For immediate release

Vancouver, BC Over the past three weekends, numerous international activists from 20 countries have joined local volunteers and Wilderness Committee Staff Scientist Andy Miller to investigate potential impacts to fish from privatized run of river hydro projects (also known as Independent Power Projects or IPPs) planned or under construction by Cloudworks Energy Inc. in the Lillooet River system southeast of Pemberton, BC.

"Some private power proponents have claimed that fish habitat is not being impacted by these type of projects. The Wilderness Committee decided to investigate a few of the projects that appeared to have high quality fisheries habitat immediately upstream or downstream of the power houses," said Joe Foy, Campaign Director with the Wilderness Committee.

"What our Staff Scientist Andy Miller found was that at a proposed run of river site at Kakila Creek, and sites under construction at Fire and Tipella Creeks, there are major concerns with salmon and trout habitat upstream and downstream of the proposed or under-construction power stations. We are concerned about what will happen to that fisheries habitat once the majority of the water is diverted from these large creeks into kilometres of giant pipes. Will there be enough water for the fish and will the spawning habitat be maintained?" said Foy.

"The public needs to know what studies were done and what their conclusions were. Unless exhaustive and long-term independent studies have been done that guarantee that these projects would have no negative impacts on fisheries, there is more than enough concern to warrant a moratorium on all run of river hydro projects until such time as scientific concerns about fisheries habitat loss are alleviated," said Foy.

"Investigating the power stations at Fire and Tipella Creeks was tough because Cloudworks staff were constantly asking us to leave these publicly-owned streams. However, we saw extensive fish habitat both upstream and downstream of the power houses," said Miller.

"We also saw considerable evidence of erosion from road-building and at the holding ponds, and extensive logging operations right down to stream banks. I am really concerned about the potential loss of fisheries habitat from these projects. All the anglers we met from the In-SHUCK-ch Nation were very concerned about potential damage to fisheries from these projects," said Miller.

Kakila Creek is still in the early stages of approval and has no construction. Tipella Creek is close to being complete, and Fire Creek is complete but not activated yet.

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For more information please contact: Andy Miller, 604-992-3099 or Joe Foy, 604-880-2580