under BC law, they're still liable. But Teck is a massive company with incredible political power in BC. Teck is actually the company that owns these big coal mines up above Montana, that's polluting the hell out of Montana. So Teck is already a bit on the hot seat there. But BC we're hoping to see that BC does go back to Teck and say, "Look, you made this mess, you walked away, you got to clean it up," rather than sticking the taxpayer for it, because that's a bad precedent. It's a bad model. It lets the industry off the hook. It tells them they don't have to follow these types of regulations. It just sends a very poor message.
Let's see what else you got. Oh, the urgency here. Yeah, the urgency. I mean, we've had 50, 60 years of pollution here, we have trouble with the Chinook in the watershed. Right now we have a political moment where a lot of interests are aligned to clean up the mine. But if you get a new government in BC, or political changes that could change, I think we need to seize this moment right now. And pretty much lock in the cleanup of the Tulsequah Chief, so that we're not subject to political changes. And also just to stop the pollution flowing into the, into the watershed. And this, this, again, is like the warning bell for us on all these other rivers and all these other mines of "Boy, this is what we've seen in this relatively small mine. This is what we've seen with the regulatory regime. This is what we've seen happening on the river." All this makes us nervous, and we want to essentially make sure the mechanisms are in place. So this doesn't happen again. If we get a mine the size of, you know, the scale of Pebble or something much bigger than Tulsequah Chief, I mean, the cleanups could go up into the hundreds of millions or billions, you could have vastly more pollution flowing into the rivers. And you might have, you know, issues at a scale that are hard to deal with, like the Mount Polley mine. What it showed was the fact that you know these tailings dams are eventually going to fail or leak. You know, they're made by humans, we're fallible, we're not perfect. And this idea of putting a huge amount of water behind those tailings dams, just creates this ticking time bomb. And eventually, when those dams fail, the water drives all the tailings out of the site downstream into the rivers. And if you didn't have all that water behind the dam, you would essentially just have more of a big landslide instead of something that can travel miles and miles. So one of the issues we have with BC is their technology. Using these big tailings dams with millions of gallons of water behind them, is essentially a ticking time bomb, it's passes off the risk to future generations, and it means that somebody who knows who and who's gonna pay for this has to monitor those tailings dams forever, because they're gonna sit there forever, and they are this ticking time bomb. You know, after 50 or 100 years, the company that built the mine is gone. They're not around. So who's going to monitor these mines in the long term? Who's going to clean them up? You know, we're really passing the buck to future generations on that one.
Ayana Young It's just so intense, but important to hear how destructive these mining projects are, and just hearing about BC and the money allocated for reclamation. And yeah, I was reading that in 2018, it was reported that the province is over a billion dollars short when it comes to their estimated total cleanup liability. And yeah, just knowing that the Tulsequah Chief mine will cost nearly a million dollars a year in maintenance for perpetuity. So these pay issues are really just really incredible, in a horrible way to hear about how disorganized the cleanup is, when it comes to the folks in power, because ultimately they don't want to take responsibility. They don't really want to deal with their mess. And yeah, so goodness gracious. But I did want to also speak to the Trump administration, and I know that they pushed for decentralizing environmental policy. And with the new administration office that is looking to adjust policy, I'm curious to hear you talk about whether or not you think federal involvement is needed in this issue? What does this sort of work look like between allies in the so-called the United States and Canada, and perhaps how does thinking about these issues in terms of domain, jurisdiction and federal responsibility, hinder or impact those who are coming to this issue with a deep reverence and love for these places, and the kin that they nourish?
Chris Zimmer For your first issue, federal involvement is absolutely necessary here. We've been pushing for that for years and years, and that push is growing stronger. You can't just leave this to the state of Alaska and the province of BC. The issue is too big. It's beyond the resources of the state in the province. There are federal laws and treaties such as the Boundary Waters treaty that come into play that the federal government is responsible for, you know those up to BC I think they would just like to have a nice cozy relationship with Alaska and you know, promote each other's mining activities and not get into the really nitty gritty of the bad side here. So, we've been demanding federal involvement to bring in the Boundary Waters treaty, to bring in more money and resources, to bring in more expertise. You know, the EPA has a lot of expertise in cleaning up acid mine drainage sites. The US government has more money than Alaska, with the new administration here. They are reaching out to tribes and some of the environmental groups to ask, you know, what are the big issues? What do we need to do? What do we need to change? You, unfortunately, this is in BC. So we are asking a foreign government to do something where we really right now do not have the ability to force them to do that. There's not a lawsuit or law to trigger that we could order BC around, you know, they're a sovereign government. So a lot of this is negotiating with BC, trying to bring the tribes and the First Nations to the table given that they're sovereign governments and make the clear case that this is not just a provincial issue, you know, these transboundary salmon are sold all over the country all over the world, on some cases. You have a number of different governments that have to be active here. So we definitely need the feds involved here, because the province and the state clearly can't handle the scope of the issues, which also you know gets out the jurisdiction here. We don't have jurisdiction over BC, and it's going to be a long involved process to change the way BC regulates its mining. And one of the really only ways to do this is just expand the issue, bring in the broader governments, bring in the downstream stakeholders.
You know, as I think I said before, us in Alaska, we're downstream, we get no benefit from the BC mines, but we bear all the risk. And there's really not much recognition of that, or any mechanism in place, or in the works to try to try to fix that. And we need the state of Alaska, but we also need the US federal government to stand up and say, these BC mining activities in the transboundary, certainly have the potential to impact Alaskan and US waters, those potentially impacted Alaskans need a seat at the table. And right now we don't really have a seat at the table, you know, the mining industry or company may call us up and say, "Hey, we're going to do this mine, or this is our plan. What do you think? What are your concerns?" You know, that essentially they take all those concerns and kind of round file them. You know, we haven't seen those concerns really dealt with, you know, I think the mining industry, oh, they're just checking off a box that "Yeah, we talked to the Alaskans, we collected all their concerns, and just trust us, we'll deal with it, everything will be fine in the long run." And "just trust us" is not a not a concept we're gonna go with here, you have to have something that really holds their feet to the fire with some credibility here and create some certainty as well. So people like me and the mining industry both know what to expect and what's expected of them. So we're looking at bringing the feds in for that. But we also need a host of changes with NBC, we talked a little about their lack of bonding, the fact that money usually isn't there for clean up, the issue that they still rely on these tailings dams that have millions of gallons of water behind them and are a ticking time bomb. There's still just in general, a lax enforcement regime, there's no mechanism to compensate Alaskans if our interests are degraded or impacted by upstream activities. So there's a host of regulatory things that really need to happen here. And it's beyond the state and the province here, you know, especially just given the scale of this region, you know, we're talking massive watersheds, massive rivers, very remote, hard to get to, and it's just expensive to operate in these areas. So we we need really an overhaul the way BC does mining, we need an Alaskan seat at the table, and we need the US federal government to stand up and say this is a national issue, this isn't just a state provincial issue, protecting these Alaskan fisheries is essentially in the national interest of the country.
Ayana Young I’m just so grateful to you, and folks like you, who are, as you say, holding the governments' and corporations' feet to the fire, I think that that is so necessary, and just to be so engaged, involved. So obviously, so much research and experience has gone into understanding the complexities that you are dealing with on a daily basis. So I just, I'm feeling a lot of gratitude. And I understand that the second issue the Taku is facing is a new proposed mine, that would also be called Tulsequah Chief, which, after what we’ve been talking about - feels truly absurd when we are only now beginning to see an effort towards cleaning the original mine up. Why is this being proposed as a solution and what is the feasibility that this mine opens again?
Chris Zimmer There's the Tulsequah Chief itself, which was operating and abandoned in the 1950s. There were the two companies in the late 90s and, and back in 2010, that bought the mine and tried to redevelop it under the kind of philosophy of we'll redevelop it, we'll make some money, we'll build a mine, and then we'll clean it up and everybody will be happy. The bubble burst on that a while ago. So there is not, although it's still theoretically possible, a new company could come in and buy the Tulsequah chief and redevelop it. That window is really only open for the next year, because of the way the bankruptcy process went. A bankruptcy court ruled that Chieftain Metals, the current owner can try to find a new buyer between now and next August– August 2022, but if they don't find a new buyer, then the mine goes away, it's BC's responsibility, we clean it up. So we kind of have this year window right now where theoretically a new company could come in and buy it. But BC opposes that Alaska does, the Taku River Tlingit, we do. The mine is really not economical. It's got a host of liabilities. So we don't see that the Tulsequah Chief is really likely to be redeveloped, I think BC is on the path to clean it up and close it down. There is, though, another old mine, right across the river and downstream from Tulsequah Chief, you can see the two mines from the properties, called New Polaris. And that was operated as well back in the 50s and then closed down, but there's now a new company wanting to explore and reopen that. And you got to ask the common sense question of, “we have had decades of controversy and pollution from the Tulsequah Chief. We are now finally moving to clean that up, which will take years and 10s of millions of dollars. Why the hell would we be talking about in permitting a similar mine, within sight of the Tulsequah Chief?” I mean it from a logic perspective, it makes no sense. If we're really looking at trying to eliminate the effects of mining and the Tulsequah Valley, if you get rid of the Tulsequah Chief, but then allow New Polaris to rise up, you know, all you've done is traded one problem for the other. So the New Polaris project makes us very nervous because it could, you know, essentially bring back all the problems from Tulsequah Chief that we're starting to address. And yet, we can't get any response from the British Columbia government about New Polaris, you know, we asked them, “Well, given this problem, why would you allow another problem here?” And they really it's a difficult question for them, they probably don't want to address it. It'd be good to keep the Tulsequah Chief clean up simple, and it's on its own. But you have this huge complicating factor of another proposed mine right across the river. And it also points out a lack of long term vision, really what is BC's long term vision for the Tulsequah Valley and the lower Taku watershed.
You know, the Tulsequah River is the largest tributary to the Taku. And the mines we're talking about are around the Tulsequah several miles upstream from where the Tulsequah meets the Taku river, and then a couple dozen miles upstream of the international border. So when you look at this, you know, this is right in Juno's backyard. And it's been a huge controversy here for a couple decades and again, we've got to keep raising this comments and question of what is the long term vision we can't keep looking at development piecemeal of "Okay, we have a mine we look at it, we spent 10 years, you know, reviewing it, then the next project comes along and the next one." What we really need is a long term vision for the lower Taku that recognizes its values, recognizes the threats from mining, and essentially creates a regime where mining and mineral staking is not allowed in that region. So we can solve the problem once and for all, and so that you and I and 10 years are not having the same conversation about the same mines. That we actually accomplished something here and move on to other priorities.
Ayana Young Well, you know, I've spoken on the program before about British Columbia's modern day Gold Rush with Nuskmata (Jacinda Mack). And for those of you who haven't heard those episodes we had, they're incredible. And I have so much love for Nuskmata. So please go listen to those as well to really dive into this topic. But, you know, in preparation for our conversation, I’ve heard you speak about the reality that much of what these companies are interested in mining for are resources needed for the green energy industry and technological sectors. Can you candidly share with us what is being mined, why there is still money to be made, and what the marketplace connections are?
Chris Zimmer What the most of these mines we're talking about are, with the exception of mines I mentioned up above Montana, are hard rock mineral mines, so we have gold, silver, copper led, but mainly you're looking at gold, silver, and copper as probably the top three.. And right now the mining industry is certainly putting out a very aggressive message that we can mine our way out of the climate crisis, that the mining is needed to create the materials for windmills, the metals you need for car batteries for electric cars, that if we are going to move away from fossil fuels and move to a green energy strategy, not only do we need mining, but we need a hell of a lot more mining. I kind of disagree with that. I mean, clearly, we're going to need more copper, for instance, you know, for electric vehicles. The question is, where does that come from? We also need gold. Gold is used in plating and a lot of electrical components, things like that. But when you look at gold, for instance, there's a ton of gold to be recycled, there's tons of copper to be recycled in different areas, and there's piles of computers and cell phones that can be mined for certain minerals. So one of the things to look at here is recycling our mineral supply and not looking at it as a throwaway thing. We're certainly going to need more metals to deal with climate change. The question is, where are they going to come from? How much of that can we get through recycling? How much of that can we get through different technologies? And if we are really going to need more mining, that needs to be done in a vastly different way than it's been done, and that it's been done now. If the miners want to step up and say, yeah, we're going to help with this climate strategy, they can't do that at the expense of salmon and water quality and habitat. If they are going to expand their activities, they're gonna have to expand their safeguards as well. So it's not as simple as we could just mine our way out of this. It's more complex than that. That's an easy corporate slogan to throw out there. But it ignores things like looking for different technologies, recycling, and then also where are these mines going to be? Everybody thinks gold is this rare material. I mean there's gold everywhere. The question is, where is it in a way that there's enough of it, and it's that you can get at it economically? I had one mining engineer tell me that you can have an economical mine, you can have an environmentally safe mine. But you can't have both because it's too expensive. You know, that's kind of a disturbing concept there. But I think you know, us as environmentalists have really been challenged like this, we have to look and say, "Well, you know, we're not going to abandon our push for clean energy and dealing with the climate strategy. But on the other hand, we don't want to give free rein to the mining industry." And that probably isn't, you know, sufficient anyway. So I think it's a big challenge here of "Okay, can the mining industry change to where they can contribute to the climate change strategies? Are they willing to do that? And how are we going to create a regime that creates some trust on both sides?"
But clearly, climate change is driving all kinds of debates and controversies, whether it's over salmon fishing, and how many fish whoever gets the catch whether it's over water supply, and use and who gets the amount of water from the rivers? And now, you know, how are we going to address a very possible aggressive expansion of mining in different areas? So I don't think any of us have the answer to this one. But clearly, mining our way out of it is not a solution. Additional mining may be an option here and part of the overall approach, but it's just not as simple as that. And there's a, you know, an expansion in mining comes with cost, cost, the fish cost, the water quality costs for cleanup. And one thing I wanted to get at is this kind of issue of sustainability. We had been contacted by a contractor for a mining company a couple weeks ago and they said they were doing a sustainability report and they wanted to interview us. Well, our first question was "What do you mean by sustainability? Are you talking sustainability of this mine, of the mining industry, of fish, of fishing?” And they didn't have a good answer. And our take on this was well, the minerals if you mined them out of the ground, yeah, you get 10 or 20 years of economic activity, then they're gone. And then you have a ticking time bomb. The salmon, since the beginning of time have always come back to these rivers. And if we give them a productive, healthy place to come back to water quality, spawning gravel, those salmon are going to continue to come back forever, they will continue to provide the food, the resource, the economics, the culture, in the recreation, if we just give them a happy home.
And that's, that is a long term sustainable vision. When you look at sustainability related to the mining industry, I mean, I don't know how you could ask, Is this mine sustainable? It's one mining project, I think you could ask, does it threaten other sustainable resources? And then you could look at the sustainability of the mining industry as a whole. How sustainable is it economically? How sustainable is it given its effects on other industries, other habitats, other landscapes. So we keep seeing this phrase sustainability thrown around. And I think people mean vastly different things there. When we talk sustainability, we mean, whatever happens in these watersheds, it needs to sustain the existing values, the water quality, the fisheries, the game populations, and the essential overall integrity of these watersheds so that they're not carved up into little pieces. And that also gets at this long term vision. You know, BC's long term vision of the trans boundary watershed seems to be based on mining. The vision on the Alaska side is fish, you know, we get a lot more in fisheries values out of these watersheds than minerals. And with BC, it's the opposite. So you have that kind of contradiction to deal with as well, not only for specific mines, but for the long term vision of what kind of activities are going to be essentially allowed and fostered and encouraged in these, these watersheds here. And maybe this whole climate change issue is finally giving us some more of a long term vision here and starting to raise some questions, whether we can carry this out, whether we can answer the questions, whether you can fix the problems, who knows. But I think we've got to take a much longer term view of these watersheds and the activities that we're going to be promoting in them.
Ayana Young Oh, that was such a good overview and something that I feel really passionate about, with thinking about the green New Deal or this green energy industrial complex where I know, we, you know, I think for most of us, we want so badly to find solutions out of the crisis we're in. But I see that so many of these solutions are in no way getting us out of the crisis, they're actually just the continuation of what put us in the crisis to begin with. And I think it's really important for us to, to take a deep breath, and actually look at what it really is, and what it's going to take us to get to these places, and how destructive mining has been. And sure, maybe you're not pumping fossil fuels out of the ground, to put in your vehicle. But there had to be fossil fuels taken out of the ground to be putting into the huge machines that create the mines that then pollute the rivers so it's like, we cannot be fools here, we need to really see the full picture so that we can consensually make decisions. So I'm just so happy you spoke to that. It's definitely something that I feel so strongly about. And yeah, Chris, this has been so beautiful and just and disturbing, like all of the things that these conversations are both just the beauty and the terror. And as we come to close, I'm thinking about how Rivers without Borders has been doing this work since 1999. And I'd like to ask you about what your dream is for this place in terms of reclamation, a moratorium on mining and getting folks to pledge allegiance to these rivers that supersede colonial borders and jurisdictions.
Chris Zimmer The border really is just a line on the map, you know, the fish don't respect the border, the pollution doesn't magically stop at the border. You know, one of the things that come up over the last few years is people realizing that you know, that border is an artificial construct, that we've got to look at these watersheds as intact systems and not look at them as okay the upstream half and BC and the lower half. So one of the things is taking that holistic approach there. As you just said, one thing I did mention was that climate footprint of, okay if the mining industry is just gonna expand what is going to be then their contribution to global warming itself? Because you got a lot of diesel trucks, you've got a lot of gasoline powered equipment. And there is now more, I think, willingness of some of the mining companies to address those types of or least quantify those impacts when they do their environmental analysis of the mine. So that realization is there as well, I guess our long term vision for the Taku I'd say we cut it in two pieces, the first one cleanup and closed down the Tulsequah Chief in a way that it just will never be reopened. stop the pollution, clean it up, and essentially restore the site to as much of its previous condition as we can. And then what we would like to see is somehow address New Polaris, and halt the development of that mine, which was right across the river from Tulsequah Chief. And then in the longer term, I think BC would formally create a no-staking reserve, protected area, there are a variety of different designations that it would essentially forbid that kind of heavy industrial development, and recognize the fish and water quality and cultural values of the area and prioritize sustaining them versus opening up the area to road building and mining and logging and things like that. That we get the short term problem with Tulsequah Chief, we create a long term vision, I think it would set somewhat of a precedent. And then we can actually move on, you know, this has been 20 years over this relatively small mine, while BC is moving aggressively to create mines that are 10, 20, 30 times bigger, would last a lot longer. And therefore when problems come up, they're going to be vastly increased as well.
And also recognize the Taku watershed itself as a potential refuge for fish during climate change – the amount of clean cold water it has, the amount of rain and snowfall. We're not worried about the Taku going dry anytime soon. And it could, you know, be a freshwater refuge for fish during climate change. And during a period when you know the ocean is a little bit hostile to the salmon as well here. So you have a long term vision to maintain the integrity, the water quality, the fish and the Taku. And make sure that we're not dealing with mining threats anymore, because we have a host of other activities and issues in the trans boundary to deal with. We need to solve the Taku and move on.
Ayana Young Yeah, well, before we say goodbye, I'm wondering, Chris, how can listeners support this work?
Chris Zimmer Boy, there's I mean, this is really where we're looking to come in all hands on deck thing. And there are a host of things that are needed here. I mean, some people have money to donate, some people have time to donate. Some people have technical expertise. someone knows Lisa Murkowski and goes to cocktail parties with her. I mean, there's a whole range of things we need to do here. A couple of things we're trying to do right now are the kind of same old, boring, traditional stuff of writing letters, writing emails, making sure Murkowski and Sullivan continue to hold BCC to the fire, continue to keep the pressure on Governor dunlavy here in Alaska, to maintain the focus on transboundary. On the BC side, we're trying to get a flood of letters into the ministries. telling them that this is an important public issue Tulsequah Chief is a priority. So there's that, and I gotta admit, I don't know social media at all, I'm a kind of technological Luddite, the social media is kind of a mystery to me. But one of the things that’s just getting people together, and that's putting out information on Facebook and the other platforms, getting our action alerts out as far and wide as they can on the letters. If you're a fisherman, if you have a fishing business, we definitely need your help, because those types of businesses are dependent on a healthy Taku.
So one of the best things I really recommend for folks is to get in touch with us, and depending on your wants, your needs, your abilities, your skills, their variety of things we could use help with. But one of the big things, again, is just that public pressure, that sends the message that this is an important public issue, we're not going to let it go. This is a fundamental first step that if we can't take, we're never gonna be able to deal with the implications of other mining. So the Tulsequah Chief is a necessary first step to a longer term strategy of dealing with upstream BC mining here. And what one of the things that really is put the pressure on BC is the other coordinated outcry from Southeast Alaska to Washington state where they're facing mining in the headwaters of the Skagit on the BC side to Montana. We're all facing the same dynamic here. We're downstream of BC mines. And that's the dynamic from Montana to Southeast Alaska here. That's millions of people who are involved in that and having those people come out in public and say I want this river protected, or I need protected, because this is what feeds my family. I think that has had a huge impact on BC, and it's brought the state of Alaska and the US federal government into the fight. But it's been 20 years here, we've got to continue to maintain this pressure. So a lot of it is just people power here. And then you can get more into technical things. If you know if there are folks with technical expertise, if they can analyze effects of mining, they know about heavy metals and fish. So we can if there are folks interested, we will one way or another find something for them to do to help us here. I guess one of the one other things I would add that that's kind of odd that you hear from folks is there was a bumper sticker a few years ago here in Juneau, in Southeast and I think Bristol Bay that said, you know, you love wild salmon, then eat one. And you know, I gotta admit, I got a fair amount of questions about well, wait a minute, are we trying to save the fish? Why would you want to eat them, aren't they endangered? So part of our push here is to essentially maintain this resource. I mean, wild salmon are incredible resources. They're the best food on the planet. They support, you know, thousands of families in a sustainable industry. The fisheries, although it's always a controversy, are regulated, who gets the catch how many fish in general, I think are decently regulated up here. You know, the biggest threat to them is not overfishing, for sure. But I think to demonstrate to, you know, the powers that be that salmon are important, they're not just, it's not just a pretty picture we want to see in a museum, it's not something we want to put behind a fence and just look at it. They are economic, cultural, recreational resource. And we want to make sure that resources are around forever. So that 100 years, you know, we don't have a couple of fish in the Smithsonian Museum where people can walk in there and see him in a tank because they're not in the wild anymore. So oddly enough, I think one of the things people can do to help protect and preserve and promote wild salmon is to actually eat one.
They're not all endangered, the fisheries in general are fairly well regulated. Farm salmon have a host of problems. They're definitely not near the quality of the fish, they have their own environmental problems. And they actually threaten wild salmon by being in the same waters with predators and pests and genetic issues there. You know, the beast with farmed salmon is you got to move the farms on land, and I think that would solve a fair amount of the problems. Now that the farm salmon are in the ocean in these big pens, that's creating a real risk to wild fish. But farm salmon can certainly provide a hell of a lot of protein if it's done, right. But the wild fisheries are still you'll never match the quality of a wild caught Chinook as compared to a farm fish. So I think people should not be afraid of eating wild salmon. In general, they're not on the endangered list. Except when you look at some of the Columbia River and Oregon and a few California stocks, but they're not fished hard, but there are healthy sustainable stocks of wild salmon out there that can put food on the table. And I don't want folks to think that salmon are not a resource you can utilize, whether through fishing or eating or food. You know, they really sustain people throughout the region here both economically and spiritually and, and I guess also nutritionally.
Ayana Young Yeah. Yeah. I'm thinking about their deliciousness as you speak. So thank you, Chris, for all that you've shared with us. I'm really appreciative and can't wait to get up there and hopefully meet you in person soon.
Chris Zimmer Oh, you're welcome. You too. Thanks for having me on. And I look forward to seeing you here in a couple weeks.
Ayana Young Ditto.
Francesca Glaspell Thank you for listening to For The Wild Podcast. The music you heard today was by Jon Yonts, GoldenOak, and Larkhall. For The Wild is created by Ayana Young, Erica Ekrem, Francesca Glaspell, and Julia Jackson.