Dear editor,
I am writing today because I am one of many Fanny Bay residents who has contacted the RCMP to report a theft.
In the late hours of Saturday night someone went onto private property and removed every single No Coal Mine sign they could find throughout the Ships Point and Island Highway area.
This was a methodical removal, as in some cases they would have had to remove bolts and roll boulders as well as yank lawn signs to the total of well over 100 signs.
I have never put up any kind of lawn sign until a few months ago. I did it in order to stand up and be counted as one of many people on this island and elsewhere, whose opinion is against The Raven Coal Project. This is due not only to its inevitable impacts on the tourist-oriented direction of the Comox Valley but also on our air quality worldwide.
Raven would be a 3,300-hectare underground coal mine stretching from Union Bay to Fanny Bay proposed by CJV (Comox Joint Venture). Yes, I am a resident of Fanny Bay but we will all be affected by coal being hauled from the site in Fanny Bay through Cathedral Grove Park to the harbour in Port Alberni.
These B-train trucks will leave approximately every 15 minutes, 24/7 for 20 to 25 years. Despite Compliance Energy CEO John Tapics' assurance in a Feb. 18 edition of the Times Colonist that "They have no plans for open pit mines," why it is still posted on their website for the Bear Project?
By the maps on the site this (next?) venture appears to straddle the fossil-rich Trent River between Courtenay and Cumberland.
We have just learned we are heading into a federal election. I suppose many people will want to exercise their expected right to free speech and post a lawn sign for their candidate.
Every year we see signs vandalized. Must we all have to take these signs in at night so we can continue to express our point of view?
I want to thank these thieves for letting us know the signs are effective and unnerving. I had thought this mining project, which is a threat to our aquifers and world-class oyster harvesting, was becoming old news and that our signs were fading into the landscape.
This spring, not only will No Coal Mine signs sprout again but you have renewed our resolve to paint a different future for this island than CJV ( Compliance Coal, LG International and Itochu Corporation) seems to want for us.
Wendy Keating,
Fanny Bay