3 March 2010

Too Much of a Risk for my Family

Kamloops British Columbia - A Kamloops great grandmother Tuesday re-submitted a challenge to the environmental permit issued to a company planning to process waste railway ties in a gasification plant on Mission Flats.
 
Ruth Madsen, whose original appeal was ruled deficient by the B.C. Environmental Appeal Board, wrote in a three-page letter that while she has studied the toxic properties of creosote, she's also concerned about the project as mother, grandmother, and great grandmother.
 
The appeal board had asked her to explain how she qualified as "an aggrieved person" and therefore eligible to appeal.
 
Madsen said she gathered samples of snow from nearby Aboriginal Cogeneration Corp.'s existing chipping facility and submitted them to a lab. Eighteen chemicals commonly found in creosote were analyzed in the snow samples, she said.
 
"Again, too much of a risk for my family, my neighbours, and the salmon that are already in huge decline in the Thompson (River)."
 
She told the board her home is four kilometres from the Domtar pulp mill and from the proposed site of the ACC plant.
 
"My home and property are hugely affected by emissions from the mill, therefore the emissions from the ACC plant will follow the same airway as it is directly adjacent to the mill site," she stated.
 
"These emissions invade my property approximately two days a week, but also when there are inversions which happen regularly."
 
Madsen asked that the appeal board conduct an oral hearing in Kamloops. The board is expected to rule sometime in the next two weeks on whether it will allow the appeal to go forward.