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<a class="gmail-domain gmail-reader-domain" href="https://thetyee.ca/News/2021/10/04/Pipeline-Standoff-Wetsuweten-Block-Effort-Tunnel-Morice-River/">thetyee.ca</a>
<h1 class="gmail-reader-title">Pipeline Standoff: Wet’suwet’en Block Effort to Tunnel under Morice River<br></h1>
<div class="gmail-credits gmail-reader-credits">Amanda Follett Hosgood - October 4, 2021<br></div>
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<p>At the turnoff, four workers with Coastal
GasLink security gather in orange and yellow vests, their voices edged
with frustration as they talk above four idling pickup trucks that
release a haze of exhaust into the early morning light. </p>
<p>Another pickup faces off against
the group, blocking access to the rough and muddy spur road that leads
to the pipeline worksite. </p>
<p>It’s a scene that has played out every day
for the past week and a half on Wet’suwet’en territory, as land
defenders block pipeline workers from accessing a site where Coastal
GasLink is preparing to drill under the Morice River and install the
pipeline. </p>
<p>On Sept. 24, protesters used Coastal
GasLink’s own machinery to dig up the rough resource road that connects
this junction to a worksite two kilometres beyond. A camp was
established at the site and a school bus used to block access. The
school bus has since been removed — twice — by RCMP and Coastal GasLink
before being returned to its place in the road, which has been roughly
repaired by the pipeline company. </p>
<p>Known to the Wet’suwet’en
as Wedzin Kwa, the Morice River becomes the Bulkley, eventually flowing
into the Skeena River at Hazelton. It’s a major artery through the
territory and source of sustenance and tradition for the nation, as well
as the territorial boundary between the Gidimt’en Clan’s Cas Yikh house
and the Unist’ot’en, a house group belonging to Gilseyhu Clan. </p>
<p>According to Molly Wickham, a Cas
Yikh house member whose Wet’suwet’en name is Sleydo’, it was never a
question of whether they would fight to protect Wedzin Kwa. Only a
question of when. </p>
<p>“It’s always been about Wedzin Kwa,” she says. “Everything that’s happened up until now has been about Wedzin Kwa.”</p>
<img src="https://thetyee.ca/News/2021/10/04/MollyWickhamCGLBlockageProfile.jpg" alt="MollyWickhamCGLBlockageProfile.jpg" style="margin-right: 25px;" width="426" height="284">
Molly Wickham, whose Wet’suwet’en name is
Sleydo’, stands next to Coastal GasLink’s pipeline right-of-way where
she and other land defenders have built a camp on Gidimt’en Clan
territory.
<span>Photo by Amanda Follett Hosgood.</span>
<p>The current standoff takes place 63
kilometres down the Morice West Forest Service Road south of Houston,
B.C., the site of two past police actions. In early 2019, RCMP arrested
14 people, including Wickham, when they raided a roadblock at Kilometre
44, where members of the Gidimt’en Clan had erected a camp to re-occupy
the land and keep pipeline workers out. </p>
<p>A year later, in February 2020, four camps
along the Morice were raided after Coastal GasLink was granted a
permanent injunction to continue its work on Wet’suwet’en territory. The
final day of arrests took place at the <a href="https://thetyee.ca/News/2020/02/10/Emotions-High-Unistoten-Arrests/">Unist’ot’en Healing Centre</a>,
just a few kilometres from the current roadblock, where Wet’suwet’en
resistance to pipelines began more than a decade ago. In total, 28
people were arrested over five days, seven of them at the healing
centre. </p>
<p>Police have already arrested two people in
the latest standoff. But today, the camp and blockade two kilometres
beyond the turnoff from the forest service road are quiet. It’s the
first day that RCMP haven’t arrived to read the injunction or threaten
arrests, and the land defenders busy themselves working on projects
around the camp as a raven hops brazenly nearby, the inquisitive tilt of
its head appearing to ask what’s for breakfast. </p>
<p>The camp has been established on a muddy
site intended as a helipad next to Coastal GasLink’s right-of-way. The
pipeline route, which the company says is more than 90 per cent cleared
through this section, extends 670 kilometres from northeast B.C. to
Kitimat, where it will connect with LNG Canada’s processing and export
facility.</p>
<p>It’s only by walking the right-of-way to
where clearing stops about a kilometre below camp that you hear Wedzin
Kwa gurgling beyond. Here, the 30-metre-wide route expands several times
over, its surface scraped bare and mud threatening to consume a rubber
boot. Deer and bear have left their marks in its surface. </p>
<p>It’s here that Coastal GasLink plans to
stage its drilling operation, the vast expanse of muck a holding area
for lengths of 48-inch pipe. Slash piles and dirt mounds tower several
times the height of a person. An abandoned bulldozer sits idly nearby, a
sign reading “Active Work Site” appearing to mock the scene. </p>
<img src="https://thetyee.ca/News/2021/10/04/CGLClearedPipelineRoute.jpg" alt="851px version of CGLClearedPipelineRoute.jpg" style="margin-right: 25px;" width="426" height="253">
A cleared area several hundred metres wide
just above the Morice River, Wedzin Kwa, is intended to store lengths of
48-inch pipe during Coastal GasLink’s drilling process.
<span>Photo by Amanda Follett Hosgood.</span>
<p>Where the clearing ends, a narrow trail
begins. It leads to Wedzin Kwa, where the river’s edge is quiet,
continuing as it has for millennia. A pair of seagulls dip and dive over
the river. </p>
<p>“That’s our main river, Wedzin Kwa. That’s
where our salmon are,” Hereditary Chief Na’Moks, John Ridsdale, says
about the river’s significance as a food source and lifeblood for the
nation. “We’re the Wet’suwet’en. This is who we are — the land, the air
and the water.” </p>
<p>In its 135-kilometre journey through the
Skeena watershed, the pipeline route crosses 206 watercourses, according
to a technical data report submitted as part of its 2014 environmental
assessment application, tributaries that offer vital spawning habitat
for salmon. </p>
<p>This stretch of river below Morice Lake,
Wedzin Bin, “supports important Chinook salmon spawning and holding
areas,” according to the data report. Pink, coho and sockeye salmon are
also found here, and steelhead and bull trout use the river on their way
to spawning channels upstream. </p>
<p>“These areas and other
accessible tributaries also provide critical rearing and overwintering
habitat for juvenile salmon and resident char and trout,” the report
says. </p>
<p>The report indicates there is no low-risk
period for working within the waterways. Salmon occupy Wedzin Kwa up to
11 months of the year, and other species fill the mid-summer gap when
fry have left their spawning ground in spring and the return of salmon
in late summer. </p>
<p>“There are fish of one species or another
that are in that waterway at all times of the year,” says Michael Price,
a fisheries biologist and researcher with Simon Fraser University who
co-authored a <a href="https://skeenawild.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Rebuilding-Plan-for-the-Morice-Sockeye-Recovery-Unit-Final-4.pdf">sockeye-recovery plan</a> with the Office of the Wet’suwet’en. </p>
<p>Price says sockeye returns in Wedzin Kwa
plummeted in the mid-20th century, from an estimated 70,000 a year to an
all-time low of about 1,000 in the mid-1950s. Work to recover salmon
populations has been ongoing for more than 50 years, with moderate
success. By the early 2000s, returns appeared to rebound, levelling off
at between 10,000 and 20,000 returning sockeye each year — still well
below historic numbers. </p>
<img src="https://thetyee.ca/News/2021/10/04/MoriceRiverFlow.jpg" alt="MoriceRiverFlow.jpg" style="margin-right: 25px;" width="426" height="284">
Below Coastal GasLink’s drill site, Wedzin
Kwa continues as it has for millennia. ‘This is who we are,’ says
Wet’suwet’en Hereditary Chief Na’Moks, ‘the land, the air and the
water.’
<span>Photo by Amanda Follett Hosgood.</span>
<p>But even as the nation, in partnership with
Fisheries and Oceans Canada, works on a strategy to rebuild salmon
stocks, industry continues to impact salmon habitat. </p>
<p>This spring, Wickham says the river’s silty
runoff season, when people avoid drinking its water, lasted several
months instead of the usual several weeks. She suspects it was the
result of industrial logging in the watershed. Trenching through creeks
and streams in preparation to lay pipe beneath the riverbed will likely
also release silt and sand into the waterway. </p>
<p>“My biggest fear is that we’re never going
to be able to drink from Wedzin Kwa again... and that it will impact
spawning salmon,” Wickham says. </p>
<p>Price says the continued effects on the
watershed — things like habitat destruction, overfishing and climate
change — act as a “death by a thousand cuts.” </p>
<p>“Fish need cold, clean, contaminant-free
water. Whenever you have industrial projects that take place in or near
water, there’s a high potential for damage,” he says. </p>
<p>“I’m amazed that a project like this has
been allowed to go ahead given that there’s at least one endangered
population of salmon up there. There’s a rebuilding plan that Fisheries
and Oceans was part of, and we can’t even stop an industrial project
like this from taking place.”</p>
<img src="https://thetyee.ca/News/2021/10/04/OrangeShirtMoriceServiceRoadTrucks.jpg" alt="851px version of OrangeShirtMoriceServiceRoadTrucks.jpg" style="margin-right: 25px;" width="426" height="278">
Workers with Coastal GasLink security placed
an orange T-shirt, symbolic of Indigenous children who died at
residential schools, at the junction of Morice West Forest Service Road
and a spur road leading to a pipeline worksite.
<span>Photo by Amanda Follett Hosgood.</span>
<p>In an email to The Tyee, Coastal GasLink
says it’s not required to limit work on river crossings to least-risk
windows — June and July — under its environmental assessment application
if it’s using trenchless crossings, where a tunnel is bored below the
river rather than disturbing the riverbed. </p>
<p>The company says its plans to use <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microtunneling">micro-tunnelling</a>,
which uses a hydraulic jack to force pipe into the ground behind the
boring machine, is “the most precise and state-of-the-art” drilling
method available. The almost 900-metre span is expected to take 10
months to complete, the company says. It did not respond to The Tyee’s
question about how deep the drilling would go. </p>
<p>This is the only trenchless crossing in Wet’suwet’en territory.</p>
<p>“Nothing like that’s ever happened along
that river system, ever,” Chief Na’Moks says about the company’s plans
to drill under Wedzin Kwa. He says something as simple as a bridge
constructed over a river can be enough to keep salmon from migrating
upstream. </p>
<p>A hereditary Chief recently met with the BC
Oil and Gas Commission and Ministry of Energy and Mines to request a
moratorium on the drilling, he says. When asked about the request, the
Oil and Gas Commission says that any changes in the project’s timeline
are up to Coastal GasLink. </p>
<p>It’s unlikely that Coastal GasLink would
voluntarily agree to further delays. The project has been plagued with
cost overruns and setbacks, largely due to protests and the pandemic.
The delays have <a href="https://globalnews.ca/news/8072383/tc-energy-lng-canada-coastal-gaslink-update-july/">led to tensions</a> with LNG Canada. </p>
<p>With drilling already a year behind
schedule, Wickham speculates the company is feeling anxious to regain
access and begin the work. </p>
<p>“They cannot afford this conflict or any delays,” she says. </p>
<p>Wickham says the land defenders’ ability to
delay the project is a testament to the strength of these occupations,
which have been backed by hereditary Chiefs from all five Wet’suwet’en
clans, and sends a cautionary tale to industry attempting to work in
Indigenous territories without explicit consent.</p>
<p>“What happens here is going to set a
precedent for all other industries that want to trespass on our land
without free, prior and informed consent from our hereditary governance
system,” Wickham says. “Industry needs free, prior and informed consent
from Indigenous people.”</p>
<p>Coastal GasLink did not address The Tyee’s
questions about the delays, project timelines or how significant the
current setback is for the project, saying only that progress continues
with almost 50 per cent of construction complete. It has already done
five trenchless crossings of other rivers, it says. </p>
<p>Back at the turnoff, the workers, who say
they are with Coastal GasLink security, have hung an orange shirt from a
pylon next to the road. On the eve of Canada’s first Reconciliation
Day, the symbol recognizes Indigenous children who were forcibly taken
from their families, many of whom died at residential schools. </p>
<p>When approached, the workers pull out video cameras and decline to answer questions. </p>
<p>A fifth man arrives in another pickup,
wearing an identical orange T-shirt. When asked about the shirt’s
message, his response is brisk.</p>
<p>“To show our support for the missing
children,” he says, edging toward his vehicle as he speaks. “We all have
children and we all know. That’s why we’re doing it. Just to show
support.” </p>
<p>The man declines to give his name. </p>
<img src="https://thetyee.ca/News/2021/10/04/ShaylynnSampsonDrumMollyWickham.jpg" alt="851px version of ShaylynnSampsonDrumMollyWickham.jpg" style="margin-right: 25px;" width="426" height="282">
Shaylynn Sampson, from the Gitxsan Nation,
drums as she and Molly Wickham, who carries the Wet’suwet’en name
Sleydo’, sing together at a camp designed to block access to Coastal
GasLink workers.
<span>Photo by Amanda Follett Hosgood.</span>
<p>Back at camp, Wickham is thinking about her
own children and their future here on the territory. It’s been a week
in camp and she doesn’t know when she’ll see her family. It all seems
really crazy, she acknowledges, recalling a recent moment when she left
her cabin in the dead of night. </p>
<p>As she stared into the darkness, her headlamp beam caught the nearby right-of-way, its trees razed by machinery. </p>
<p>“And I was like, no, <em>that’s</em> crazy,” she says. </p>
<p>“I feel like it’s so normalized to see the
destruction of the land that it doesn’t feel absurd to people... What
we’re doing should be normal and destruction of the land should not be
what seems normal.” <img src="https://thetyee.ca/ui/img/ico_fishie.png" alt="[Tyee]" width="12" height="16"></p>
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