Dear editor,
In your paper a resident of Fanny Bay recently called a proposed coal mine within five kilometres of Baynes Sound an insane Idea but does not explain why he has this opinion.
I hate to see this become another emotional football like the anti HST tirade with all the costly results for B.C. without explaining some facts as I see it. In my opinion it is a more suitable area for a metallurgical coal mine than anywhere. Highways and rail connections to Port Alberni and deep water for transport to ovens and smelters is readily available keeping secondary pollution to a minimum.
Direct pollution in the form of coal dust is not near a residential area or Baynes Sound and coal is already in it from previous mining activity.
Drain water is expected to be of similar quality as the water seeping out of the hillsides. Visual pollution similar to logging may not be preventable because I expect the coal will have to be sorted and with the non-coal material will leave piles of rock and dirt. Any settlement of the surface above the underground mine over the next hundred years may hardly be noticed.
Besides the economic advantages for the local area, the province and Canada, it should be realized that metallurgical coal is the foundation of our present civilization. There is no other available fuel that melts iron out of ore on a large scale economically.
No metallurgical coal, no coke, no iron, no steel, no pipe, no oil and gas, no plastics, etc. You can dream your own results from saw blades to furnaces and engines.
People elsewhere love the land where they live just the same as we do but if further from deep water, run into many more problems than we do.
We have to be very selfish to make use of the steel products created by the use of their coal while we can produce the same coal so easily right here.
George Tinga
Courtenay