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Forum wants province into Crofton airshed |
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Forum wants province into Crofton airshed
Losing Confidence: Advisory body calls for true baseline study
By Peter Rusland
The Pictorial (Duncan)
Jun 19, 2005
Another study aimed at listing all Crofton pulp mill air pollutants and
their health risks will be commissioned in the near future, the mill's
community advisory forum decided Tuesday.
CAF members - frustrated about how to best identify and fix mill air
emissions - will also strike a sub-committee discuss local pollution
prevention and urge regional directors to start airshed management
talks.
Tuesday's tsunami warning stopped the meeting before timelines, funding and other details about the motions could be discussed.
CAF members - comprising mill management, workers, Natives, business,
residents and the Crofton Airshed Citizens' Group - agree Valley
citizens are anxious for action from their volunteer group.
The CAF is also demanding guidance about emissions tactics from B.C.'s
Ministry of Water, Land & Air Protection whose staff has had little
involvement in CAF talks so far.
"Don't let us flounder around out here," CAF member Joe Allen pleaded
with WLAP's Bernard Bintner. "We're losing the public's confidence."
Crofton resident Carol Donnelly agreed. She cited a recent News
Leader/Pictorial editorial urging the ministry to work with the
community and the NorskeCanada mill to address pollution sources and
health effects.
She insisted WLAP review the mill's recent baseline emissions report by
consultants Jacques Whitford to determine "what's really going on at
the mill."
"There's lots of pollution coming from the mill and governments have to
independently start doing their job. People tell me they aren't coming
to CAF meetings because they think it's a lot of B.S. We have to get
to work and really do something."
Bintner said the ministry would offer its expertise to the CAF
sub-committee that will set the parameters to the next baseline
emissions study.
That probe Whitford's study, and include recommendations from two conflicting peer reviews.
The CAF still must decide who will pay for the sweeping study to list
all air toxins, their health risks, and best places to locate
air-monitoring stations plus emissions modeling methods.
"We still don't fully understand what all the (emissions) sources are," mill vice-president Don McKendrick said.
"I see no evidence we're a health risk and if we are we'll address it."
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