Through our Environmental Law Alert blog, West Coast alerts you to environmental law problems and developments affecting British Columbians. It is the public voice of our Environmental Law Alert unit which is a legal “watchdog” for BC’s environment.
If you have an environmental story that we should hear about, please e-mail Andrew Gage. Also, please feel free to comment on any of the posts to this blog – but please keep in mind our policies on comments.
The Jumbo Resort in the Kootenays will negatively impact Grizzlies, according to a Grizzly biologist, Dr. Michael Proctor. Dr. Proctor’s findings were highlighted in a press release from Wildsight and picked up by the Nelson Star.
Dave Quinn, of Wildsight, expresses the hope that the...
In our recent blog post suggesting that the Oil and Gas Commission (OGC) is not properly regulating water use by oil and gas companies in the North East of the province, we didn't directly point out that the province's current efforts to "modernize" BC's archaic Water Act could (if done right) help solve some of these problems.
The post explains how the OGC has been issuing and re-issuing short-term (1 year) approvals to...
Stories sampled over the past week include:
Rabble.ca has just published the following opinion piece from West Coast Environmental Law's Josh Paterson, which we reproduce below for our readers.
...This mine would permanently destroy an area that is a place of worship for our people, a cultural school for our children, and a bread basket that has fed our people for centuries.
Yesterday the Ministry of Environment released its 1st Quarter Compliance and Enforcement Report for 2010. Ordinarily this would not be news (there are 4 of them a year, after all), but this one caught my eye – primarily because we’d given the Ministry such a hard time about plummeting enforcement levels earlier this year (here’s...
Looking for a tasty morsel of environmental law news? Some of the stories that caught our eye over the past week or so include:
Last week’s events should have sounded some alarm bells for people wondering how the BC government regulates the oil and gas industry in Northeastern BC.
Last week the McLeod Lake Indian Band walked away from BC Hydro’s consultations over the controversial Site C Dam, returning the $100,000 funding that they had been given to enable them to participate in the consultations. The Band is one of the Treaty 8 nations located in Northern BC. Chief Derek Orr was quoted as...
The BP spill in the Gulf of Mexico and the Enbridge Pipeline spill into the Kalamazoo River in Michigan have both brought international attention to the dangers of transporting oil over long distances. Here in BC that’s meant increased scrutiny of Enbridge’s Northern Gateway pipeline and the possibility of oil tankers travelling the province’s treacherous north coast and a sullied reputation for Enbridge.
The Coastal First Nations have been clear in their opposition to the proposed pipeline, most recently at the...
According to Barbara Yaffe’s most recent column in the Vancouver Sun, “Knocking oilsands bolsters Northern Gateway”, the actions of environmental groups, in exposing the environmental impacts of the Alberta tar sands, are making it more ‘imperative’ that Enbridge’s Northern Gateway Project proceed as the U.S. becomes increasingly unwilling to buy tar sands oil.
Even if the U.S. market for tar sands oil one day dries up (...
Why does West Coast Environmental Law need a blog?
About the blog's authors (coming soon)
About West Coast Environmental Law
