Novawest & Brightstar (PGE)

[echarters]

Dredging does not kill fish. There has been no statistics to that effect. In addition if one dredges in a locked or dammed pond, as most dredges did in the Yk, then there is no direct sediment discharge into any watershed. You can as well take the sediment and filter it thru various mechanisms. The load is not high, so it is not that expensive.

One cannot say that the fish population in those creeks was good or bad as there was no-one there who could give reliable statistics. What I am saying is that there has been no great drop off in fish population that is due to river bed disturbance. Any fish degradation in the river can be explained by overfishing by an increasing population and commercial fishing. We know that kills fish for sure and we have seen this sort of thing in many, many cases. This sediment load has me wondering. We know that zebra mussels, and lamprey and sulphuric acid from pulp mills kills fish, by deoxygenation and other ways, but we don't know that sand does. We know that sand invigorates fish habitats. Fish live better in high sediment load rivers and lakes than they do in lightly loaded ones. This smells more of an anti mining agenda than anything else.

EC<:-}