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Wednesday, March 10, 2010 Orono Weekly Times - 7 Major atoms house league team makes `A' Division finals by Esther Sims Up against Clarington #3 for the second time in less than a week, playing a rare mid-week game, and coming off a win at their previous meeting, Orono's Major Atom House League team took to the ice ready for another win. Unfortunately, that wasn't to be. Despite their aggressive play, Orono lost this one 4-2. Clarington #5 proved too strong for Orono on February 6, as the team comes up short by 3 in a 52 loss. Orono's goals came from Lucas Iantomasi from Brett McCormick, and John Sims from Jonathan Feddema and Matthew Caudle. February 13, they faced Clarington #2, the league leaders. Play was fast and Orono worked hard as a team. It was an exciting game to watch. Orono fought off two penalties and scored on a power play. Assertive play by the team and commanding performances by both Kevin and Josh in net kept the scoring to a minimum. Orono loses this one 2-1 with Jonathan scoring for Orono. Coming off of three losses and a week without a full ice practice or game, Orono had two games to play to finish out regular season action and needed to win at least one to stay in fourth and be in the 'A' division of the playoffs. Opting to switch up the lines for the first time since the Christmas break, the coaching staff were looking to build up their lines for the playoffs. Proving to be resilient and adaptable the players were looking strong after they got the first couple of shifts under their belts. Lucas opened the scoring early in the second period and repeated with another goal at the halfway mark. Jonathan made the lead 3 early in the third but Clarington #1 came out fired up and scored while short handed to cut the lead to 2. John Sims finally met the mark after several good chances to end the scoring at 4-1. The next day they met Clarington #5, a team whose goalie was used to having shut outs. This was an exciting game. It was Orono's Matthew who opened the scoring in the second with assists going to Cassy Dolley and Ayron Deisinger. Midway through the third, Lucas scored with Jonathan's assistance, but Clarington #5 walked away with the win in this 3-2 final game of the regular season. Although not mentioned individually by name, it is only due to the play making moves of the other forwards and especially the defencemen that these goals can happen. Their clearing shots, timely passes, work at the blue line to keep the puck in the other end make the scoring opportunities happen. Hats off to all of the players for their had work in regular season play. It's been exciting and we look forward to the playoffs! Bring them on! Bowmanville and Newcastle firefighters respond to a grass fire at the Samuel Wilmot Nature Area at the mouth of the Wilmot Creek in Newcastle at noon on Saturday. It took the fire crews an hour to extinguish the blaze. The Concept of Risk by: Paul-André Larose, Ph.D. I attended the March 2nd session on incineration held in Courtice. I believe that the implications of incineration will be even more nightmarish than those outlined that evening. In this paper, I will attempt to clarify the issue of "risk". There are those who believe that there is a "safe" level. This is not so when dealing with contaminants for which the human body has NO intrinsic defense mechanisms. In such instances, even a healthy immune system cannot cope with the invasive trauma. In addition, there are synergetic effects resulting from compound interactions with those from existing industrial emissions. In order to assess the risk, one has to look at the "Big Picture." Risk should be assessed on the basis of worst-case scenarios, including the probability for such occurrences and expected duration. The incinerator proponents do the opposite - they assume that the system is always operating under optimal conditions. In this case, exposures were NOT estimated in instances of degraded operations where systems are NOT 100% functional 100% of the time. At best, this can grossly underestimate actual exposure levels. Moreover, the possibilities of operator errors or system over-rides were NOT considered. The incinerator has no redundancies in its emission control systems. In cases of emission control system failure(s), it will NOT be possible to use alternates. Given that an incinerator CANNOT be turned off, the plant will have, under such conditions, reduced emission control capabilities; the extreme case being the release of untreated emissions. This will result in exposures that are higher than what was originally estimated under a best-case scenario. Given that all systems eventually fail, redundancies should have been an essential component, like in a missioncritical system. We have to ask: "What type of risk are we talking about?" These could be from a host of medical issues, ranging from respiratory ones, compounded risks, life expectancy, added body chemical burden, genetic risk, fetal risk, risk on children and the elderly, diabetes patients, chronic heart or lung disease sufferers, hormonalrelated matters, etc, etc. In addition, there is the issue of bio-concentration and epidemiological data that were ignored. People should realize that ALL of them will undergo increases in body chemical burden and nano-particulate intakes through breathing, drinking or eating. For many of these pollutants, there are no "safe" threshold levels and the only safe level is actually "zero". Another illustration of the lack of redundancy in the system is the fact that there is no secondary waste storage to provide a buffer function whenever the incinerator has to be shut down, as it unavoidably will. Optimistic projections are analogous to the claims made in the post-WW-II period about the "Wonder Materials for a Better Tomorrow". These included asbestos, DDT, PCB and a host of others. These were then said to be perfectly "safe" and met the legal requirements then in force; reality was altogether different. It is tragic that this was realized at the expense of personal suffering and early death of many people exposed to these products. Do we want the same thing to happen with incineration? This outcome would be doubly tragic as the adverse implications of incineration are already well documented, particularly from epidemiological data. It is hoped that rationality will prevail and that this incineration project will be abandoned for good.