The Prince
Citizen
FRIDAY, MAY 17,1991
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Phone: 562-2441 Classified: 562-6666 Circulation: 562-3301
GOVERNMENT BROKE	COURT RULES
Alcan review order cheered
by BEV CHRISTENSEN Citizen Staff
Native leaders and environmentalists in central B.C. are celebrating today after learning Thursday the Federal Court of Canada has vindicated their long-standing opposition to Alcan’s Sl-billion hydroelectric project west of Prince George.
“This is one of the happiest days I’ve ever had in my life. This is a victory for the Nechako River,” Carrier Sekani Tribal Council Chief Justa Monk said Thursday after learning of a ruling by Justice Allison Walsh.
Justice Walsh ruled the Conservative cabinet had broken its government’s own laws when it issued an order in council in October, 1990, exempting the Kemano II project from its own environment assessment review process.
Walsh not only ordered the government to initiate a public environmental review process by an independent body with full public hearings, but also quashed the 1987 agreement between Alcan and the federal and provincial governments which cleared the way for the company to begin working on the project, about 600 kilometres west of Prince George.
The additional 540 megawatts of power generated by the project was to have been sold to B.C. Hydro.
The David and Goliath-stylc battle over the environmental impact of the Kemano II project pitted the 13,000 members of the Carrier Sekani Tribal Council and the members of the Rivers Defense Coalition in a joint action against the international economic muscle of the Aluminum Company of Canada.
Monk joined other Central Interior residents who are calling on the government to heed Walsh’s findings and immediately initiate a full environmental review of the project.
In the Commons Thursday, Skeena NDP MP Jim Fulton asked federal Environment Minister Jean Charest to set up an environmental review of the Kemano project and give full assurances that all future projects will have to be reviewed before construction begins.
Charest replied he would respond after he and his staff have had time to study the ruling.
Pat Moss of Smithers, chairman of the Rivers Defense Coalition, said Walsh has made a significant legal decision with national implications.
Mall expansion plans under way
by KEN BERNSOHN Citizen Staff
Preliminary work for the redevelopment of Parkwood Mall is under way, a decade after it was an election issue that changed Prince George city council.
“We aren’t in a position to make a formal announcement yet, but we hope to be able to do so within a few weeks,” said Ronald L. Meiers, senior vice-president of Cambridge Shopping Centres. Ltd., owners of the mall.
“I can tell you we’re planning to make the mall far larger than it is, and we expect to get to work on the project before it snows in Prince George,” Meiers said Thursday in a telephone interview from Toronto.
One house, the former Prince
75 years of The Citizen
The Prince George Citizen is 75 years old this year, and we’re celebrating.
We’ve gone back through the pages of the newspaper, and in a special 12-page supplement in today’s Citizen we trace the people and processes that have brought you news from around the city and around the world for the past three-quarters of a century.
Realty building, was moved this week from 12th Avenue across from the mall’s parking lot. It’s expected other buildings on 12th will be demolished, after a formal announcement is made, to make room for the mall expansion.
A survey crew was at work Thursday morning. “We’re just taking some elevation readings, so an architect can finish up his plans,” one of the surveyors said.
At the moment the mall has 15 stores, after Wednesday’s closure of the Parkwood Theatre.
Mayor John Backhouse, who has been pressing for redevelopment of the mall, will return Saturday from Scandinavia, where he and others are studying universities. In previous years Backhouse has called Parkwood Mall a “retail ghetto.”
The mall, near 15th Avenue and Spruce Street, became a key issue in the 1981 municipal election.
In the late 1970s then-mayor Elmer Mercier supported a proposed two-storey, four-squarc-block mall downtown to be built by Cadillac-Fairview Corp.
During negotiations between the developer and the city, Woodward’s proposed a triple expansion to its department store at Parkwood Mall.
People, including aldermen, began to take sides — supporting either the proposed $55-million downtown complex or the 46,000-square-metre Woodward’s expansion.
Aid. Art Stauble, Monica Becott and Denise Goodkcy lost in the 1981 election due to their support for the Cadillac-Fairview downtown proposal.
Headrick’s Strachan charge ‘unfair’
by PAUL STRICKLAND Citizen Staff
Bob Headrick’s remark that Prince George South MLA Bruce Strachan was a latecomer to the cause of promoting a university here is false and grossly unfair, says Murray Sadler, chairman of the interim governing council of the University of Northern B.C.
"Bruce was really onside with the university right from the embryonic stage of this development,” Sadler said today.
Headrick, in resigning from the Prince George-Mount Robson Socred riding association this week, said Thursday it was former Premier Bill Vander Zalm who brought a university to the city, while Strachan sat back “until he knew things would fly.”
Sadler said he went to Strachan with the idea of a university late in the fall of 1987, before most people had even heard of the idea, and made a request for money for a feasibility study.
Strachan was then environment minister but also minister of state for the Cariboo region with a $1-million fund available from which studies could be funded. There
were eight such ministers of state in the province at the time.
Strachan went to work immediately to try to get some of this money for a feasibility study, Sadler said.
Peter Ostergaard was seconded from the environment ministry to help design the study. Strachan saw to the hiring of Urban Dahl-lof, a Scandinavian expert on distance and remote education, to oversee the study. Strachan had arranged for an allocation of $100,000 by January, 1988, Sadler said.
“Bruce Strachan was in no way a latecomer to the university cause,” Sadler said.
In fall of 1988, Prince George area delegates at the Social Credit convention in Penticton proposed a resolution calling for a university in the North, and it received unanimous support Vander Zalm started making favorable public statements about it in early 1989.
“No doubt the premier was supportive,” Sadler said, who feels Headrick was wrong in saying the premier started the university proposal.
“The statement that Bill Vander
Zalm brought the university to Prince George while Bruce Strachan sat back is totally false and without substance,” Sadler said today.
In the fall of 1987, Sadler, then
president of the Interior University Society, “met with me to discuss funding for a feasibility study that would demonstrate the need for a university in the North,” Strachan said.
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Bill Woycik dies after fall
Well-known resident Bill Woycik died early today in Prince George Regional Hospital following a brief illness. He was 65 years old.
Mr. Woycik was admitted Wednesday to the intensive care unit at PGRH after suffering a bad fall which resulted in internal complications, his daughter said today.
He has been a familiar face in Prince George almost from the day he arrived in 1958. He spent 28 years as the city’s parks and recreation director and	many years
with the Prince George Exhibition board	as well as
being active with the Prince George Symphony Orchestra and First Baptist Church.
For the past four years he has served as the provincial representative on the Prince George Regional Hospital Society board of directors.
Bom in Regina, Mr. Woycik transferred here as sales representative for Swift Canadian Co., but took an opportunity to work for the city.
“I intended to stay here for no more than two years, but I was taken by the town right away, deeming it a good place to raise a family, so I jumped	at	the	opportunity to go to work for the city,” he told The Citizen in a	1986	interview at the time of his retirement.
BILL WOYCIK
Low tonight: 6 High tomorrow: 20
INDEX
Ann Landers .	. . . 38
Bridge		. . . 26
Business ....	. 22,23
City, B.C. . . .	. . 2,3,9
Classified . . .	. 26-33
Comic		. . . 34
Commentary .	. . . .5
Crossword . . .	. . . 27
Editorial ....	. . . .4
Entertainment	. 34,35
Family		. 38^9
Horoscope . . .	. . . 26
International .	. . 11
Lotteries ....	. . 12
Movies		. . 35
National ....	. . 10
Sports		13-16
Television . . .	. . 31
UIDUAU*
'The body fits him, but the neck's too tight."
APPEAL EXPECTED |
Construction will continue on the Kemano Completion project and a Federal Court of Canada decision would “almost certainly be appealed,” Bill Rich, Alcan vice-president for B.C., said Thursday.
He noted Justice Allison Walsh’s ruling specifically says, “.. .current jurisprudence has determined that a project can proceed while awaiting the outcome of an environmental assessment review, even if one is undertaken.”
Rich pointed out the company went ahead with the massive hydroelectric project after both the federal and provincial governments gave their approval.
“We should be able to rely on those approvals,” he said.
More than $675 million had already been spent on the project and 700 workers are employed on the construction site, he said.
Skeena NDP MP Jim Fulton says Alcan will be in a weak legal position if it continues to do any work that may have an impact on tite water flows in the Nechako River until after the environment assessment review process has been completed.
“I think the government is now going to have to do its homework,” Fulton said.
“ There is going to be a public panel process independent from government and we are finally going to be able to air these issues like what about the Fraser River dropping three feet at Hell’s Gate (after the first Kemano project was completed in the 1950s), what about the levels of oxygen in the Fraser River below Prince George and what does it mean, are we going to have to shut down a pulp mill or noL and what about eating the fish taken out of the river at Prince George?” he asked.
“It sends a very strong message to the government that they can’t ignore their own guidelines and they must — it’s not discretionary
any more — they must conduct public environmental reviews into projects with significant environmental implications.
“This is has been a 12-year struggle to get what we thought was just natural justice, initially expecting that there would be full public hearings before they made any decision.
“So you could say there’s a sense of vindication of our position after all these years. The courts have recognized that this is what should have occurred and should now occur.”
The coalition, which appeared in court as the Save the Bulkley group, represents members of the Vanderhoof-based Nechako Ney-enkut Society, the United Fisherman and Allied Workers’ Union, B.C. Wildlife Federation, Steel-head Society of B.C. and Canadian Association of Smelter and Allied Workers.
The quashing of the 1987 agreement raises the question of whether Alcan has regained the right to dam the Nanika-Morice river systems. In the agreement, the company gave up their rights over that river system south of Smithers to gain the right to divert more water from the Nechako River.
John Ricketts, NDP candidate in the Prince George-Omineca riding, pointed out the provincial govern-
ment was also a party to the agree-menL
“The provincial government is also shirking its responsibility. I don’t think a decision like this should be made in the courts.. .the government is the caretaker of the environment and should show more leadership,” he said today.
Once Kemano II was completed in 1994, Alcan planned to reduce the water flows in the river near Vanderhoof to 12 per cent of its pre-1950 level by diverting more water from the Nechako River into its reservoir behind the Kenney Dam 135 kilometres southwest of Prince George. The dam was built 40 years ago after the province gave Alcan control of the waters in a large section of northwestern B.C.
Ed John, a former chief of the Carrier Sekani Tribal Council, says native leaders have always opposed Alcan’s industrial developments in their territory. When the Kenney Dam was completed in the 1950s it flooded the villages and burial grounds of the Cheslatta people who, although they were promised new reserves, were forced to travel through the wilderness to establish homes on land they purchased near Bums Lake.
Be aware and share
Citizen photo by Dave Milne
Motorcyclists Mike Wall and Clay Hauff are among dozens of bikers on the road now that the weather has turned warmer. ICBC wants to make sure motorists keep a sharp eye out for them by declaring May Motorcycle Awareness Month. Because motorcycles are smaller, and their handling is adversely affected by weather and debris on the road, car and truck drivers should “be aware and share the road,’’ ICBC said in a news release.
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