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Nisga'a need Avanti mine

Having lived and married in the Nisga’a for 25 years, and worked in the Kitsault/Alice Arm area, I have a good feel of both sides.

Dear Sir:

I would like to make a few comments on this issue with the Avanti Kitsault mine and the Nisga’a environmental concerns.

As a person who has lived and married within the Nisga’a for the past 25 years, and has worked in the Kitsault/Alice Arm area for four years, I feel I have a very good feel of both sides of the situation.

Avanti has made a huge investment at this property in the past three to four years, working with the proper governmental agencies and the Nisga’a Nation to get this much needed project off the ground.

A project which, I might add, is too employ and train a good number of Nisga’a citizens in secured and good paying careers in an industry very close to home. One of very few in the area, I might add.

I’m pretty sure it is not in Avanti’s best interest to carry out shoddy environmental practices – really wouldn’t make very good business sense now would it.

It’s in their best interest to get all in line and get this project operational and bringing in revenue for prosperity.

These are terms the Nisga’a government can’t comprehend. Investment for prosperity for their people.

They want to nitpick a process that has already been approved by our and their provincial government.

They may govern themselves but last time I checked they still live in B.C., and thus have to live and respect the laws of this province as we all do.

They don’t own the property at Kitsault, haven’t invested a dime in the project. They’ve invested no monies for the road and bridge upgrade, which their people and tourism businesses use. Before Avanti came in the picture, the majority of the road was a goat trail at the best of times.

If I’m not mistaken, Avanti has committed monies to the Nisga’a nation for their environmental assessment and mine training program. No problem with Avanti there, eh.

I hope the Nisga’a government keeps spending their peoples’ monies on litigation and court trips to the big lights on minute issues that have rustled a few feathers. They have mastered this process of wasting their peoples’ monies over the past 10 years.

Frankly, the majority of the Nisga’a Nation are tired of the monies wasted within this government.

The majority want to work and have job security in an industry, not a project that will come through and last only a couple years.

Get on with it already. Check your overpaid egos at the door and get down to business and get people working on this project.

You need the tax revenue from your people working in these mining jobs to run your government and your four villages because in the past 10 years you have spent millions of your peoples’ monies and have created no growth industry whatsoever for your people to prosper.

If  the Nisga’a government wanted to run the Kitsault area their way, they should have had the foresight to purchase the mine and the entire town of Kitsault.

Amax offered it to them. Oops, I forgot. They would have had to actually made an investment.

Gregg Cavagnaro, Terrace, BC