Dear editor,
There are many issues about the Raven coal mine proposal including the issues brought forward by the Liberal government.
However when people, in opposition to development, put forward non-rational arguments you have to wonder if they are helping or hindering their cause
Mike Bell told us we "...can do the math." So I did.
Mike said the waste from the Raven Coal Mine "will be the size of a 500-storey building spread over an area the size of Canadian football field."
A Canadian football field is 110 yards long or 330 feet. It is 65 yards wide or 195 feet. Most people say a building storey is 10 feet. In tall buildings the storeys actually are more than 10 feet high, but to keep the math simple I used 10 feet.
So, according to Mike, the Raven coal mine will produce a pile of waste 330 feet by 195 feet wide and 5,000 feet tall or almost a mile high. So it would be slightly wider than the CN tower (,1815 feet tall, 218.4 feet wide) but 2.5 times taller.
Almost as tall as the the CN tower, on top of the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, on top of Great Pyramid of Giza, which altogether would total 5,017 feet.
As that would easily be the tallest freestanding structure in the world, Vancouver island would get millions of tourist coming to view the most incredible rock stacking ever. I think if Compliance Energy Corporation can stack rock with that kind of precision they should be allowed to have the coal mine.
Nina Usherwood,
Comox