Editor:
Re: “Lax Kw’alaams decide to support project on Lelu with two conditions”
So the newly elected mayor of Lax Kw’alaams, John Helin, has climbed aboard the crowded gravy train joining proponents supporting the Pacific NorthWest (PNW) LNG project, which at best, will compromise the fragile, thousands of years old, ecosystem on Lelu Island, known as Flora Bank.
Forget about the people who stood in the rain and wind over the winter on Lelu Island in an attempt to protect the site (and those of us who cheered them on). Forget about the unanimous vote of the people of Lax Kw’alaams which rejected PNW’s proposal last May. Forget about the rhetoric of Indigenous leaders across the country who espouse, “the stewardship of the waters and the earth.”
Forget about the dire warnings from four Russian scientists, who had nothing to gain and who spoke from their knowledge of the adverse effects of LNG facilities in the Sakhalin Island region of Russia. One of whom put it succinctly, “to allow an LNG facility to be established in the estuary of the Skeena River is simply crazy”.
Forget about the concerns of the more than 130 scientists and academics who put their signatures on a letter to the Canadian Environmental Assessment Authority protesting an LNG facility in a vulnerable location like the Skeena River estuary.
Forget the comforting notion held by most of us that some natural ecosystems, belonging to the future as well as the present, are so uniquely precious they would never be considered marketable. It would seem that what we have to remember, with all we have to forget about the proposed PNW LNG project on Lelu Island is what the canny businessmen from Shanghai knew all along: everything is for sale, the only question is the price.
Marg Ciccone
Prince Rupert