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HomeMy WebLinkAboutClinton News Record, 2014-03-12, Page 5Wednesday, March 12, 2014 • News Record 5 www.clintonnewsrecord.com letters to the editor Nuclear waste presentation deliberately misleading Dear Editor: "Designed to Deceive" is about the nicest thing I can say after attending the Nuclear Waste Management Organization's (NWMO) Deep Geological Repository (DGR) Open House at the Lucknow Com- munity Centre March 6. It was like attend- ing a smoking information session by the tobacco industry that failed to mention lung cancer, emphysema or heart disease. Let me give you a few examples. 1. When I ask if there is information on the risk of radiation I am told that they don't have that literature* with them. It is being revised and reprinted. I can go on line to get a copy. BUT there is no place in the fancy literature displays announcing this. Funny thing, a year and a half ago at NWMO's dog and pony show in Ripley I asked the same question and was told they had "forgotten" to bring the information. 2. There was a neat little display of some stones and a pair of salt and pepper shak- ers which you could rotate past a geiger counter and hear it clicking off radiation hits and see the scale. However there was no information about how this level of radi- oactivity compared with that of used fuel. There are also fancy photos showing the radiation associated with a variety of ordi- nary materials and activities in mSv (mil- liSieverts) but showing the highly radioac- tive fuel levels in becquerels (Bq). When I ask how to convert mSv's to Bq's none of the nine staff know the formula but agree this makes it hard to grasp how highly radi- oactive used fuel compares with their examples. Funny thing, a year and a half after I'd pointed out this problem to the folks at the Ripley show they still haven't made their displays useful or even have a conversion formula available. Perhaps "Calculated to Confuse" would be how to describe this part of the display. 3. A brochure entitled "Multiple -Barrier System" says on its front page in bold print "Barrier 1: The Used Nuclear Fuel Pellet': Underneath is a photo of an ungloved human hand holding a pellet with tweezers in front of a pile of pellets in the back ground. When I point out to the staff that this can't be "used nuclear fuel pellets" since they would be way too hot, both radi- oactively and thermally, for a person to be unprotected he agrees that it is a mislead- ing picture and tells me the pamphlet is being reprinted and he thought that he had removed them from display. I'd pointed this out a year and a half ago. When I leave after touring the information and displays I notice that the misleading material is still out available to continue misleading the public. It is misleading and dishonest to talk about radioactive fuel without being clearer about cancer, genetic damage and birth defects. This is not a good start to a community information process that pur- ports to be open and honest. When the sec- tions I do understand are so obviously "Built to Bamboozle" it makes me very dubious of all the other claims of safety or the integrity of the process. I feel really uncomfortable being asked to trust these folks to bury this material beside the great lakes in the middle of some of Canada's best farmland. Yours Sincerely, Tony McQuail Lucknow, ON Conservatives seem to have forgotten their base Dear Editor: For a number of years true conservatives have been disappointed with the govern- ment of Stephen Harper. While claiming to be conservative, Harper has repeatedly betrayed his base. Economically, Harper has expanded the size and cost of the federal government 40 per cent. He and his Finance Minister, Jim Flaherty, raided income trusts which many seniors had invested in and which Harper had promised never to do. As an economist Harper knows that stimulus spending does not create long-term employ- ment. Yet he not only engaged in massive stimulus spending, but long after the reces- sion was declared over, he continues the spending, so much so that one commenta- tor declared it to be the new normal. As a result, on the federal level Canadians are now in debt $700 billion and counting. Polit- ically, Harper has dramatically increased the size of the federal civil service, and he has not reformed the Senate or the Supreme Court. For years, Harper and his people have sneered at social conservatives as "having missed the bus:' Harper has not closed down the Canadian Human Rights Commis- sion, has not defended traditional marriage and has openly sought to preserve the status quo with regard to abortion. And on his watch the RCMP have become a rogue agency, which seeks at every turn to perse- cute law-abiding firearms owners. Last year in High River, Alberta, the RCMP broke down the doors of 1900 homes and confis- cated legally possessed firearms, which their owners are still trying to get back. The aver- age damage to the affected homes was reported to be approximately $3,000 and not only did the Commissioner of the RCMP not fire the officer in charge of the operation, he promoted him. Just recently, the Commis- sioner of the RCMP reclassified two families of previously legal, non -restricted rifles to prohibited status. Anyone who now pos- sesses one of these rifles, even though the rifle was bought legally must turn the rifle in to be destroyed without financial compen- sation [And the cost of the one rifle, imported from Switzerland, is about $3,000 per rifle.]. Anyone who fails to turn in this legally obtained firearm is now a criminal subject to ten years imprisonment, a lifetime ban on owning firearms and fines. Child molesters and rapists are rarely treated this harshly. Yet neither Harper, Justice Minister Peter McKay or the Public Safety Minister have disciplined the RCMP Commissioner or rescinded the order prohibiting these fire- arms. Indeed, the Minister of Public Safety signed off on the order. I am tired of the phony conservatism of Stephen Harper and his party. Harper would do well to remember what happened to the Tories under Brian Mulroney and Kim Campbell when they betrayed the conserva- tive base. True conservatives simply stayed home and the Brian Mulroney -Campbell Tories were sent out into the political wilder- ness for years. Dave Joslin, Clinton ON Turbines present more liability than profit Dear Editor: In Bluewater our roads this winter are busy with construction traffic. A fleet of trucks carry gravel, concrete, steel and other construction materials. Many acres of farmland at the corner of Babylon and Cen- tennial roads have become a storage and staging area. This area is now lighted, guarded 24 hr per day and covered with construction equipment, bulldozers, exca- vators, cranes and covered trailers to carry tools and other construction equipment from site to site. Many, many miles of new road, comparable to gravel covered side roads covering acres & acres of productive farmland have been built to enable con- struction and continued maintenance of wind turbines. Usually, seeing a construction project for a large commercial facility gives me a good feeling. Construction activity uses a broad range of products creating jobs and economic activity for lots of people. Then when the facility gets going it makes prod- uct or services that continue to create jobs and profitable economic activity as well as contributing tax revenue to help pay the cost of running our Country. This time however, the profitable eco- nomic activity will be during construction period only. After construction the only financial benefits will be to the owners of the turbines, the workers who service the turbines and the owners of the land leased for new roads and base for the turbines. The product of the turbines, electric power, rather than create economic pros- perity will create economic disaster for the people of Ontario. The owners of the tur- bines will receive about 22 cents per kilo- watt hour for the power produced. Some of that power will be sold to hydro customers for about 10 cents per kilowatt hour, some will be sold for 2 or 3 cents per kilowatt hour to the U.S. and some we will pay the U.S. to take it, as we have been doing in recent years. The balance will be paid by additional charges on our hydro bill or our increased taxes. These turbines will help drive us from being the lowest priced energy jurisdiction in Canada to the high- est priced energy jurisdiction in North America. Consider what this will do to fam- ilies as well as industries, particularly industries that use large quantities of power. How many more jobs will this help drive to a lower production cost area? Instead of providing tax revenue, these tur- bines will create tax liabilities you and I will have to pay well into the foreseeable future. Consider, also some of the people who live near a turbine will experience health problems. Who is responsible for this financial fiasco? Not the people who rent the land, not the people doing the construction. These folks are just responding to an eco- nomic opportunity, if they didn't do it someone else would. No! Our financially inept Provincial government is solely responsible! They signed a contract committing the people of Ontario to pay to have the tur- bines built by buying the electricity they produced. They passed the Green Energy Act stripping municipal authorities of any power to control if or where the turbines would be placed. Its just another, no doubt the most costly, the longest lasting in a string of financial disasters dumped on the people of Ontario by 10 years of a Provin- cial government that lacks a shred of busi- ness sense. How much longer will they be allowed to mess up our financial affairs? Gordon Hill Varna