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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 1995-07-19, Page 4Hot dog Photo by Janice Becker Looking Back Through the Years From the files of the Blyth Stan- dard, Brussels Post and the North Huron Citizen 1 YEAR AGO JULY 20, 1994 Blyth welcomed two politicians to the area during the week. Minis- ter of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs Elmer Buchanan attended the Food Fair while Provincial Lib- eral Leader Lyn McLeod met with local association members at Lions Park. Blyth council passed their 1994 budget which saw an increase of .89 per cent. The Huron County Board of Edu- cation and the Ontario Secondary School Teachers' Federation reached agreement for a two-year contract which gave no salary hike. Blyth Festival board member Paul Thompson received the Silver Ticket award in honour of his out- standing contribution to the stage. Bruce and Grace Schmidt of RR3, Walton were awarded top honours for composite BCA num- bers at the Holstein Twilight meet- ing. Letters THE EDITOR, When the three members of Concerned Citizens of Ashfield and Area (CCAA) made presentations at the July 6 Huron Council meeting, the hope was that the search for a new Huron dump would be halted. It is the opinion of the CCAA members that council is irresponsible for participating in a project that could prove to poison wells of residences neighbouring the dump, and that with no uncertainty a dump will most certainly damage the environment through emissions of greenhouse gases. The other reason for going to council was to stop the waste of money on impact studies at the Ashfield A3 site. We wanted taxpayers to know that the site has not been 100 per cent approved, and that a quarter million dollars will be wasted proceeding with the studies if the site, for any reason is not selected. As the studies are site selective, the studies will be totally useless if the search for a dump moves elsewhere in the county. Had the Waste Management Committee stopped the process the first time the CCAA asked for a review of alternatives to a dump, taxpayers could have had another saving of $78,000. The total of costs to date searching for a dump has been $1,300,000. Huron Council will tell taxpayers that half of that money has come from provincial and federal grants, but any taxpayer can attest to the fact that the money was taken from their same pocket. The bottom line on costs, dumps versus incinerators, is that incinerators are more expensive up front (because a facility must be built), but in the long run, a dump is more expensive. Where it costs little to close an incinerator (all pollutants are destroyed by incineration), dump closures are expensive. For the five landfill systems documented in the appendices of the stage 2d Waste Management Master Plan closure of the dump would cost from $4;5000,000 to $8,500,000, depending on the system used. This is closure, but in the event that a mistake was made, and leachate was found in high concentrations in local wells, the dump could be decommissioned. In the event that the source of the contamination is not known, the whole dump could be ordered removed. In this case, the contents of the garbage stew could cost $100/cubic metre to remove. Years Continued on page 5 PAGE 4. THE CITIZEN, WEDNESDAY, JULY 19, 1995. C The North Huron itizen eNA BLUE RIBBON AWARD -995 P.O. Box 429, P.O. Box 152, Publisher, Keith Roulston BLYTH, OM. BRUSSELS, Ont Editor, Bonnie Gropp NOM 1H0 NOG 1H0 Phone 523-4792 Phone 887-9114 Sales Representatives, FAX 523-9140 FAX 887-9021 Jeannette McNeil and Julie Mitchell The Citizen is published weekly In Brussels, Ontario by North Huron Publishing Company Inc. Subscriptions are payable in advance at a rate of $23.00/year ($21.50 plus $1.50 G.S.T.) for local; $33.00/year ($30.85 plus $2.15 G.S.T.) for local letter carrier in Goderich, Hanover, Listowel, etc. and out-of-area (40 miles from Brussels); $62.00/year for U.S.A. and Foreign. Advertising is accepted on the condition that in the event of a typographical error, only that portion of the advertisement will be credited. Advertising Deadlines: Monday, 2 p.m. - Brussels; Monday, 4 p.m. Blyth. We are not responsible for unsolicited newscripts or photographs. Contents of The Citizen are © Copyright. Publications Mail Registration No. 6968 Do it, or do without it Come the revolution (Common Sense or otherwise) people in Ontario, and probably all of Canada, are going to face a new reality: either they do without some of the government services they've come to take for granted, or they have to pitch in and make things happen on a volunteer, community level. This was once the way things were done, of course. If something couldn't be provided by the private sector, either a community got together and used joint action to get it, or it did without it. It's hard to know where the change came: the birth of lottery funds comes to mind. Remember back in 1977 when the provincial government condemned hundreds of arenas across Ontario because of worries about safety? With one hand the government took something away, but with another, it used lottery funds to help communities rebuild their arenas bigger and better. From that point on the idea that there was somehow an endless supply of manna from heaven, or dollars from government, seemed to take over our lives in smaller communities. Soon it went beyond lottery funds. We began to think that what we'd like is what we should have. And if people were too busy to volunteer anymore, then why not get a grant to hire someone? So today we have services we could never have dreamt about 25 years ago, everything from day care for children and seniors to summer recreation programs supported by government employment grants. In the coming years, however, we're likely to lose many of these programs. With the federal and provincial governments cutting costs and passing their problems on to the municipal government, programs supported by any level of government are in danger. Take a look at what we had in the community in 1967 — it's likely to be what we'll have in 1997. It means we'll be thrown back on our own resources as we were before government largess came along. If we want to have many things we're going to have to get more volunteer activity. We're going to have to give willingly in donations what we griped about paying in taxes. The question that remains to be answered is if we can summon up the kind of volunteer participation that was once the hallmark of our small rural communities. We're in a different world than in 1967. Today most women work and try to carry out household duties in the evening and on weekends. They don't have the time for the many community activities that women carried out 25 years ago. The changing conditions mean there are far fewer farmers and many of those who are left work off the farm and try to farm in evenings and weekends. Where once they looked to community activities to give them a social life apart from their jobs that kept them isolated, today's farmer is more likely to want to collapse in front of the TV just like everyone else. Even non farmers seem to be pushed harder to stay in the same place in the cruel economic realities of the 1990s. Then there's the fact the baby boom generation which dominates the current society, is getting to middle age, with less energy and enthusiasm for life. Is this crucial group up to the challenge of picking up the slack as the government backs out of many of these programs? Probably no one in government has even thought about these questions. It doesn't matter. The reality is that we're going to have to do more for ourselves in our communities. We've got to find the time to carry out the activities we think are important to our community, or we're going to have to live without them. The choice is ours. —KR Trial a sick mirror of society If the results weren't so tragic, the revelations of the Paul Bernardo trial in the past few weeks might have made for a darkly comical commentary on life in the 1990s. Bernardo and his former wife Karla Homolka took many of the driving forces of our age to ridiculous, and sick, extremes. Like much of what we see in movies, TV and ads, they were obsessed with sex. Even before they turned to kidnapping and murdering teenage girls, the couple seemed to think they had to live out every sexual fantasy in every pornographic movie ever made. The couple were also obsessed with money, dreaming of wealth, without real effort to make the money themselves. Homolka dreamed of a $16,000 wedding and turned on her parents when they said that because of the funeral of her sister (who she helped kill) they couldn't afford such a storybook ceremony. The couple took everything to a sick extreme, but perhaps we should all be looking at the signals our society sends. — KR E ditorial