The revisions to the Wastewater Treatment Plan that was recently published by CMR have changed so significantly from the plan published in 2019, that it should warrant another public comment period to assess the effectiveness and acceptability of their plan. While CMR and DOWA may like to think that they can plan to operate regardless of numerous concerns of the community of Haines, they do still operate on Planet Earth, whose laws and regulations are not decided by humans. Thanks to gravity, water still flows downhill, no matter which part of the watershed it starts in. Thanks to chemistry, sulfide-bearing ore exposed to a watershed always spells trouble for salmon. And thanks to the combined forces of chemistry and physics, copper and sulfur very frequently occur in the same mineral deposits. We only have to look to our neighbors in the Tulsequah watershed, home to the Tulsequah chief mine, to experience the consequences of that. Foreign corporations may want to access minerals outside their borders, but they cannot access those minerals outside the bounds of the physics and chemistry of the planet they are located on. Those of us who enjoy living here demand an opportunity to respond to the heavily revised Wastewater Treatment Plan, whose consequences we will end up with.
Nora Zimmerly