Editor: I have sent the following letter to Metro Vancouver air quality director Ray Robb:
I read the article in The Times (Feb. 5), “Clock ticking on compost decision.”
Composting is an ugly word for me, as for about three years my neighbours, family and I were subjected to unbelievable noxious odours from a mushroom factory on 16 Avenue in Langley.
There were many telephone calls to your office (the Metro air quality line), telephone calls and meetings with Bill Storie, manager of bylaws and meetings with the mayor and Township councillors. We were pleading with them to stop this factory from producing these unbelievable smells, but to no avail.
I was told by the Metro people that the mushroom factory had “state of the art” composting equipment. You believed them.
The death of three workers and severe brain damage to two other workers finally put a stop to the composting operation. You did not stop it.
The air quality was atrocious most of the time. You and the Langley Township council did not pay one bit of attention to all the people who were terribly upset with this facility on 16 Avenue.
You have an opportunity now to listen to the 120 people who attended the first meeting on the Glenval Organics proposal. Listen to them, for goodness sake.
Would you like to have a composting facility down the block from your house? The place would smell, and you know it. So do your job, move Glenval Organics a few miles east of Chilliwack. Let’s have some air quality in our neighbourhoods.
Roger Layton,
Langley
