Honouring our carriers
It’s Friday afternoon as I write this and a steady stream of rain is splashing outside my window.
But despite the overall miserableness of the outdoors you would have expected to receive the Friday’s Northern Connector paper in your mailbox. And today, for your Northern Sentinel, you may have had this delivered to your home as well.
I bring this up not because I’m trying to instill our branding into your mind Sentinel Sentinel Sentinel but because I wanted to emphasize the importance of the newspaper carrier to the whole operation.
I grew up in a rural area on the Sunshine Coast in B.C. so newspaper delivery wasn’t the same as it is here, so basically I didn’t get to enjoy the accomplishment and hard work that comes with delivering the news, an experience many in Kitimat share.
But it’s really one of the most crucial parts of the operation. All our work would be for naught if it wasn’t actually delivered. Whether in rain or snow, deep slush or not, our carriers, young and old, bring the papers to you.
We have 44 carriers delivering the paper throughout Kitimat, and the fact you’re reading this paper should prove they’re a group which gets the job done.
This is all a round-about way of saying that it’s International Carrier Appreciation Week, from October 6 to 12, a time set aside time to think of the good work they put in here, and everywhere a newspaper is made.
So remember, no matter how it looks out there, someone is braving it to bring you the news.
Thanks to all our carriers.
Cameron Orr
On the airshed study
Just to comment on that airshed quality study for Kitimat, while I may agree with our MLA that an airshed quality study may have been useful earlier in the emerging LNG industry in B.C., it is encouraging to see so many zeroes attached to the cost of a study for our area specifically.
$650,000 is no small amount of change, so we’ll anxiously await the results of the study, on how well our atmosphere in the valley can handle these projects.
However, it’s worth considering that the government has already okayed some projects that will up the particulates in the air. Notably Rio Tinto Alcan has received an amended emissions permit which allows more sulphur dioxide released, which the company says is in proportion to their production. (The permit has been appealed, it’s also worth noting.)
As well, Kitimat LNG, the Chevron/Apache project for Bish Cove, have their provincial and federal environmental permits.
And with BC LNG small enough not to need environmental permits (hopefully I’ve remembered right) that just leaves LNG Canada still needing their paperwork done. So how a study will actually affect these projects, I’d bet not too much.
(Online addition: I was clearly only thinking of projects that had submitted for environmental review, so in my haste I did leave out the Kitimat Clean refinery in my thoughts, which has not yet gone that far. While I don't think the airshed study would halt an oil refinery, I would guess that the project would see the largest scrutiny following an airshed study. )