Editor:
Howard White deserves a 'misappropriation of words' award.
His letter to the editor (Coast Reporter, Oct. 23) about the Pender landfill suggested that I agree with him, want a landfill expansion, and that the Sunshine Coast Regional District (SCRD) is causing a rift in our community. Not true.
White knows I favour a transfer station for economical and environmental reasons, and that I believe his words and actions are causing a rift in the community. Yet he used my name to further his cause. Not on.
White says Highway 101 and Sechelt will become a 'waste corridor' with a transfer station. Total fear mongering. All garbage from the Pender landfill, except household, is already trucked to Sechelt. Adding household waste would add one to two trucks every six days. Not traffic or a 'waste corridor.'
White says expansion is better environmentally and economically. Where's his evidence? All the experts' reports claim the opposite. He says the SCRD should follow the wishes of the community, that 80 per cent of respondents of a questionnaire favoured expansion. He didn't mention the small number of respondents, or that many have changed their minds since educating themselves.
White says our landfill has 50 per cent reduction in waste, improved leachate controls, and is well maintained. Sources? Fifty per cent from what? A collection pit beside an unlined landfill in 2009 is sad, not an improvement. And 'good maintenance?' Until this issue became news, household garbage lay uncovered for years.
It's time White stopped misappropriating other people's words, spreading fear and mis-information.
Carole Rubin
Pender Harbour
