Native Group Opposes Mining Project on Sacred Site

Every summer since 2005, a group of elders from the Tahltan First Nation keeps watch over a lonely road in northern British Columbia.

This road, partially washed out though it currently is, is the only road leading to the mineral-rich and stunningly beautiful Klappan Valley on the southern-most end of the huge Spatsizi Wilderness.

Calling themselves the Klabona Keepers, the elders and their supporters are attempting to halt resource development in the Klappan, including a coal-bed methane mining project planned for the region by Royal Dutch Shell.

Known to First Nations as the Sacred Headwaters, the Klappan Valley is the birthplace of three of Canada's great rivers: the Nass, the Skeena and the Stikine. The rivers are home to a variety of salmon species, as well as steelhead trout, contributing $110-million annually to the local economy.

The legends of the First Nations peoples in the area hold that the Sacred Headwaters is the place where the world was created, and that this is where their cultures originated. The area teems with wildlife, including the world's largest population of Osborne caribou.

In 2004, the B.C. government awarded the mineral rights in the Klappan to Shell Canada, now owned by Royal Dutch Shell. The Sacred Headwaters happens to sit atop one of British Columbia's largest coal deposits, containing an estimated 8-trillion cubic feet of methane.

Shell's proposed development is to occur in the headwaters basin, which is what worries those who live in the region, native and non-native alike. Coal-bed methane mining, although still at the exploration stage in British Columbia, comes with a bad reputation.

Rhoda Quock, a spokesperson for the elders—most of whom hail from the communities of Iskut and Telegraph Creek—says the Klappan Valley is "highly used" by First Nations for fishing, hunting and trapping. There's a burial ground there, as well as a culture camp where the Tahltan take the youth every summer to teach them their culture.

"If Shell gets in there there's not going to be much of the Klappan left," says Quock. "The rivers would most likely end up dead. It's going to be destroyed."

In 2006, half of all mining exploration activity in northwest B.C. occurred on Tahltan territory, according to Rivers Without Borders. In the face of an unprecedented mining and energy boom, the Talhtan are scrambling to balance potential economic gain with protecting their lands.

Quock says the Tahltan are not against development—they just don't want the six-plus projects that are proposed for the region happening all at once. And they're firmly opposed to any development in the Sacred Headwaters.

After Shell drilled the first three exploratory wells in the headwaters in 2004, the Tahltan began to learn of the impacts of coal-bed methane mining and the growing grassroots opposition to it by farmers, ranchers and First Nations in Alberta and parts of the United States.

A flashpoint in the Tahltan's struggle with Shell occurred in 2005, when four Shell Canada employees who came to the band office in Iskut were turned away by a group of elders and children. The elders read an eviction notice and the employees left. No drilling occurred that summer.

In the summer of 2005 and 2006, the elders erected a human blockade on the road to the Sacred Headwaters, preventing access by two other mining companies who wanted to drill in the Sacred Headwaters. Their non-violent protest delayed drilling but led to the arrest of nine elders and four others.

In August, Shell applied for an injunction to remove the protesters, but because of rallies outside the courthouse and in Smithers in northern B.C., the company adjourned the hearing.

"Coal-bed methane is clean-burning once you actually get it into a pipe; it's just like the stuff you burn in your furnace," says Eric Swanson, campaigner for Dogwood Initiative, a leading land reform organization in BC.

It's getting it out of the ground that poses problems, says Swanson, because the methane is bound to massive coal-beds, which have to be cracked to release it. This usually produces copious amounts of gaseous, salty water that in the mining process has to be pumped out and stored in settling ponds. Or it may be injected back into the ground or spilled over the surface, depending on the quality of the water.

But once the coal-bed has been cracked, the released water, which is sometimes toxic with arsenic and barium, can also make its way up through the earth and into groundwater by itself.

Coal-bed methane development requires a network of roads, pipelines, power lines, wells and noisy compressors. It also includes flaring, a controversial method for burning off excess gas.

Dogwood Initiative says that in areas in the U.S. and Alberta that have commercial production of coal-bed methane, horror stories abound of domestic wells that can be set alight because of methane ending up in local aquifers, of croplands that have become largely infertile, and streams that are no longer fish-bearing because of high salt levels.

"Almost wherever coal-bed methane goes there's opposition to it because it's such a destructive type of fossil fuel extraction," says Swanson.

And there's plenty of opposition in B.C. South of the Sacred Headwaters, the residents of the Bulkley Valley, including the Wet'suwet'en First Nation, have waged an effective campaign against a proposed coal-bed methane field adjacent to the village of Telkwa. Demonstrations against the project have seen over 600 protesters take to the streets of Smithers, a town of only 5,000 people.

In 2003, the Union of B.C. Municipalities unanimously passed a resolution asking the government for a moratorium on coal-bed methane mining in the province.

David Suzuki and Wade Davis, explorer-in-residence for National Geographic, have spoken out against coal-bed methane mining in the Sacred Headwaters, and 14 environmental groups sent a letter to Shell in June stating their opposition to the project. "At Shell, we have tried very hard to reach a full consensus with the community," says Larry Lalonde, a spokesperson for Shell Canada, adding that the Tahltan Central Council (TCC), an elected body within the nation, agreed to the exploration in the headwaters.

"All we know is that they [the TCC] do not speak on the Klabona Keepers behalf," says Quock.

Ex-Tahltan Chief Jerry Asp was forced to resign after the elders staged a 95-day sit-in at the Telegraph Creek band office in 2005. They believed Asp, being involved with two Tahltan pro-development organizations, had a conflict of interest as chief.

While Lalonde is tight-lipped about any legal action against the elders, Shannon McPhail, a spokesperson for the Skeena Watershed Conservation Coalition, a group formed in 2003 to fight coal-bed methane in the Klappan Valley, says Shell has filed a lawsuit against three of the elders for loss of revenue.

"They're suing these people who have nothing," says McPhail. "There are millions upon millions of dollars in resources being pumped out of their territories every year and they don't even have a teacher for their school; they don't have a hospital, a community centre, or lights for their hockey rink."

The Klabona Keepers in turn are suing Shell for failure to consult, says McPhail.

Along with their fight to protect the Sacred Headwaters, the Iskut community is struggling to cope with high rates of substance abuse and suicide.

With natural gas reserves running low in Canada and the United States, and industry and governments looking to coal-bed methane to take its place, it remains to be seen how well the fragile community will cope with a fight that may drag on for some time.