Supporting the responsible development of the Tulsequah Chief Mine through the cooperative effort of Alaska and British Columbia and urging Governor Knowles to withdraw his request for a referral of the Tulsequah Chief Mine to the International Joint Commission under the Boundary Waters Treaty.

SCR 7 supports the environmentally responsible development of the Tulsequah Chief Mine through the Canadian permitting process. Furthermore, the resolution urges Governor Knowles to withdraw his request for referral of the project to the International Joint Commission under the Boundary Waters Treaty.

The Tulsequah River Basin has been an active mining area since the 1920's. Likewise, the Tulsequah River and the downstream environs of the Taku River have been producing healthy runs of salmon throughout this same period of time.

The owners of the Tulsequah Chief Mine have gone through extensive environmental research and consultation for over 3½ years, including numerous public meetings dealing with potential local and transboundary impacts. This process has involved the ministries of Canada and British Columbia who have graciously included the permitting agencies of Alaska and the United States.

The permitting process used for Tulsequah Chief is a new process that has been developed over several years. This process, although different than Alaska's, is considered by the Canadian government to be the best, most effective, and most stringent ever used in Canada. The process has been internationally touted as how environmental permitting should be handled and is considered to be at least as thorough as the Alaskan/U.S. permitting system.

The British Columbia government found that after over 3 ½ years of public comment and review by numerous permitting agencies, there were no overwhelming environmental concerns that could not be adequately addressed in the subsequent individual permitting processes. On March 19th, 1998, following comment by a 13 member international committee, the B.C government issued the overall environmental assessment certificate.

SCR 7 supports the continued bilateral cooperative relationship with British Columbia in working towards our common goal of environmentally responsible resource development while recognizing Canada's jurisdictional autonomy.