B.C. Indian band preparing court action over mercury poisoning

FORT ST. JAMES, British Columbia (AP) Tl'azt'en First Nation leaders say they face crippling health problems from more than six decades of eating food and drinking water laced with mercury from a World War II-era mine.

The 1,200 Tl'azt'en people, Carrier Indians who live in northcentral British Columbia, blame pollution from the Teck Cominco Ltd. mine for untimely deaths and epidemic rates of cancer, arthritis, lupus, kidney disease, birth deformities and crippled limbs.

The last straw may have been the death of band elder Sara Duncan on May 15 at age 73. A once-vibrant cultural leader and fisherwoman, Duncan died with twisted, crippled hands and feet, balding head, dementia and the stained purple gums associated with mercury poisoning.

``My mother was a respected cultural leader and a hard worker who provided for her family,'' says Lucille Duncan, 48, ``but after years of eating fish and drinking water from Pinchi Lake, she died in pain, her hair falling out, with dementia and all crippled, and her gums purple from the mercury just like her mother did and now I have it.''

On Tuesday, health researchers and lawyer Rory Morahan of Victoria met with Chief Tommy Alexis, band council members, health workers and ailing band members.

Morahan says he has been instructed by Alexis to prepare a lawsuit against Teck Cominco and the Canadian government.

In 1985 the Whitedog and Grassy Narrows Indian bands in Ontario accepted a $16.6 million (US$12 million) settlement from Ottawa and two chemical corporations for mercury waste contamination of fish in rivers and lakes.

Cominco, forerunner of Teck Cominco, operated a mercury mine on the shores of Pinchi Lake, about 425 miles north of Vancouver, in 1940-44 and again in 1968-75 .

According to company reports from the initial mining phase, waste mercury was sluiced into the lake daily and mercury-laden tailings created a long island.

Meanwhile, Carrier people drank the water and ate mercury-laden whitefish, char, trout, ling cod, suckers, kokanee salmon, beaver and moose.

In 1969 signs were posted in English to warn against eating fish from the lake, but the Carrier people most of whom spoke little English and relied on fish as a staple of their diet kept fishing and eating.

The company is now conducting environmental remediation and has spent about $3 million (US$2.2 million) on cleanup and leachate prevention.

Mercury levels in Pinchi Lake fish are declining from peaks in the 1940s and 1970s but remained far higher than other area lakes, according to Cominco's environmental studies in 1999 and 2001.

``We will work co-operatively with the responsible government and health agencies and the Tl'azt'en people from the area,'' Teck Cominco spokesman Doug Horswill said. ``We have on our own begun our own remediation studies.''

Duncan says she has the same high blood pressure and tingling, numb, weak and twisted hands her parents and grandparents developed, as well as lupus and tunnel vision.

Her mother had two miscarriages, two of her mother's children died in infancy, two are very ill and another is severely mentally ill, she said, adding that three of her own children have learning difficulties and a fourth was born with physical and mental defects.

Former Tl'azt'en Chief Harry Pierre, 62, said that when he was hired to clean out a mercury-contaminated mine shaft in 1967, before the mine reopened, the 125 non-Indian workers always wore masks, filters and full protective suits.

``We were told to wear a waterproof jacket and pump all that mercury right into the lake,'' he said.

His father, who fished and trapped near the mine, had heart problems, tunnel vision and crippled hands.

(Copyright 2003 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)