Letters  

Dear Republic:

Dear Republic: So City Council voted unanimously to encourage the Whitecaps Football Club to proceed to build an open-air stadium for 15,000 fans over dangerous goods rail tracks. The Whitecaps motto is “We love our fans!” but do you have to love them to death?

An accident, or God forbid, a post-9/11 terrorist act involving a rail car could cause a 1,000-foot-high fireball over three city blocks. And there would “be heavy impact” according to a former Vancouver city manager, for one mile in radius, and it would blow out windows for three miles around.

City staff will soon be approaching the federal government to accept all legal responsibility in case of a catastrophe.

Vision Party’s Heather Deal wants to sing in the proposed stadium. It’s not clear whether she would sing our anthem or Beethoven’s “Clashing noisy railcars, Opus 5.”

And what about the decking? Decking once toppled a Premier in this province. Both myself and Gastown’s Bruce Clarkson, of the Central Waterfront Coalition, spoke to Council about the dangers of stadium decking over the dangerous good rail tracks. Will they deck over the tracks all the way east to Main Street?

How would emergency vehicles gain access under the stadium? The only have half an hour to contain a potential disaster. Decking can increase the force of an explosion like a rifle barrel. It’s all contained in the City of Vancouver Summary—Brief to the Railway Transport Committee of the Canadian Transport Commission: Re Orders R-3601 and R-36012, submitted on March 11, 1985.

A mini shopping mall at Commercial Drive and Broadway, to be built over the tracks of the Grandview Cut, was defeated by a Vancouver City Council a few years ago because of the problem with decking over rail tracks.

—Don Larson, Vancouver

Dear Republic:

West Kootenay MP Alex Atamanenko has brought municipal, provincial and federal politicians together for a series of public forums in his large interior riding. It was a chance to air concerns.

I had some concern with the quality of air in Nelson, so I attended the July 5th forum in Nelson.

Gary Wright chaired the forum with warm and fuzzy introductions of our various elected officials. He was particularly fuzzy with introductions for Nelson's mayor, Mr John Dooley, telling us how he had successfully nominated Mr Dooley to an important committee from the convention floor of the recent federation of municipalities meeting and how rare it was for someone to be elected from the floor. This impressed us.

Mr Dooley’s opening remarks informed us about his new roll in the federation and how he had found out that environmental issues were one of the primary concerns for all BC municipalities. He was sounding like a real champion of environmental issues.

What had impressed Mr Dooley most about our eroding air, water and weather was the business opportunities. He actually expected his Nelson audience to be comforted by these new economic realities.

The frightening part was the level of acquiescence from the 50 or so citizens and his fellow political pundits.

Mr Dooley sold this crowd pollution as an opportunity. The Nelson Daily News report about this meeting was nice but failed to understand the dangerous nuance presented by our Mayor.

I asked our Mayor during the time allotted for public questions if he would again permit the air pollution contest that is part of the annual "Road Kings" car show in September. He said he would stand by the decision of the RK directors and that the tire burning contest was no different than fireworks, leaving me with the impression that two wrongs make a right.

This pollution contest is permitted by Nelson City Council to break provincial air quality standards. Until we as citizens control this kind governance we will not solve the plethora of health problems caused by bad air, water and weather. Yes, some will get rich selling us bottled water, air and sun screen. Is that fair trade or free trade?

— Tom Prior, Nelson BC