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Editorial Comment Over a Garbage Barrel The Durham Region is over a barrel. barrel. Not a regular barrel, not an oil barrel, but a garbage barrel. Somehow, it has reached the point where it has no large-scale waste disposal facility of its own. And that means it is at the mercy of rising rates charged for the disposal disposal of regional trash at the Metropolitan Metropolitan Toronto landfill site located located on the Pickering/Toronto boundary. The only landfill sites operated by the Durham Region are small ones located in townships. One such site is in former Darlington Township, but operations such as this one are not large enough to hold the volume of waste produced by centres such as Oshawa. There are some advantages to Durham's use of the Metro site. The biggest bonus is the fact that this location has all of the necessary environmental environmental approvals. Therefore, the Durham Region can avoid the controversy which would arise if it embarked on the development of its own major landfill project. Durham seems to have decided it is better to use this existing site than go through the political minefield of developing its own facility. At least, that seemed to be the conventional wisdom until information information was presented at the regular regular meeting of Durham's regional council in Whitby last week. That was when Durham discovered discovered a drawback to riding on Metro Toronto's coat-tails. That drawback can be summed up as follows: follows: When Metro opts to raise its rates, Durham has no choice but to raise taxes or boost the user charges associated with waste disposal disposal at the Toronto location. Last Wednesday, without warning, warning, Durham was told that Metro was raising its rates by 17 per cent. Durham, of course, followed suit. But not without considerable protest protest from members of council who felt the whole process was highly unsatisfactory. It seems to us that the development development of a regional site is a desirable desirable goal. But it will not be a cure-all. The cost of acquiring land, defending defending the project before municipal boards and environmental hearings hearings will amount to millions of dollars. dollars. And the result will be rates comparable to the high costs of the Metro site which raised the hackles of regional councillors last week. While Durham should work towards towards developing a new site, it must also look at schemes to reduce landfill landfill costs. The most reasonable idea may be the separation of re-usable metals and paper from the vast tonnage tonnage produced every day by our throw-away society. Reducing the volume of waste by removing usable garbage may be the best way to make landfill sites last longer. And with trash disposal costs rising rising annually by as much as 17 per cent, such an option looks better as time goes on. Section Three The Canadian Statesman, Bowmanville, May 30,1984 3 Popular Pansies Non-Nuke Circus Coming Once again, it's circus time. No, there won't be any elephants, lions or clowns when this circus comes to town. But there will be a goodly assortment assortment of sixties-style radicals, people with faces painted white, a celebrity or two, and swarms of media with cameras and microphones. microphones. At least, that's how previous demonstrations demonstrations at the site of the Darlington Darlington Nuclear Generating Station have always looked to us. Perhaps the latest protest slated for Monday, June 11, will be different. different. But we doubt it. And we wonder if the non-nuclear movement which is behind the Darlington protests is its own worst enemy. Perhaps nuclear opponents are playing into the hands of Ontario Hydro and the nuclear industry in general by looking and acting eccentric. eccentric. Sometimes, they make it appear as though opponents of nuclear nuclear power have no more credibility credibility than members of the flat earth society. Non-nuke protesters should certainly certainly think about these points before before they embark on their next public public protest. Consider the recent demonstrations demonstrations at Darlington and you will find they were enormously popular as media events but they did little to add credibility to the cause. Three protestors camped atop one of the hydro transmission towers towers at the site. Parachutists descended descended to the Darlington property and a few hundred protestors went over Hydro's security fence where they were promptly arrested. Now, the average Joe who views these shenanigans on TV news knows that he would never camp atop a hydro tower, don a parachute or get arrested for the non-nuclear cause. Therefore, he assumes that those who do so must be merely a group of cranks who are fighting a losing battle. The "average Joe or Josephine" gets the impression that the nuclear nuclear debate is divided into two groups: The extremists who climb fences and get arrested, and the scientists, scientists, engineers, and rational people who agree with nuclear power. In that kind of comparison, only the nuclear opponents will lose. As proof that this benefits Hydro more than it benefits the protestors, protestors, we might point out that the anti-Darlington crusades of the past five years have not altered Ontario Ontario Hydro's Darlington plans one iota. In all of the hoopla, the underlying underlying issues raised by both sides become become obscured. Opponents wonder if the more than the $11 billion cost of Darlington Darlington is necessary when Ontario Hydro already has a power surplus. They also worry about the disposal of waste and the danger of an accident accident at a nuclear power station. Nuclear supporters, in reply, point to the thousands of jobs which would be at stake if nuclear projects projects are abandoned. They point out that Canadian nuclear plants have a safety record second to none. They note that nuclear energy offers offers a solution to the problem of acid-raid brewed from the smoke of conventional coal-fired power stations. stations. If the only opposition to nuclear power comes from the band of wilted flower children which has appeared at previous Darlington protests, Ontario Hydro could proceed proceed to put a nuclear reactor in everybody's back yard with hardly a word of complaint from the majority. majority. Judging from past performances, it would seem that the non-nuclear movement has traded publicity gimmicks for credibility. And, ironically, ironically, this has only strengthened the non-nuclear position. It will be interesting to see if the upcoming protest will be any different different from the one that last occurred at Darlington about three years ago. Canadian Statenman 623-3303 (JcNA Durham County's Great Family Journal Established 130 years ago In 1854. Also Incorporating The Bowmanville News The Newcastle Independent The OronoNews Second class mall registration number 1581 Produced every Wednesday by THE JAMES PUBLISHING COMPANY LIMITED 62-66 King St. W., Bowmanville, Ontario L1C 3K9 l/L>' JOHN M. JAMES Editor -- Publisher GEO. P. MORRIS Business Mgr. BRIAN PURDY Advertising Mgr. RICHARD A. JAMES Assistant Publisher DONALD BISHOP Plant Mgr. All layouts and composition ot advertisements produced by the employees ol The Canadian Statesman The Newcastle Independent and The James Publishing Company Limited are protected by copyright and must not be reproduced without written permission ot the publishers. $15.00 a year -- 6 months $6.00 strictly In advance foreign - $45.00 a year Although (ivory precaution will bo lakon to nvold urror, Tho Ciinndum Slatosman accepts .idvortislng in its columns on tho uiHlmlamluuj that it will not bo Imblo lor nny onor in tho mlvortisomont puhlishuit hoioundor unless a proof ol such advertisement is requested in willing by the advertiser and returned to The Canadian Statesman business olllco duly signed by the advertiser and with such error or corrections plainly noted in writing thereon, and in that case it any error so noted is not corrected by the Canadian Slatosman Us liability shall not exceed such a portion ol the entire cost ot such ndverlislment as the space occupied by the noted error bears to the whole advertisement space occupied by such SUGAR and SPICE Growing Old Comfortably V How to supplement your income when you go into retirement? This is an occupational hazard of potential retirees, who, after living in ; this country for the past thirty years, know full well that their paper money is going to be good for starting fires with, and not much else, in a decade or so. Canadians are extremely security-conscious. They don't give a diddle about growing old gracefully. They want to grow old comfortably. It's hard to believe. These are the same people whose ancestors came from the fogs of Scotland and the bogs of Ireland and the smogs of England, with plenty of nerve and not much else. They paid their dues with hard work, taking chances, raising and feeding huge families. The last things in their minds were pensions, condominiums in the south, the falling dollar, or Ayrabs. They didn't need oil; they cut their own wood. They couldn't even spell condominium. There was no such thing as a pension. The old man was Grampa, and he hung onto his land, bullied his sons, and mad£ most of the decisions, until he retired to senility and the fireside. The old lady was Gramma, and she helped birth her grandchildren, bossed her daughters, had a wisdom that only hard living can give, and was buried thankfully, but with copious tears all around. They lived with a certain ugliness: brutal work, vicious weather, cruel child-bearing by the women, until they were warped and arthritic and sick in body. Few pleasures like music and books and drama and automatic dishwashers and television and milk in a plastic carton instead of a cow. But they didn't need two martinis to give them an appetite for dinner. They didn't need a couple of Seconal to put them to sleep, or a couple of mood elevators to relieve their depression, or a couple of Valium to relax their muscles. They ate like animals because they worked like horses. They slept like animals because they were exhausted. They didn't need mood changers because they had only two or three moods: angry, tired out, or joyful. They didn't need muscle relaxers because their muscles were too busy to relax. Now you may think I'm making a pitch for "The good old days." I'm not. I think they were dreadful days. I remember the look on my Dad when he couldn't even make a payment on the coal bill. I remember watching my mother, who never cried, weeping over the sewing machine at midnight, when she thought no one was looking. But in those days, people grew old with a certain dignity, if not beauty. They accepted their final illness as "God's will." Most people today say, "Why me?" when they are stricken. Today people want to be beautiful when they're old. They want to be thought of as "young at heart". They want to be comfortable. They don't want to be ill. They dread the cold. They fear poverty. They search, sometimes desperately, for some sort of womb, or cocoon to go back to, where they will be safe and warm and fed, and never have to look that grim Old Man straight in the eye. And modern economy lets them down. Their hard-earned, and hard- saved dollars dwindle into cents. They come close to heart attacks and strokes when they have to pay $3.80 for a pound of beef, 89 cents for a lousy head of lettuce, over a dollar for a pound of butter. They are disoriented, confused, and frightened. And it's not only the old who are frightened and insecure. I see it in my younger colleagues. They don't talk about Truth and Beauty, Ideas and Life. They talk about property and R.R.S.P.s, and the price of gold, and inflation, and the terrorizing possibility of losing their jobs. Some of the smart younger teachers bought some land when it was cheap (they're not so young anymore, eh?) and built on it. The smarter ones have a working wife. The smartest ones have both. Most of them, even those in their thirties, are already figuring on a second income when they retire: selling real estate or boats; doing the books for some small businessman; market gardening; antique shops. Who can blame them? But I have the answer for every one of them. No problem about retirement. Just follow Bill Smiley around, do exactly the opposite to what he does, and you'll come out healthy, wealthy and wise, when it's time to put your feet up. If Smiley buys equities, buy blue chip stocks. If Smiley buys gold mining stock, buy a swamp. If Smiley calls the Tories to win, vote Liberal. If Smiley buys an ounce of gold, dump yours fast, because it will drop $200 overnight. If Smiley gets into seat-belts, because they are compulsory you get out. The law will change. I could go on and on, but I won't. Just watch what I do, and do the opposite. And have all the papers to prove it. But I'm charging twenty per cent of everything you make. And that's how I plan to weather inflation and retirement. Letters to the Editor The Canadian Statesman Dear Editor. Fish Over the Dam. The Vanstone dam has been in the news lately, two good stories, both about private enterprise showing the way, Mr. Pypker, restoring hydro electricity from the Bowmanville Bowmanville Creek, which was done much earlier around the turn of the century somewhere at Jackman Road and Mill Lane, and our B.C.A.A, people lifting lake trout over the dam to enable them to spawn upstream. upstream. Being a fisherman of kind myself, it was good to see these anglers busy helping our fishy friends get further inland, inland, although I am not sure that all landowners upstream will he happy with the kind of crowds these same trout have attracted below the dam. What's good for the tackle- shop and the chiptruck, is not always good for a farmer, Perhaps, the B.C.A.A. people would do well to consider consider their proposal to have the M.N.R, build a fishladder for a cool $1)5,000. (estimated) and in reality probably much more, and keep counting their own fish by lifting them over as was done this spring. 700 trout, some 350 pair, seems plenty to stock six miles of stream, and more would probably be counterproductive, counterproductive, and assuming that for once a government body would he able to stick to its estimate, of $95,000, for the fishladder, then added to that the maintenance cost, your work of lifting 700 trout per year over the dam, will be worth about 20 dollars per fish. Not a bad return for a lot of fun. That will be a real service to the taxpayers, and- to us fishermen. See, when I read all these wild figures from our learned friends who work for the government, about the cost of these structures, then one gets really mad. It is now some 32 years ago, that I helped repair the mill sluice at the Hampton millpond, millpond, two men under the direction of the mill owner, with some new and used timbers, timbers, work for two weeks or so, at a cost of less than 2,(M)0 dollars, our work lasted for some twenty years, until a rainstorm, washed part of the dam out. If that pond was still privately privately owned, and no while helmeted persons were involved, involved, and no green cars or trucks in sight, that millpond would have been restored long ago, and everybody happy to sec the ducks and geese, and the fish back. It is not that the officials arc not correct in their calculations, calculations, according to their accepted criteria, but their criteria are wanting, A private owner would repair these dams, within his means, using his experience and money, quite a different criteria to work from. They also take a chance that, yes, there might he another rainstorm, rainstorm, so what? There also might not he. If people worked and lived with all these projections as used by the conservation authorities, authorities, nobody would have any children, because they might die before they arc eighty, Thanks to the private mill owners, and fishermen and women, for showing the way, keep up tho good work, and keep it in your own hands, please I Yours truly Dirk Brinkman Niagara Peninsula Flood Plain Fighters Inc. May 19th, 1984 Dear Editor, When you published our letter of April 1983 in which property owners injuriously affected by the Provincial Flood Plain Management policies were invited to contact contact our organization, we received a substantial number of replies. The "horror stories" which these replies factually documented were incorporated in our brief to Premier Davis and his Cabinet. This brief obviously made an impression because the Minister of Natural Resources, Resources, Mr. Alan Pope appointed a Flood Plain Review Committee, which spent several months holding public meetings throughout the Province. Thu presentations made to that Committee were incorporated incorporated in their report (which is available from your M.P.P, or the Regional office of the Ministry of Natural Resources) Resources) which set out the reforms needed to nut an end to a decade of injustices to property owners in Ontario. Three of the most Important recommendations of this Committee are: - (1) abolition of existing regional storm criteria, to be replaced by the one in a hundred year flood criteria used by the Federal Government and other Provinces, Provinces, the U.S.A. and many European countries; (2) restoration restoration of the rights of properly properly owners to appeal decisions decisions affecting their land to an impartial body - the O.M.B.; (3) removal of Flood Plain land use controls from non- clectcd Conservation Authorities, Authorities, to be transferred to local Municipal Councils subject to safeguards legislated in the new Planning Act, with the Conservation Authorities acting as advisers. It has come to our attention that the Association of Conservation Conservation Authorities (encompassing (encompassing 39 member Authorities) Authorities) is lobbying hard to brainwash brainwash local Councils into believing believing that these reforms should ho rejected, and they arc using public funding to accomplish this cud, The Minister of Natural Resources the lion, Mr. Alan Pope has publicly supported the reforms advocated by the Flood Plain Review Commit tee Report, but lie has made it clear that these reforms will not be put into effect unless local Councils endorse the Report. I urge your readers to contact contact their local Municipal Council either personally or by letter, to request that they pass a resolution to be forwarded forwarded to the Hon. Mr. Pope in support of the recommendations recommendations of the Flood Plain Review Committee by June Both, 1984. Sincerely, Mary Fox, Secretary Niagara Peninsula Flood Plain Fighters Inc. P. O. Box 1009, Fort Eric, Ont. L2A 5N8 Tel: 1-410-735-5999 or 1-416- 382-2320 or 382-2332.