Taxes, Tubs and Ashes

To Powell River Legacy group:

How many of you trouble makers have woodstoves?Are you willing to pay 40% more taxes when your troublemaking shuts the mill down and puts all of the workers out of work?Did your small minds even bother to look into the fact that a CEMENT tub has been built to put the ash into? How are ashes going too go through cement?

Tell that trouble maker that moved here from Vancouver and is starting all this to go back where she came from. Her starting trouble and getting sued by Formasa already should show her what a good for nothing she is.

Reply 1 from the PR Legacy group:

How many of you trouble makers have woodstoves?

Despite the fact your tone is accusatory and insulting, here are some answers for you to mull over:

I'm not a troublemaker, but I do have a wood stove. However, I don't burn salty wood in it, I assure you. Nor will I be producing 1.3 million tons of salt hog flyash over the next 20 to 40 years and piling it in a huge mountain on the top of the hill where the wind and rain and sun break it down and disperse it over the entire peninsula.

The flyash slurry is not particularly stable. It is abradable. The mill has done no studies on its structure or the effects of weather on the exposed surfaces. However there is information on the internet regarding the structure of flyash that indicate the drying-out of the slurry allows dust dispersal.

Are you willing to pay 40% more taxes when your troublemaking shuts the mill down and puts all of the workers out of work?

No one on the community committee is interested in seeing the mill shut down. Our neighbours and family members work at the mill. The new owners, Third Avenue management, are doing a fine job of shutting down the mill as a paper-producer all by itself.

Supporting the landfill expansion only furthers their plans to cut more jobs and turn the mill into a producer of energy, not remain a paper-maker. (read more)

The pulp and paper industry in Canada is in trouble you know. Thousands of job loses have been occurring every year across the country. We are not the only community facing these problems.

Granted, it is easier to blame a local of group you don't agree with, than to look at the big picture and understand what is going on nationally and internationally. But it doesn't help to solve the problems we are facing as a community.

The taxes the mill will pay will remain in the tax base whether they employ a lot of folks making paper, or just a few folks producing energy.

And speaking of taxes, next year the mill tax break amounts to a cool $1 million. You and I and every other residential rate payer in Powell River will see that added to our taxes.

Did your small minds even bother to look into the fact that a CEMENT tub has been built to put the ash into? How are ashes going too go through cement?

Actually the brain size of the group is quite astounding.

However, as to the cement tub, if there were such thing, the ash would not go through the cement, it would blow off of the exposed surface of the tub. (And if the tub was built on top of an existing highly toxic landfill, such as is now in Wildwood, the weight of the flyash would still push the existing toxins even further into the watertable).

Furthermore, the Wildwood Ratepayers have implored Catalyst in over two years of discussions to employ a containment system (a tub, if you wish) for the flyash if they are going to store it above ground. This would considerably reduce the possibility of air contamination by the chalky flyash slurry. This of course would be expensive, and we assume it is for this reason that Catalyst has rejected our suggestions on this matter.

The Draft Golder Technical Report contains no discussions of a cement containment system.
Perhaps you are referring to the "conceptual" operational plan in the Golder Report (page 23, item d) which states:

"The waste will be filled in lifts by constructing an outside berm of ash that has a relatively low slump consistent with the construction of 3 horizontal to 1 vertical slopes. This outside berm will serve to contain ash loads that have a higher water content and higher slump."

As you see the conceptual plan is simply to use thicker flyash slurry (not cement) to contain thinner flyash slurry.

Flyash slurry does not harden to cement. This is a common misunderstanding perpetuated by the use of the words "concretized" and "cementatious."

These are perfectly valid terms, but may lead folks to interpret them to mean the slurry is like cement.
It is not.

To quote the Engineer, Colin Wong, who wrote the Report for Catalyst, slurry hardens "like hard soil."

There are many factors that determine how hard the final set-up is. These include water content, what kind of fuel is used in the boiler to make the ash, how much limestone is added, the temperature the boiler is fired at, etc.

This issue is more complicated than your statements would lead one to believe. You see, there is a very good reason the Bible says, "Ignorance is Bliss."

Tell that trouble maker that moved here from Vancouver and is starting all this to go back where she came from. Her starting trouble and getting sued by Formasa already should show her what a good for nothing she is.

As to your scandalous statements here, we will leave them to the person you are vilifying to answer. You should be aware however that she is not a member of the community group working on this issue; nor do we support her opinion that the mill should be closed. We only support her right to have that opinion.

Just as we support your right to have your opinions, as misguided as they may seem to us.

Nelle Maxey