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HomeMy WebLinkAboutTimes Advocate, 1992-06-03, Page 4Page 4 Times -Advocate, June 3, 1992 Pubilsh•r: Jim Beckett News Editor: Adrian Harte illoslossos‘lovisger: Don smith Owitposielon Manu n Deb to i -- aa to.Nlt'Mtar owlet addressee $30.00 .10 0.5.T. 111 OatMds 40 mites (65 km.) or any farts *safer address $30.00 Ow 888.78 (stat 48.75) +. 341 0.8.1. Onside Canada $68.00 • • More process than product ust wagttk's editorial itt the Waste Management 'Master `'Alan • zsaid "a more cynical mind *lght call it a $200,000 make- work 'project for the Huron County Planning:Departmen t." That is -mot to say that it is a make- work -project, only that some people may be upset at the money, time. and re- sources :spent 'on a :nearly four-year long >pr+oject to find 'she new county landfill site:that vt ll:eludes us. The_accompany tg:arti&le in the sane issue pointed .nut:that-she Master Plan was -carried out in stccradance with Ministry of the Environment nt regula- tions.: Regulations which :county clerk Nigel Bellchamber .agrees are !frustrat- ing". With a goal to find a :landfill site, the project starts -by surveying residents as to what . constraints oere to be placed .on that site's location: One -assumes that in desolate _areas of Northern Ontario, there _are fewer worries .about where a landfill may located. -If you wanted to put a landfill somewhere in Metropoli- tan Toronto, public concerns would -make certification of a new landfill im- possible. :But in Huron County, the public's own .constraints on where a.new dump a & go'effec ively _ the -six Sites selected by the .study. Also gone are -most of the benefits of the $409,000 spent on the Waste Management Mas- ter Plan. Cleverly enough, the . only ones to blame are the public, who, when aske4, made their restrictions too tight, or so it seems from the ministry's standpoint. Now, as Bellchamber observes, the only. course of action is to go back and re-evaluate those constraints on landfill location. If the public agrees to loosen its restrictions, Men one assumes some or all of those six sites may be back on the drawing board. For those interested in the costs asso- ciated with the Waste Management Mas- ter Plan, it has cost $128,371 in planning department wages, another $181,365 for the hired consultant, and another $99,714 in other expenses. The MOE funds nearly 50 percent of the cost All however, is not lost, and as Bell - chamber points out, a meeting scheduled for Hensall on June 19 will be determin- ing-wiere the process goes from - here, with a -goal of completing the process by mid-1993. What can't be changed is the back- wards approach the ministry requires of such studies. The study still calls for a utopian landfill site, leaving the consul- tants to find it for them. They can't, so you have to go back and try all over again. As many on county council, the waste management oommitee, or the planning department might agree, theiiiajr,i guidelines place more emphasis on pro- cess, rather than on product. A.D.H. First HURRI results are in! Last week I informed my readers that the Hessel Univer- sal Rapid Research Institute (HURRI) had been established, and that this newspaper would report the first findings as soon as they were available. Well, Duncan and I set to work right away and started our very fust experiment. Origin of the universe Otlr first objective was simple: to investigate the two main theo- ries about the origin of the uni- verse. Our studies were prompt- ed by a fundamental discussion. Duncan had come home from school with yet another pearl of wisdom. (It costs Canadian tax- payers ;27.45 billion a year to dispense such knowledge.) "The universe has been around forev- er." Obviously the boy had been thinking about it, and he found the idea difficult to cope with. "Do you believe that, Dad?" he asked mc. I suffer from the male answer :,yndrome (which compels males to find an immediate an- swer- to -any question,-no_matier whether they have the faintest idea about the subject or Trot). So I said: "Yes, I believe that the universe has been here for a long time." "But forever?": He wanted an instant commit- ment in a matter over'6hiich sci- entists, theologians and philoso- phers have pondered and argued for thousands of years. "Let's put it this way," I tried to wriggle myself out of this sit- uation, "I find it just as hard to imagine that the universe has been here forever as to imagine that it started with a big bang." "I like the big bang theory a lot more," Duncan said. "Why?" "Well, if something never started. then how could it be?" "If nothing ever existed, how could something get started? Peter's Point • Peter Hessel From what? Where did all the material come from?" So we put our lab coats on and went to work. As I told you last week. HURRI is a state-of-the- art but basic research facility. There are no frills and no expen- sive apparatus, but the walls arc covered with Duncan's art. The experimental design We filled three clay pots with earth and three identical pots with nothing. We labelled the full pots A, B and C, and the _empty pots X. Mand. Z. The A -C series represented the "Fewer theory", the X -Z series stood for the bigbang. We covered the pots with sa- ran wrap, filled out our data sheets, and waited, while leaving all environmental conditions as before. There were no measura- ble changes. We went to the lab office and entered our data on the comput- er. For those interested in the te- dious high-tech details, let me just briefly explain that the insti- tute's principle hardware compo- nent is a rapidly aging Mac Pius with an external disk drive and a (slow and noisy) Image Writer. For software, Duncan turns out the graphics with MacPaint, while I establish the text base with Microsoft Word 4.0. I told you last week that it is not -the mission of this particular research institute to perform lengthy, time-consuming and ex- pensive experiments. Hs task is to come up with universal but snappy, i.e. rapid research re- sults. In this instance, we man- aged to reach our -conclusion only 45 minutes after setting up. Our findings indicated that pots A. B and C remained full, and pots X, Y and Z remained empty throughout the entire ex- perimental period. Our painstak- ingly meticulous evaluation indi- cated that it is just as unlikely for empty pots to fill up with something than for full pots to lose their contents. Full remains full, and empty remains empty. Answer to age-old questions. Modesty prevents us from claiming too much credit. But we seem to have discovered the answer to man's and woman's two most fundamental questions: Bow did it W part and where -ii it all going to end? And don't forget, we have per- formed this service without grants or subsidies, without any cost to the taxpayer whatsoever. And remember this, too: You didn't.even have to buy the Sci- entific American or Reader's Di- gest to learn about it. All you need - to keep yourself informed about the leading edge of scien- tific: progress -- is to renew your subscription to this weekly newspaper. It - along with the other papers carrying Peter's Point - will serve as our scientif- ic forum. "Men ere never so likely to settle a question rightly es when they discuss it freely." • Thomas Macauley Published Each Wednesday Mondere 4 tel., Ex.ter, °Merle, NOM 1.se by J.W. E.d PithLtd. Telephone t-8132384331 t*tssaep. " I am not overdrawn, just a little under -deposited! " T\ojard.-saiej1frfI4cie, not me I was onrduty Saturday,,ao the assignment 'was mine-,wvhieh was probably just as well since the temptation would have been too great anyway-. Yes, it was raining, but I didn't think that it would keep too many people away from the Hensall Community yard sale. I was right, it didn't. Some of those I spoke with said the grim weather may have even helped the event. Families unable to visit the beach, or trim the grass in the yard apparently headed.to Hensall in droves. Not that I'm a garage sale jun- kie, myself. Not that I would admit to it if I was. But it's hard to resist the charm of being able to find a few bargains among the things other people no longer want. With a community sale, its fas- cinating to see what other peo- ple are buying, and what people are selling, aside from the usual cups, plates, and odd-looking candle holders. One interesting antique that appears to be hitting the tables with surprising regularity is the turntable. Yes, I know that record players have been always been prime garage sale items. But I'm ,talltllgg about full- fledged turntables with ,high- quality cartridges and suspen- sion systems. Can records be that obsolete already? Hold that thought ... By Adrian Harte I know I've been predicting the demise of vinyl since the CD ar- rived, but it's still a shock to see a direct -drive Tedmics along with boxes of records set out as yesterday's news. In other technology wars, I saw a video game system that was the hottest thing only two Christmases ago, on sale in Hen- sall. I suppose we could all see that one coming. Despite the rain, people looked like they were having fun. A good raincoat and you could shop all day. Many sell- ers obliged by setting up their vores inside. their garages [now there's a novel ideal or by string - Letter to Editor ing up awnings above tyles. Although I was just there ams spectator, the inevitable hap- pened. Just like the Varna yard sale when I found a grecian um at the right price, I succumbed to temptation and found nothing less than a vacuum cleaner in need of a good home. Mindful of the fact that an old beaten -up vacuum of mine suf- fered an untimely death when accidentally plugged into a 220 volt outlet, I found a likely can- didate to take its place. Al- though it was missing a few of the attachments and tools, a bit of splicing with the hose al- lowed me to use all my old ones. You just can't have that kind of fun with store-bought stuff. Hensall has the community sale format down pat. The vil- lage is just the right size so that you can stroll virtually all the streets in a couple of hours, you're never too far away from the excitement 'downtown with all the food booths and face painting. The -real trick is going to be to try to find someone else to cover it next year, lest I end up with yet another vacuum cleaner. Editorial disputed Dear Editor: This is in reply to your editorial -this week titled "A waste taxes mer plan". I believe there arc so many inac- curacies one wonders whether you researched your material. On the previous page of your paper the ar- ticle by Fred Groves titled, "Six Proposed Sites for County Landfill Rejected", gives a more accurate view on the same subject. The Huron County Planning De- partment did not do the report as you stated. If you had checked into or attended any of the local meetings, you would have known that the County was following pro- vincial guidelines (M.O.E.). The County has a Waste Management Committee in place, made up of the warden, five county councillors, plus the county engineer, planning director, administrator and three provincial representatives. The Province is contributing financially to the study. Huron County. after reviewing other on-going studies, took their1°i own route in hiring a project co- ordinator who is jointly funded by both the County and Province. They then hired a consultant and they were the ones who did the study. But the exper- tise of the County's Administrator, Planting Director and Engineer were also used. County councillors have been kept well informed of the procedure and the progress of the study. As your editorial states we ap- proved this from the "wrong an- gle". Well, we might not like the procedure but we followed govern- ment policy and guidelines, and they aren't all that bad. This proce- dure protects landowners of poten- :tial sites and we have to prove that Abe candidate site meets other crite- ria such as the environment, agri- culture, other agencies, etc. I would hope in the future you get your facts more accurate. Yours truly, Thomas Tomes, Chairman Huron County Waste Managemeet commit/0e