I take exception to Mr. Kellermann’s letter (The News, April 12) urging us to Wait for the mine to see its effects.
Recently I attended a Coal Watch meeting in Courtenay and learned in advance the effects of allowing Raven coal mine to become a reality. It will bring some 300 new jobs to the area and in the process of washing the coal with water from local streams running through their property, they will poison the waters of Baynes Sound, kill the shell fish industry and in the process destroy over 700 existing jobs.
I ask where is the sanity when one branch of the government creates Clam Shell University in Deep Bay and another branch creates the go ahead for a mine which extends from Fanny to Mud Bay, will last 17 years and destroy all the work of the University?
One of the important points brought out at the meeting was that the selling price of cheap low quality coal that is extracted from Vancouver Island went from $50 a ton up to now selling for $150 and more a ton. So there is money to be made from these coal deposits. Start buying stock now. Or start investing in the future of your grandchildren. They might want to breathe clean air. If this application for Raven goes through, in its foot steps is another one, closer to Cumberland and it is not a mile deep like Raven into the earth, it is an open pit mine and they will use the infrastructure established at Raven to process the product and get it to Asia.
I wonder how many truck loads a day will travel through Cathedral Grove to and from the deep sea dock at Port Alberni during the 17-year operation?
We learned at the meeting that the local coal is considered low quality because it has a high sulfur content.
When sulfur is removed from the earth there is a reaction and acid is produced. That acid will eventually be washed into Baynes Sound, also affecting the PH of the waters and creating havoc among the bivalves and all marine life.
Len Walker, Bowser
