NESPELEM – Lawmakers, stakeholders, and expert witnesses participated in a virtual conference on April 8 to discuss the future of wild salmon in the Pacific Northwest and Alaska. The briefing was specific to the British Columbia mining operations in salmon river headwaters.
Participants focused “on the need for a rigorous financial assurances regime in British Columbia, where the mining industry is operating at the headwaters of transboundary salmon rivers flowing into Alaska, Washington, Idaho, and Montana,”
The hour-long briefing, began with opening remarks from U.S. Congressional Wild Salmon Caucus co-chairs Don Young R-AK and Jared Huffman D-CA. The congressmen’s remarks were followed by Washington State Senator Jesse Salomon D-32nd District, Jill Weitz, Campaign Director of Salmon Beyond Borders, and Ephraim Froehlich, principal and founder of AKWA-DC.
According to its website, Salmon Beyond Borders (salmonbeyondborders.org) is a campaign driven by sport and commercial fishermen, community leaders, tourism and recreation business owners and concerned citizens, in collaboration with Tribes and First Nations, united across the Alaska/British Columbia border to defend and sustain our transboundary rivers, jobs and way of life.
AKWA-DC (akwadc.com) founded in 2019 provides creative solutions for fisheries, maritime, and environmental policy from Alaska and Washington State to D.C. A panel of technical experts and community leaders provided short presentations.
Panelists included Colville Business Councilman Jarred-Michael Erickson (Nespelem District), Chairman of the CBC Natural Resource and Fisheries Committees and Chairman for the Upper Columbia United Tribes.
Erickson has a B.S. from Eastern Washington University and worked as a wildlife biologist for the Colville Tribes Fish and Wildlife Department prior to his election to the
CBC. He has extensive experience on the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), intergovernmental natural resource collaboration, and wildfire natural resource damage response. Councilman Erickson, born and raised on the Colville Reservation, is of Okanogan, Colville, and Sinixt (Arrow Lakes) heritage.
Jason Dion, Mitigation Research Director at the Canadian Institute for Climate Choices.
Dion is the lead author of the Ecofiscal Commission report Responsible Risk, which studied financial assurance as a public policy tool and evaluated its application in the mining sector in jurisdictions across Canada. He is also the lead author of a series of reports from the First Nations Energy and Mining Council (FNEMC) that evaluates British Columbia’s financial assurance system for its mining sector, and possibilities for its reform.
Dr. David Chambers, founder and president of the Center for Science in Public Participation. Dr. Chambers has 45 years of experience in mineral exploration and development. He has a Professional Engineering Degree in physics from the Colorado School of Mines, a Master of Science Degree in geophysics from the University of California at Berkeley and is a registered professional geophysicist in California (#GP 972). Dr. Chambers received his Ph.D. in environmental planning at Berkeley. His recent research focuses on tailings dam failures, and the intersection of science and technology with public policy and natural resource management, financial assurance for mine closure and post-closure, and the water impacts of mining.
Frances Leach, Executive Director, United Fishermen of Alaska. Leach is a lifelong Southeast Alaskan who grew up commercial fishing with her father in Ketchikan, providing her with connections and first-hand knowledge about the industry she has championed throughout her professional career.
United Fishermen of Alaska (UFA) is the statewide commercial fishing trade association, representing 35 commercial fishing organizations as well as over 400 individuals participating in fisheries throughout the state and in federal waters off our coast.
Two days prior to the briefing the Colville Business Council on behalf of the Colville Tribes of the Colville Reservation (CTCR) unanimously approved an emergency resolution in support of “the efforts of the First Nations to protect the Similkameen and Okanogan watersheds from further pollution and contamination by the mining industry including the Copper Mountain and Nickel Plate mines.”
The resolution addresses the operations and tailings management facilities of the Copper Mountain Mine and Nickel Plate Mine in the Similkameen and Okanogan watersheds and calls for “needed reforms to mining regulatory enforcement, risk management, and financial assurances on present and proposed mines in BC” for the protection of transboundary salmon.
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