Time ripe to clear the air in Crofton - metaphorically speaking at least
The NewsLeader (Duncan)
Jun 01 2005

It's time to clear the air in Crofton.
We are not talking about the pulp mill emissions.
It's time to cut through the steady flow of acronyms and jargon flowing through the community. Borne on a stream of posturing and rhetoric, they are obscuring the issues surrounding the pulp mill.
Clearly, the Community Advisory Forum - struck in the wake of last year's application to burn tires, railway ties and coal - has yet to serve its most basic purpose: to provide clear information to the community about the mill and to gather community feedback for the mill.
Instead the forum's language and structure feed mistrust and alienate the average citizen.
The forum was designed to get everyone together in one room: health care workers, mill workers, First Nations, environmentalists, Norske executives and environmentalists.
They are all sitting at the table - a feat in itself - but nobody is truly talking.
The rhetoric, the agendas and the needlessly complex language are wasting an opportunity for real community partnership and the two sides are no closer together than they were when Randy Bachman and friends took the stage last September.
The lack of clarity even reduced a panel member to tears.
It's a safe bet that the main figures in the saga of the mill won't change their minds. No study would convince NorskeCanada the mill is harming the environment and no study would convince the Crofton Airshed Citizens Coalition the mill is not harming the environment.
So who are these studies, these facts and figures, serving? The community: the average person working, living and raising their kids in the area around the mill.
We think it's time for the government to step in and conduct a peer review, with terms of reference agreed on by both sides of the debate.
While no doubt NorskeCanada and the Crofton Airshed Society would both find fault with that study's results, there would an impartial record for the community to refer to.
It's also time to institute a community question period near the beginning of meetings, not the end.
Think about what it comes down to.
We can give up. We can decide to trust no one.
Or we can find a way to balance the prosperity the mill brings the community with the need for a clean and safe community.