Very Few Canadians Doubt Climate Change

Vancouver Sun
Only two per cent of Canadians who responded to a new opinion poll believed climate change is not occurring. Full story here.

Stop Great Barrier Coal - Sign the Petition. Please

Avaaz.org

Australia could let mining magnates build one of the world's largest coal ports on top of the Great Barrier Reef ecosystem -- opening access to 8 billion extra tonnes of planet-killing coal and risking the survival of this entire amazing world heritage site. Details here.

Manitoba's Lakes Have High Concentrations of Algae-Produced Toxin

By: Jenny Ford - Winnipeg Free Press
Manitoba lakes have some of the highest concentrations of a potent toxin produced by blue-green algae, a study published today found. Details here.

Farmers' Pardons Another Slap in the Face

Laura Rance - Winnipeg Free Press 

Harper's act of clemency hits at CWB

 

PLT photo

As the new marketing era dawned Aug. 1, Canada's prime minister took his revisionist view of history and his ideological vendetta against the Canadian Wheat Board to a new level. Full story here.

Sustainability Now a Matter of Life and Death

IPS - Interpress Service
BULAWAYO, Zimbabwe, Aug 8 2012 (IPS) - Humanity is living beyond its means with the growing demand for food, medicines and other nature-based products, making sustainable consumption and conservation a matter of life and death. This is according to the world’s oldest and largest global environmental network, the International Union for Conservation of Nature. Details here.

World's Underground Water Resources Are Being Over-Exploited, Scientists Say

Reuters

Irrigation pivots sit idle in winter, in the US midwest. PLT photo.

LONDON, Aug 8 (Reuters) - The world is depleting underground water reserves faster than they can be replenished due to over-exploitation, according to scientists in Canada and the Netherlands. Details here.

How I Spent my Summer Vacation

Dear Reader,

By way of explaining why my blog has been so dormant, I suffered a heart attack about a month ago. They rushed me by ambulance from Roblin (MB) to the cardiac wing in the Regina General hospital. There, they installed a "stent" in a blocked artery, then did open hearts surgery during which they bypassed six other arteries. Lucky for me, the cardiac ward in Regina and the people who work there, are world-class.

I'm home now, recovering. But I'll now have to visit a sleep clinic in order to deal with my Sleep Apnea which appears to have returned. I may have to start using (for lack of the correct, technical term) a "sleep machine" to help me at night.

Should be able to get back to posting regularly, in short order.

Thinking of you all.

Larry

A Poster For Our Time

A PLT creation.

Discovery of Hundreds of Dead Fish in P.E.I. Brook Spawns Pesticide Concerns

Winnipeg Free Press....
COLEMAN, P.E.I. - The discovery of hundreds of dead fish in Prince Edward Island is spawning concerns from environmentalists about the use of pesticides in the province's agriculture industry. Details here.

NEW Urgent Warning to all Cell Phone Users (Video)

Hang the Bankers
If you think the jury’s still out on whether cell phones can be dangerous to your health, then you might want to take the time to listen to this video. Watch video here.

The Rural Municipality of Shell River, Manitoba, Scraps Plans for a New Sewage Lagoon at a Controversial Location

But the RM's plan to press ahead with a lagoon somewhere else, does not bode well for those who would like to shed such antiquated technology in favour of something better. 
- by Larry Powell

=====

According to an informed source, four members of the 6-member RM Council met in special session this week and voted to scrap the site originally proposed, north of Highway Five and a few kilometres east of Lake of the Prairies. It would have been just over 1K upwind from my country residence, on land owned by the Reeve, Albert Nabe. The source, who asked not to be publicly identified, says only four of the six councillors were present at the meeting. (The other two, Reeve Nabe and Councillor Jack Lenderbeck, have not been voting because of a conflict-of-interest in the issue....Reeve Nabe because he owns the land and Councillor Lenderbeck because he rents land from the Reeve.) 

The vote to abandon the original site means the hunt is now on for another which does not need a $1.5 million liner to prevent leakage. (I reported earlier that the drill truck had struck water on at least one occasion at the original site. I have now learned that this actually happened more than once.) 

Despite this rather damning evidence that a lagoon at that location would have been a mistake, two councillors are still said to have voted to proceed to build there!

In any event, my local government has now given up completely on the possibility of considering  technology other than a hole in the ground in which to treat human waste. It will not be persuing a proposal by Blue Diamond Technologies, a Manitoba company which had asked council to consider its chemical treatment system, instead. The RM seems to have rejected the company's contention that it could do the job cheaper and better.


My application to require the RM to make the original soil test results available to the public, something it has refused to do from the outset , has now gone to the provincial Ombudsman. Despite this latest development, I intend to see this process through, because the public ought to know all the details. Secrecy and lack of accountability by this government are way too pervasive.


To me, this was never about the "NIMBY Syndrome" (not in my backyard), only. While nothing focuses the mind quite like the spectre of sewage odours wafting over one's own property, I can't understand why our politicians seem so stuck in the past they'd rather cling to the decades-old technology of lagoons, which often leak, contaminate groundwater or fail to meet pollution regulations. 

Sadly, this project will be going ahead in someone else's backyard, somewhere else in this jurisdiction. And that's too bad.

Larry Powell, concerned citizen, resident and ratepayer/RM of Shell River and publisher of "Paths Less Traveled."

Please also read:  

• "The RM of Shell River Will be Told About New Technology for Waste Disposal. Will it Listen?" 
•  "Will the Rural Municipality of Shell River Brush Aside Better Technology in Favour of Another Sewage Lagoon?" 
• "A Local Manitoba Government Seems Set to Ignore Concerns Over a Planned Sewage Lagoon"
• "Local Paper Gives Editorial Support to Citizens in the Rural Municipality of Shell River"
• "A Rural Municipality in Manitoba Gets Served With Freedom of Information Papers"
• "A Rural Manitoba Municipality Makes Quiet Plans for a Sewage Lagoon - Does the Reeve Have a Conflict?"