Last year, Pat Grantt and a group of her neighbours in Heffley Creek, a northern suburb of Kamloops, contacted Patricia Houlihan, the EDRF Liaison Lawyer regarding a problem they've had with salt contamination of their community water supply.
The Ministry of Transportation and Highways uses a mixture of sand, salt and anti-caking ingredients on the highways during winter months. The mixture is stored both in and outside sheds on a site that sits above the two community wells serving 83 residents of Upper Heffley. The residents indicated that this mixture was leaching into the aquifer feeding the wells, and now affected not only the taste of their water but also the health of their gardens, including the fruit and vegetables grown on their property.
The problem was not just higher sodium content of the water, but
the influx of chemicals used in the anti-caking ingredient. With
the assistance of the EDRF Liaison Lawyer the group worked towards
attempting to negotiate with the Ministry of Transportation and
Highways in order to have the problem rectified. The Ministry
of Highways agreed to supply drinking water for the group. The
bottled water was not enough to address the community's concerns
with respect to the water contamination. The group explained
that the problem arose as early as March 1990, however, nothing
was done until several complaints from the community a couple
of years later. And bottled water was not supplied until July
1994 - four years after the onset of the salt contamination.
In March 1995, the Ministry of the Environment laid charges against Transportation and Highways. Although the residents' concerns have not yet been com-pletely resolved, the group is happy that their efforts were a contributing factor to environment officials taking the precedential step of charging another provincial ministry.
An initial hearing has been set for early June.
Approximately fifty years ago the United Nations was established.
Its Charter pledges to reaffirm fundamental human rights, promote
international peace and security, and promote the economic and
social advancement of all peoples. After five decades several
points became apparent. First, peace cannot come solely through
control of armaments - it demands a healthy environment and the
conservation of natural resources. Second, no single global problem
can be attacked in isolation. Third, the creative energies of
people can contribute to the formation of new value systems, as
well as attack poverty, alienation and environmental degradation.
Finally, the global community must base its efforts on solidarity,
recognize the importance of forming a united front in the fight
against poverty and other social ills, and within this solidarity
there must exist a respect for diversity. Without solidarity
and respect, the agenda of shaping a truly global community can
never happen.
In 1987, the United Nations Environment Program established World Environment Day on June 5 as an annual event. World Environment Day has become an occasion to reflect on progress made to defend the environment, to call for continued change and to celebrate and recognize the work of ordinary people in conserving and preserving our environment. It has become the rallying point for the coordination of environmental efforts and the transference of ideas.
On May 13, West Coast presented its concerns about the need for an effective endangered species law in B.C. at a consultation seminar organized by the federal and provincial governments on a proposed national approach to endangered species conservation. We discussed species loss in B.C. and deficiencies with the current B.C. Wildlife Act as well as the listing process, response actions, habitat management, the need for a strong federal role, legislation and other ways to improve endangered species conservation in Canada. A condensed version of our comments appears below.
The main defect of the proposed national approach is that it leaves too much to the discretion of each jurisdiction. The suggested "agreed set of minimum legislative and regulatory response capabilities" for all jurisdictions should include mandatory listing of species at risk, mandatory prohibitions against killing or harming listed species, and mandatory protection of critical habitat of these species.
British Columbia is Canada's most biologically diverse province, and has the most species of wildlife of any province. A recent survey of the state of biodiversity in B.C. included articles from leading scientists working in universities, government agencies and museums. The decline in biodiversity these authors found is alarming. At least 50 species of invertebrates, 15 species of benthic marine algae, 5 amphibians, 26 fish, 63 bryophytes, 124 vascular plants and several bird species are threatened and endangered and many more are rare and vulnerable. Further, at least 23 species and subspecies have already become extinct or been extirpated from the province, although 3 have since been reintroduced. Authorities recommend these losses be addressed through urgent action, including expanding the scope and application of endangered species legislation.
The current B.C. Wildlife Act is deficient in its ability to protect species in a number of respects, particularly the restricted definition of species, the discretionary nature of the designation procedure and habitat protection procedures.
Species continue to decline under B.C.'s current voluntary approach to endangered species protection. The number of endangered species in B.C. rose between 1991 and 1993 from 107 to 151 of known species. Section 6 of the Act says the Lieutenant Governor in Council may designate a species at risk and section 7 also uses the discretionary word may to refer to the power to designate land as habitat for endangered or threatened species.
The current provincial law has rarely been used to designate species, and has only been used once to protect critical habitat. Since 1980, only four species have been designated: the Vancouver Island marmot, the sea otter, the burrowing owl, and the American white pelican. These species were all designated in 1980 and remain the only species to have received legal designation in the province.
Habitat loss is the single most important factor affecting species loss in B.C. Yet, the Ministry of Environment, Lands and Parks (MELP) does not control most of the habitat on which species depend. MELP controls Crown lands which have been designated as Wildlife Management Areas or Critical Wildlife Areas. The province currently has designated 11 Wildlife Management Areas, but these amount to only 0.02% of the province's area. Most provincial Crown land is managed by the Ministry of Forests for timber production, wildlife and recreation. There is the new B.C. Forest Practices Code, but it does not require protection ofendangered and threatened species, and offers even weaker protection than the Wildlife Act.
West Coast recommended several response actions to be included in new endangered species laws: mandatory habitat protection; habitat conservation plans; and, recovery plans. Using these legal and policy tools can preserve our biological heritage. For a full copy of our brief, please call the office at 6046847378.
- Linda Nowlan
Last month, EDRF Liaison Lawyer Patricia Houlihan attended a four
day training session addressing how to most effectively use the
media, and avoid common pitfalls when being interviewed. The session,
sponsored by the Tides Foundation (thanks!), addressed ways in
which those working towards environmental protection can best
achieve their objectives through the media. The session also
provided hands on practice at being interviewed by a professional
interviewer. For general information regarding working with the
media, please contact Patricia Houlihan at (604) 684-7378.
WCELA strongly supports the government's proposed zero emission
vehicle (ZEV) standards (see WCEL News 18:13), as one of the few
concrete actions proposed anywhere in Canada to reduce carbon
dioxide emissions.
Now it appears that draft regulations mandating sales of a small portion of ZEVs may not go ahead. A small group of car industry reps has put forward its own proposal, currently being discussed behind closed doors with government, which does not address carbon dioxide.
Show your support for zero emission vehicles - write to Environment Minister Elizabeth Cull and your local MLA and ask for these crucial regulations to be passed.
Hold the government to its promises to improve air quality and tackle climate change!
You may have noticed a change in the look of the WCELRF News over the past few issues. We are trying to spiff up the look of this publication without increasing the environmental outfall from improving the design. Here we share some thoughts we have had about publications and their environmental impacts. Advances in technology have made the publication of newsletters within the reach of almost all environmental groups. With a home computer and a wordprocessing program, anyone can turn text into a newsletter. But how much thought are we giving to the consequences of all this extra production and paper?
* Can you use recycled or reused paper for all or part of the job? There are many fine quality recycled and reused papers available now, at very competitive rates. The paper we use in our office, Unity, is 100% recycled, with 50% post-consumer waste. These are all positive environmental factors to look for in choosing paper. Post-consumer waste means that the paper was actually previously used, rather than just made up of mill broke (waste product from the making of paper from the virgin pulp). So, a recycled paper with post-consumer fibre is environmentally superior to recycled paper without post-consumer fibre. We know we all need to get away from 'whiter and brighter is better', but that's not necessarily enough. We can choose paper that is not secondarily bleached or deinked, or, if we must use white paper (for some court documents), we use a white paper that is bleached using hydrogen peroxide, not chlorine. And the more times we can reuse paper, the more paper (and energy, and water) we save. If it doesn't have to be broken down and reconstituted, it is better environmentally. Recently, we have been able to purchase envelopes made out of old maps. And we try to reuse envelopes whenever possible.
* How much printing do you really need? Any printing job produces waste. To get 1000 finished sheets of a printing job, the printer will run at least an extra 100 sheets, or more usually, 200. You don't get those sheets back with your print job -- they are discarded. This is called "printer's proof", and is an industry wide practice to ensure that the customer always gets exactly the requested amount of perfect prints. If you don't need an exact amount back (do you really need exactly 1000 envelopes?), you can ask the printers to get as many finished envelopes out of a starting amount of 1000. That way, the printer doesn't feel obliged to overprint to meet your requirements.
* Do you need to have more than one colour? Outside printing may also mean creation of ink waste water. If your print job is being done on a press (rather than a high speed copier), the press has to get washed down after each use. Where do you think that wash water goes? If you are using more than one colour (ie, black), each colour adds another wash. And that wash water is usually toxic. Unless you are choosing vegetable based inks, you are putting unnecessary pressure on the environment by your choice of ink colour. One better way to get extra colour is by using "screens". Basically, when you print, you print at 100% of the colour capacity of the ink. A screen lets you print in the same colour at less than 100%, giving you a lighter version of the same colour ink. This means you can have a light green, medium green and dark green all out of the same colour, instead of using three different inks.
* Do you need to get your envelopes, memo forms and letterhead all printed? We have decided we don't. At West Coast, we use the postage meter to put our return address on our envelopes, and we don't get envelopes preprinted. We don't get letterhead preprinted -- we use our graphics ability in our wordprocessing program to insert our letterhead graphic into each lettter as it goes to our laser printer. For faxes, if a cover sheet is necessary, we generate one through the laser printer, but usually we try to eliminate the cover sheet where possible. Sometimes we can just put a sticky note on the first page of the actual fax. And we are working on eliminating paper faxes by sending memos directly from our computers through a faxboard to the final fax destination. All this reduces printing and paper waste.
* Does your graphic design take environmental concerns into account? We always avoid fancy printing that goes to the edge of a piece of paper. Did you know that for each piece of printing that has ink right to the edge (called "bleed printing"), that piece of printing must be done on a much larger sheet and cut down after? Printers can't print right to the edge of anything -- otherwise the ink would run over the edge and onto the backside of the paper. They need to leave at least a 3/8" margin (called a "grip") free to keep the ink from running over and to allow the printing press to grab as the piece of paper goes through. So then, after the ink is dry, that grip is cut off all the sides where the design is supposed to go right to the edge. This is a big waste of paper. A strip of paper 3/8" wide may not sound like much paper, but imagine it multiplied for each sheet of a big printing job for a newsletter. And it gets worse. Paper comes in certain standard sizes. To achieve an 8x11 with bleeds on all four sides, the printer buys big sheets of paper and cuts them down, and this causes a lot of waste.
Another way to save paper (and ink waste, and water, and money) is to "gang" up all your printing jobs at one time. If you are ordering special large sheets of paper for something like an annual report, and those sheets are going to be trimmed to size, try to use the trim parts for some other print job. Perhaps you can get business or membership cards printed at the same time from the same piece of paper. By putting all these jobs together, and arranging them like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle onto big sheets, you can really cut down on all kinds of waste. You can get help from your printer in deciding what to gang up in your next printing job.
Another way to reduce the environmental impact of colour printing is to have designs that don't involve "close" or fine register. Close register involves two or more colours that have to be carefully lined up against each other for the graphic to be successfully printed. As you might imagine, not each piece of paper that runs through a printing press stays in complete alignment. Even a slight deviation of the paper as it travels through the printer can distort a close printed graphic. For close printing, printers do even larger printers' proofs to ensure they have enough "good" finished sheets. The waste can be quite phenomenal for close printing. A better choice would be a graphic image that involved blocks of colour that are separated by bands of black, or lots of white space. Then it doesn't matter if the colour image is printed slightly offside from one sheet to the next. These rough registered images can be just as effective graphically and far superior environmentally. Every little bit helps.
If you want to learn more about paper and environmental concerns, check out the Greenpeace Guide to Paper. And call up Paper Choice, a BC-based paper broker that has been on the cutting edge of making more environmentally friendly paper available. They have been active in the Pulp Campaign and in efforts to bring about the strong provincial regulations to reduce toxic emissions from pulp mills in BC.
- Catherine Ludgate
WCELRF, 1001 207 West Hastings, Vancouver, B.C., V6B 1H7, Canada. Phone (604) 6847378; fax (604) 6841312; email wcelrf@unixg.ubc.ca. Printed on 100% recycled paper (not secondarily bleached or de-inked).
WCELRF Newsletter (ISSN #0715-4275), copyright 1995, is
published by the West Coast Environmental Law Research Foundation.
Subscription information is above. West Coast Environmental Law
Research Foundation does research and education and maintains
an environmental law library. West Coast Environmental Law Association
provides legal representation and promotes law reform. The mission
of West Coast Environmental Law Research Foundation and West Coast
Environmental Law Association is to provide legal services to
protect the environment and to foster public participation in
environmental decision-making. We are grateful to the Law Foundation
of British Columbia for core funding of West Coast Environmental
Law Association and West Coast Environmental Law Research Foundation.
Donations to West Coast Environmental Law Research Foundation
are tax creditable.
This issue was produced by Bill Andrews, Morgan Ashbridge, Jessica Clogg, Chris Heald, Ann Hillyer, Patricia Houlihan, Ted Lewko, Catherine Ludgate, Lisa McBain, Alexandra Melnyk, and Linda Nowlan.