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2 - Orono Weekly Times Subscriptions $38.09 + $1.91 GST = $40.00 per year. No Refunds. Publishing 48 issues annually at the office of publication. "We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Publications Assistance Program (PAP) toward our mailing costs." Wednesday, June 10, 2009 ORONO WEEKLY TIMES - 5310 Main St., P.O. Box 209, Orono, ON L0B 1M0 E-mail: oronotimes@rogers.com or Phone/Fax: 905-983-5301 Publisher/Editor Margaret Zwart Production and Display Advertising - Donna Anderson Wood Classified Advertising - Sue Weigand The Orono Weekly Times welcomes letters to the editor on subjects of interest to our readers. Opinions expressed to the editor and articles are those of the writers and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the Orono Weekly times. Letters must be signed and contain the address and phone number of the writer. Any letter considered unsuitable will not be acknowledged or returned. We reserve the right to edit for length, libel and slander. If your retail or classified ad appears for the first time, please check carefully. Notice of an error must be given before the next issue goes to print. The Orono Weekly Times will not be responsible for the loss or damage of such items. The burn Anyone who has been following the incinerator issue closely knows that even before being built, this thing is all consuming. As the Region prepares to endorse incineration as its preferred method of waste disposal in two weeks time, a number of the necessary reports have yet to be published. These reports, as councillor Willie Woo pointed out to Regional councillors at last Wednesday's Regional Council meeting, are technical, complex, voluminous documents, difficult for any councillor 'with a life' to get through, let alone understand. Since the middle of May, the Region has released its reports on the Air Quality Monitoring study, the Site Specific Human Health and Environmental Risk Assessment report and the draft Environmental Assessment report. On June 5th, Clarington was to release its peer review comments on the Human Health and Environmental Risk Assessment. On June 12th, the Region will release its updated business case report, and on June 16th, the Regional Medical Officer of Health, Dr. Robert Kyle, will release his comments on whether he thinks the incinerator is safe for Durham residents. The Region's reports are prepared by the team of consultants which it has hired to conduct the environmental assessment of the incinerator. This is the same team, who early in the process, published a statement that most of what you see coming out of the stack is steam. While not totally untrue, this statement is intended to mislead. While the steam is visible as it is emitted from the stack, pollutants and toxins, that are also emitted from the stack, are invisible. It is because of this type of misleading statement, that anything the consultants say about the project should not be taken at face value. Councillors have to do their homework and read all of the studies and appendixes for themselves. It was in the Appendix to the Generic Risk Assessment report that Wendy Bracken, who has taken up the cause against the incinerator, found the tables that showed that the air shed at the East Gwillimbury site, in York Region, was far less compromised than the Courtice air shed. Yet the consultants said there was no difference between the East Gwillimbury site and the Courtice site. That was one of the criteria on which they based their selection of Courtice as the preferred site for the incinerator on. Councilllor Gord Robinson brought up the fact last month, that the consultant hired by the Municipality to do the business case on Total Hockey, guaranteed that facility would make money. This is exactly why councillors should do their own homework, and read all the relevant material themselves, before making a decision in favour of new projects. The business case report for Total Hockey made no such guarantees. If that were the case, the municipality should be launching a law suite against the authors of that report, Delloitte & Touche, (the same firm that prepared the business case for the Region's incinerator) for some of the $2 million wasted on that doomed project. I suspect very few, if any of the councillors of the day, even read the Delloitte & Touche Total Hockey report. If they had, they would not have relied on then Mayor John Mutton, (the hockey museum's biggest supporter) to give his version of what the report said. Rather than guarantee a steady steam of income from Total Hockey, the report said that if the municipality continued to invest money into the facility, they would receive a return on their investment. A far cry from a guarantee. Any councillors who are relying on Regional Chairman Anderson to guide them through this incinerator process will fall into the same trap as Clarington did with Total Hockey. Councillors have to do their own homework, decipher all the reports, including the peer reports, and read the material their constituents are providing to them on the incineration issue. As Woo indicated, anyone who is prepared to give this incinerator issue its proper due diligence should be prepared to take it on as an extra full-time job. At the end of the day, all councillors have to know, without a shadow of a doubt, that the proposed incinerator will not create negative impacts on the health of their residents or the environment. To date, no one can make that determination. If Durham Regional councillors are not willing to live beside the incinerator, they should not be voting to build it. The Chief Medical Officer of Health in Halton Region had no evidence four years ago that modern incinerators are safe. In fact, he said, they emit the same dangerous pollutants as earlier incinerators, so he recommended against building one in that Region. Unless Durham Regional councillors have proof positive that incineration will have no harmful effects now and into the future, they too should vote against building one in this Region. Letters to the Editor Please return to local editorial content Dear Editor: We have always taken pride in the fact that the Orono Weekly Times is one of the last remaining independent news papers. However we are concerned that the editorials appearing in the Weekly Times are increasingly from a variety of outside sources. Rarely do we see a locally written editorial. To use the most recent example: what does Ben Eisen, Policy Analyst for The Frontier Centre for Public Policy have to do with Orono? There is not even a comment from our editor identifying how this editorial is relevant to our community. The ideas raised in these opinion columns may very well be of interest and importance, but what have they to do with life in our community? The reason for the existence of the Orono Times is to report and comment on issues of local concern. Surely there is enough local news that editorials on issues that affect our day to day lives can appear in the Times. When we want opinions on such topics as the oil sands or national health policy, we will, and do, refer to national sources. Please return to a more regionally focused editorial policy. Regards Frances & Tim Tufts Vitriolic rot unappetizing Dear Marg: I read with considerable distaste the "Paid Advertisement" printed in Volume 72, Number 21 of your paper. It appears Mr. Prout has no one to listen to his vitriolic rot, and has to pay, to command an audience. To imagine he has basically recapped every perceived wrong in a full page ad is ludicrous beyond belief. Mr. Robinson and Mr. Trim are my councillors and have attended to any of my problems in a prompt and effective manner. These councillors are part of the decision makers at Clarington Council. I will reserve comment on any of Mr. Prout's acidic statements, belittling and slandering these duly elected representatives. These men do not deserve this treatment. Perhaps Mr. Prout is considering offering his name as a candidate in the next election. If so, I am sure the advertisement will be included in his campaign expenses. Marg, while I understand the need for advertising dollars in these difficult economic times, I am disappointed your paper has descended to running this sort of drivel. Sincerely Les Caswell We covet your opinion! We would like to hear from you, our readers. Tell us your thoughts about local issues and current events. Send us your letters today! P.O. Box 209, 5310 Main St., Orono L0B 1M0 Fax: 905-983-5301 or oronotimes@rogers.com