On Saturday I spent a couple of hours at the Earth Day celebration at Jericho Park.
I spoke to several dozen people about the plan to build waste incinerators in our region. Not a single person had heard that Metro Vancouver was intending to do this.
Interestingly, two people had seen the ads for the public meetings about waste management, but they had not understood that the meetings were about a plan to build incinerators.
Some of the people I spoke to were worried about possible health impacts. More were worried, as I am, about the climate change effects from burning plastics that will emit CO2. Most of all, people wondered why we would be spending money to burn all those throw-away products that shouldn't be sold in the first place. What better way to lock in the Throw-Away Society?
In 2000, without any public discussion, the GVRD Board agreed to spend $4.5 million on Ashcroft Ranch. Another $5.5 million were subsequently spent trying to get approval for a 100-year landfill there.
That mistake will pale in comparison to the blunder we are about to commit with the staff's new so-called waste solution. The Metro Vancouver Board agreed on Friday to authorize a quarter of a billion dollars in new debt to build incinerators.
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