Newsgroups: culist.govinfo
Subject: Gov't scientists Gagged
Organization: Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada


The Ontario Public Interst Research Group at Careton University helped
to organise an information seminar on the environmental and social
impacts of hydro projects on Hudson and James Bays. To this end, we
invited a number of distinguished speakers, so that the public and
MP's could become aquainted with economic, environmental, and social
impacts of projects like James Bay 1 & 2, Nelson-Churchill, and the
Lower Churchill dam projects.

We invited several government scientists to speak on impacts of
existing projects. Despite their willingness to do so, the scientists
were denied permission by their respective directors-general to speak
to the public and MP's (the event was held on Parliament Hill). The
department  

Dr. Drew Bodaly, of the Freshwater Institute, a fisheries biologist 
specialising in dams and methylmercury, was to have spoken on the known 
impacts of the Nelson-Churchill hydro projects in Manitoba. This research 
was published in 1984, and is part of some of the world's best research on 
hydroelectric development and its effects in boreal ecosystems. Dr. Bodaly 
has written on this subject in other fora than the journals, and was keen to 
share information on his research with the general public. He and his
collegues who worked on the Environmental Impact Assessment for the 
Nelson-Churchill projects are still predominantly employed by the
federal government, and are being prevented from speaking openly about
research that was done in the late 70's and early 1980's; another
scientists who was not allowed to speak is Andrew Hamilton of the
International Joint Commission, part of Environment Canada. He worked
on the Nelson-Churchill baseline studies.