Herring letter

A letter was sent January 8 2016 to the Hon. Mr. Tootoo, Federal Minister of Fisheries, Oceans and Canadian Coastguard and the Hon. Ms. McKenna, Federal Minister of Environment and Climate Change.

In the letter to the Ministers we ask for a review of the Herring Spawn assessment and reject Woodfibre LNG’s Once Through Cooling system proposal.

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Print the letter
Use to the ‘Pop-out’ button that will appear when you hover your cursor over the top-right of the letter screen. It will open up a tab from which you can print the letter.

Download the letter
Download letter to the Ministers. Can also be used to print the letter.

View Buchanan’s Herring survey report
Compilation report John Buchanan’s survey work in Howe Sound North 2010 – 2015

More information about proposed Logdump at Folger Creek

Brief history
Early August 2015, we started working on the Herring spawn in Howe Sound North and in Woodfibre LNG’s application one short paragraph made it clear that the company was aware of a ‘Citizens scientist’ observing Herring spawn in Howe Sound. However Woodfibre LNG didn’t do what we did: contact the person in question, John Buchanan from Squamish and asked him for his survey data.

What Woodfibre LNG did instead is known: it submitted a proposal for a Cooling system appropriate for a location where NO herring spawn is present and simply ignored DFO’s Guideline that seawater intakes are to be located 2 km or more away from historic Herring Spawn. Although, Woodfibre LNG’s 2015 Herring spawn survey came back positive, DFO and EAO didn’t demand the cooling system and the location of its water intake to be changed.

Compiling Bachanan’s data we quickly realized that Woodfibre LNG’s Herring spawn 2015 survey resutls were not an one-off: Herring spawn around Woodfibre was observed since 2010. We had the data reviewed by Dr. Doug Hay, one of BC’s Herring experts, who found it to be of value and data that could be added to DFO’s Herring spawn database.

It now became clear that assessment of Herring spawn was based on insufficient information and we have proven with Buchanan’s evidence that Herring spawn observed in 2015 was not an one-off, and DFO’s and EAO’s assessments were premature and simply wrong.

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