Editor, The News:
Re: Do you support removing land in the North Lougheed Corridor from the agricultural reserve? (Question of the week, Oct. 12).
I was encouraged to see that the vast majority of respondents (79 per cent) were not in support of losing more of our productive farmland.
However, the majority on Pitt Meadows council decided to send the exclusion application to the Agricultural Land Commission for its consideration.
If any of the 79 people who responded in the negative to this question have not already done so, I would encourage them to send an e-mail to the ALC, outlining their reasons for opposing this proposed exclusion. (ALCBurnaby@Victoria1.gov.bc.ca).
If this exclusion is approved, it would result in speculative pressure on surrounding farmland and renewed exclusion applications in Maple Ridge.
The already evident effects of climate change should be reason enough to not pave over any more of our productive farmland.
Peter Jongbloed
vice-president,
Pitt Polder Preservation Society
Major problem
Editor, The News:
Re: Do you support removing land in the North Lougheed Corridor from the agricultural reserve? (Question of the week, Oct. 12).
To our misguided politicians, no, I definitely do not support removing any farmland from agricultural land reserves, whether it is north of the Lougheed corridor or anywhere else.
Think about the future or do politicians only care about the present. Maybe they think we buy all of our food from the U.S. or any other country.
Our government should support and encourage local farming; we have enough shopping malls and industrial centers (50 per cent occupancy rate in the Maple Ridge industrial centre and many others).
When is this insanity going to end?
Trucks are moving north, south, east and west throughout the Lower Mainland and are causing havoc in everyday traffic.
No designated truck routes.
No restriction on Saturday and Sunday hauling.
What are you thinking??
We have major traffic problems in the Lower Mainland, directly associated to these malls and industrial centres.
People have to use their cars to get to them and trucks have to transport the merchandise to these centres.
The lack of intelligence of our politicians (federal, provincial and municipal) boggles my mind. We vote them in to be smart and make intelligent decisions, but they never come through.
It is always big developers and offshore interests that dictate their decisions.
I say enough is enough and keep our farmland away from developers who are only interested in their financial gains.
Harry F. Hartwig
Maple Ridge
