PACHA gets results

I received a neat e-mail today from Rob Watt of PACHA (People's Action Committee for Healthy Air):

Thank you to all the members of the community that took the time to write letters to CANFOR, Charles Jago and Brett Robinson, regarding your concerns about the odors in the community. Dave Fuller from PACHA and Carol Fairhurst from MACC had a meeting on October 7th with Canfor reps, Brett Robinson, Glenda Waddell and Martin Pudlas to bring forward the concerns about odors, to talk about the bucket brigade and to hear about their odor study and what Canfor's plans were to deal with odors.

At that meeting Canfor informed us that they were indeed planning to reduce odors in Prince George, that they had 4 projects on the books to deal with odors, and particulate. Once they got notice that they had received funding they were going to make these projects public. On Friday October 9th, Canfor received notification that they had been approved for $122 million in tax money for the black liquor credit to use towards these projects. Shortly you will see specifics about these projects in the press.

Canfor has asked us how best to respond to your letters. We have told them that the best way is to inform you through a public statement that Canfor indeed cares about reducing pollution and odors, wants to be a good neighbor, and is committed through these projects to improving air quality. We are now in the process of setting another date for a good neighbor meeting with Canfor to learn more about these projects.

If you haven't written a letter please hold off and save your skills for the next campaign!

Currently we are trying to set up a meeting with Husky to talk about their odors and how they are affecting the neighborhoods as many of you have expressed concerns about this plant. We will keep you updated on this.

Bucket Brigade - Thankyou for all your contributions to making this project successful. Our first two samples are back from the lab and we are waiting for comments on them regarding our findings. We will make the findings public as soon as we have the comments and post the data on our website. More sampling will take place over the next several months.

Marsulex - Thanks to those people that expressed their concerns about the Marsulex we will be keeping our focus on this permit review and keep you updated.

Nice work, everyone!

If you'd like to learn more about PACHA or subscribe to their e-mail list, visit their website at www.pachapg.ca.