To the Editor,
Re: Time to tear up incinerator plan, Editorial, April 17.
Your editorial plays to a noisy placard-waving mob which flooded council with form letters and jammed council chambers, some not even knowing what WTE stands for, let alone having researched unbiased information on waste-to-energy.
A minority throng of NIMBYs, including this paper, has not given a hoot that the Regional District of Nanaimo ships some of our trash and recyclables across the strait. Where are these same protesters and writers when it comes to screaming about this?
Saying there was overwhelming public opinion against a plant at the Duke Point industrial site, set up in the 1970s for this type of industry, is dead wrong. It was a small and vocal minority spewing out poisonous and erroneous information. In this case, naysayers yelled before all information on the WTE could be legally released.
If this same attitude was around 100 years ago most of us, maybe this city, would not be around today. There would have been protests over coal mining, logging, lumber mills, pulp mills and fishing. Nanaimo would just be a dimple on a map with high unemployment, a lot of welfare and a place for gang mentality.
C.L. CavanaghNanaimo
To the Editor,
Re: Incinerator project draws threat of lawsuit from city, April 17.
Nanaimo city council made a strong and commendable decision regarding the issue of a Duke Point location for Metro Vancouver’s planned waste-to-energy incinerator. The unanimous message that Nanaimo will not be passively placed at risk, is a clear expression of our community’s democratic right to self-determination regarding our citizens’ health and economic well-being.
Carla SteinNanaimo
To the Editor,
Re: Incinerator project draws threat of lawsuit from city, April 17.
When you refer to the proposed incinerator for Nanaimo as WTE, I believe you are leaving out two letters. It should read WTEAP, which stands for waste-to-energy-and-pollution. Pollution on several accounts: the pollution created by loading and dragging the garbage across the Strait of Georgia and then unloading it, plus the pollution from the burning and the leftover ash.
If it’s such a good idea why doesn’t Vancouver incinerate the garbage in its own city? Think of all the energy they’ll produce, and money they will save, by not transporting it to somebody else’s backyard..
Noel Lewis-WattsNanaimo