The federal budget just recently announced that Canada starts at the Rocky Mountains ( not the Pacific Coast ) and the federal government totally has on purpose not paid any money towards the Northern Sports Centre so why would Councilor Don Zurowski think the government would do the right thing ? They have said no to the bridge all ready, so many times even from other grant sources. We do not need this bridge or it should at least be funded by industry who say they need it so badly.

LUNARGUY... BEFORE YOU MAKE COMMENTS LIKE,"WE DON'T NEED THIS BRIDGE", GO AND SIT AT FIFTH AND CARNEY FOR A FEW HOURS,THEN YOU CAN MAKE AN INTELLIGENT COMMENT.

What a crock of wasted time has this been. All the foofaraw, and we are back to using the existing piers, well, DUH. Speaking as John Q. Taxpayer,that looked like the best solution ever since they announced that an eng. study declared the piers suitable for re-use (at least that is how I remember it)
Why the waste of time? Is it because the media might hold someone responsible for 'not seeking all possible solutions'? That kind of garbage is for people who lack common sense, or courage. To this average guy, the design only makes sense. Heck, you got some good piers there, why not use them, good choice, even if the decision making process is overcomplicated. As for federal money, Lunarguy, you are right, we should not wait for them, else we will never have the bridge replaced. Anyone who looks at the traffic on 5th ave. now can see that the bridge is needed. I don't think it is just local heavy industry that wants a bridge there. Some mention has been made about the lack of a dangerous goods corridor that we do not have (Councillor Scott?) That is a very real and present danger, eventually there will be a situation in our city involving dangerous cargo, that affects the health and safety of all of us, but just imagine if such an incident occurred in an area where there are houses, children, schools etc.
metalman.

The corner of 5th and Carney could stand to be renovated to accommodate the extra traffic but needing three bridges to cross one river is such close proximities makes no sense given the volume of traffic.

If more effort was put into a dangerous goods route that need for traffic to cross the river downtown would be even less.

I go through that intersection 5-6 times a day and am well aware of the traffic levels but also that it is an old design of an intersection that has not been changed since the bridge closed down.

Hazardous goods will still travel along Carney and Fifth.

The bridge solves nothing it only postpones a decision on a hazardous goods route.

There are school children, the elderly and new families living on the route of hazardous goods.

Industry has pushed hard for this bridge, it should be tolled so the innocent taxpayers most affected by this decision don't have to subsidize it.

I agree with the toll. The more expensive it is to operate industries in the middle of a city, the sooner they will move. Moving industry away from the downtown of urban centres has been happening for many decades in North America as well as Europe. The time has come for PG to follow that pattern. There is money there from the province and the feds to put towards diversification in the wake of the MPB, and that includes making this city more livable to attract people to come here. I do not know why the city of Fort McMurray understands the need to provide proper accommodation for those working in that region and we do not take the same view.

At the same time, the city needs to provide a proper industrial area for new industries to move to and old industries, when they are ready to do major upgrades, to do the same. Again, some incentives are likely required. I look upon it as an investment in infrastructure to renew the city in precisely the same way that industrial plants are renewed to accommodate new technology and improve efficiency. Cities are more efficient when its citizens can enjoy their city without having to complain about such things as safety – air quality, dangerous goods transport, highways with large amount of truck traffic passing through city centres, blighted look for people passing through and those who thought they might want to stay but decide not to when they see what the dot on the map looks like from the highway. It is called first impressions, and often the only impressions and they are taken home with them to pass on to others.

I have said this before and I repeat. Buildma city where people want to live and the economy will follow. As it stands now we give all sorts of incentives to attract business, we give away the store when the economy is up and we starve to death when the economy drops.

It is these well meaning people that go around with their head you no where and cant see the forest for the trees.

Cheers

I see we have a council with no vision for a ring road or an industrial site located out of the airshed with the proper infrastructure in place. This decision moves the real needs of the city to the back burner for at least another decade, maybe 20 years.

Wake up people. Most of your industry is already outside the City. All the industry on the pulp mill road, or Noranda Road ie; FMC, Husky, Chemtrade, Intercon, and Pr George Pulp, Northwood Pulp, PG Sawmills.

The balance for the most part is in the BCR Industrial Site ie: North Central Plywoods, Rustads, Dollar Saver, Carrier Lumber, Pellet Plant, Marsulex, and various and sundry warehouses, and trucking companies. Some heavy duty forest industry companies, like Finning etc;

What do you have in the City proper.
1. Brink Forest Products,
2. The Pas Lumber Co.,
3. Lakeland Mills.
4. Imperial Oil Storage Depot
5. A few warehouses and trucking companies
6. Whats left of the CN Yard, as most of this business has moved to the BC Rail side of the River.

Seems to me we are talking a lot about nothing. It is more likely that that the business's on 'River Road will go broke before they will relocate, and in any event as far as industry goes they dont amount to a hill of beans. As I said, a lot of to-do about nothing.

If you think that any of the Industrie on the pulp mill roads, or the BCR Industrial complex will be relocating you need a head check.

The cost of the Cameron St. Bridge will now be $9.5 Million dollars. The City will be stuck for the full cost if no money is forthcoming from the Feds, or the Province. Without Fed/Prov funding do you think that they will opt for a single lane steel superstructure bridge,to keep the cost around $6 Million, rather than a two lane, or will they come up with some excuse so that we can pay for it all.

$500,000.00 per year repayment on a
$6 Million Dollar loan is approx $4 Million in interest. Somewhat more than we would pay to get our roads paved. Interesting that its ok for a bridge, but not ok for roads, even though its the roads that connect the bridge.

This bridge could have been repaired and up and running one year ago for the measly sum of $724,000.00. However in our wisdom we choose to spend 6 or 9 Million to get the same service, and that my friends is why this City is so far in debt, and beleive me there is more to come.

"Wake up people. Most of your industry is already outside the City. All the industry on the pulp mill road, or Noranda Road ie; FMC, Husky, Chemtrade, Intercon, and Pr George Pulp, Northwood Pulp, PG Sawmills."

The air shed does not look at legal boundaries. It looks at the physical configuration of the ground and associated wind patterns. The BCR as well as the industry to the north east is a major influenced on monitors at PLAZA 400. In fact, the industry to the north east, most of those you name above, is projected as providing 40% of the measured PM10 there. I can send you a Power Point report prepared by the MoE on that if you wish, so it is not just me talking of the top of my head.

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"If you think that any of the Industrie on the pulp mill roads, or the BCR Industrial complex will be relocating you need a head check."

Not all of them, but some of them. If ou read my note above you will see I, for one, did not expect any to move in a hurry. However, as they upgrade in substantial amounts I would expect that to happen. There is a new, relocated plant which appears to be putting more pollutants into the air than the existing plant and it will be putting that into the air 1.5 km closer to town and to the south of town which is upwind of the population in the city. If there had been an industrial site out of the airshed, that plant could have located there.

Remember, we will have an increased push to creating BioEnergy fuels from wood. Those suckers are high PM producers in the manufacturing process. We need those located outside the airshed.

After the MDF episode the mayor said that they are developing sites outside the air shed. That was over 10 years ago. Nada, niente, nichts, rien, nothing. In the meantime no change to the air quality in this town.

Now, for that head check. If you think that some, if not all, the pulp mills on River road will be operating in 10 or so years from now, you may not need your head checked, but will need a reality check.

The biggest fa

The way I see it is that we got a new home tax to pay for a Quebec income tax cut. Its what we elected.

The federal government got out of paying for the Sports Plex (previous government promises don't count), as well as funding a share of the new bridge, and even the pine beetle diversification by the looks of it. All the money saved was packaged up by Jay Hill and his partner Stephen Harper and given to Quebec in a budget designed to buy the Quebec vote for Stephen Harper. In turn Quebec premier the next day promises an equivalent increase in transfer payments as an income tax cut for Quebecers.

We pay our federal taxes and expect infrastructure investments for our taxes paid to a government we elected and all we get in return is a tax cut to buy votes on the other side of the country. Funny how that works.

It makes one wonder why we vote conservative federally when:
- we see no ring road investment to mitigate air shed concerns and show leadership in where our economy is going;
- we get no investment in local infrastructure needs;
- as of the last year they have abandoned the principles of the old reform party;
- and their policy seems to be to use our tax dollars to buy their votes in Eastern Canada just like all the governments that came before them.

Surely we don't elect conservatives for their Mid-East policies, because thats all that's left for a voter from this part of the country in the current conservative platform.

Weird, I was going to write (but didn't)the biggest fact I see Re: the relocations to the BCR site is that they were by and large mostly near non-emitters and not major polluting industry. The idea would be to migrate major pollutors to a safe location over time through available infrastructure in the appropriate location. I think the federal and provincial government have a role to play in this regard under the special airshed category.

???? BCR plants are not near non-emitters. Far from it. The highest readings are at the BCR monitor.

As was in the news recently, the pellet plant at south end of the BCR has been emitting in the order of 370 tonnes of PM annually and it has not been reporting to the National Pollution Inventory. It has been operating with no reporting requirement to the MoE for some 7 or so years. They have just asked for a permit amendment which sees their discharge allowance raised by a factor of 5 over the previous permit.

This is one of the up and coming bioenergy industries that is going to save the city by putting its peoples health even more in jeopardy. And, because they were not close enough to town, they are building a new plant 1.5 km closer.

Compare the 370 tonnes of total PM to Rustad’s 66.4 tonnes. The Plywood plant is 22 tonnes.

How are we ever to get any improvement in the air quality in this city with people who pretend that they are not a major part of the problem.

Owl how many companies relocated from the downtown to the BCR site are major emitters? I am at a loss to follow you on that one. I agree the BCR site has major emitters, but they didn't relocate there from the downtown.

The pallet plant relocated from further out. The point being suppliers and vendors that relocated in the past to the BCR site don't necessarily need to relocate to any new industrial zone. Only the emitters would be encouraged to move over time. I think you can agree with that.

The pallet plant is a prime example of a company that should have been located at the Fraser Flats Industrial Site.

Chadermando .... am not too sure how to interpret this part of your post: "the biggest fact I see Re: the relocations to the BCR site is that they were by and large mostly near non-emitters and not major polluting industry."

I thought you were talking about plants in the BCR. But perhaps you are talking about the river road plants possibly relocating to the BCR.

Two are relatively large emitters of PM - Lakeland is in the order of 325 tonnes per year. Winton Global is 400+ Brink is 60 tonnes per year.

Lakeland reports a very small fraction of PM10 ... 7 tonnes … Brink has 19 tonnes of PM10 … Winton Global has 153 tonnes per year of PM10. These are all reports to the NPRI. The two pulp mills close to town are reported as PM=735 tonnes and PM10 as 503 and PM2.5 at 275 tonnes, by far the largest emitter at any level, especially the PM2.5. The old Northwood plant is considerably higher in each of the three categories… almost 2 times as high in the PM2.5. But it is further out of town, so likely does not have that much of an effect unless the inversion lasts a long time and the slight wind here might be is from the NorthEast.

But we are being promised a model plus speciation studies within the next year or so which will shed more light on this ….. about a decade + from when that technology was available.

OOps .. made a mistake .... I said" which WILL shed more light on this "

What is more appropriate wording is: "which MAY shed more light ...."

Was just reading on the net that if there are over 5000 signatures opposing the borrowing of money they will have to have a referendum.

The borrowing interest amounts to 1/2 Million per year for 20 years!

Foo738. The City will borrow $6 Million dollars and pay it back over 20 years at $500,000.00 per year. This means that the interest would be approx $4 Million dollars.

It will be no easy task to get 5000 signatures to force the City to go to a referendum, and then of course you would have to win the referendum to stop the borrowing. If you could get through those two phases, then the City would be forced to abandon this idiotic idea, and repair the existing bridge for a cost of approx $724,000.00 and we would end up with a net savings of $12,000,000.00 assuming maintenance costs of approx $130,000.00 per year for the next 10 years.

I urge all cost conscious Citizens to sign the petition when it comes available at City Hall if for no other reason than to send a message to the Mayor and Council that it is time to quit wasting our money.

Owl I agree that was a badly worded sentence written in haste. I was reffering to the historical relocations from River Road and Downtown to the BCR Site as was mentioned in Palopu's post. Palopu said it had no effect on the airshed, but that facts are all those historical relocations were distribution type industry and not emitter type industry. Therefore that anology (of Palopu) is not correct in assessing the ability for the BCR Site to continue to be the location we should build around for industry the are the big emitters.

Owl is correct in that it would be dumb to relocate the river road mills to the BCR Site. If and when their day comes it would be much better if the city-federal-provincial government had a safe location for industry equiped with the required infrastructure to relocate these types of businesses to. Obviously this kind of expenditure requires subsidization by the federal and provincial government in order to make this dangerous to health airshed safe for the 71,000 people in the city of PG.

Thanks Palopu for the math. I have trouble with decimal points and figures that are beyond my ken.

Most people aren't that interested but it would be great to hold a referendum. At least we would have a vote.

The Hart Highway people also seem to want the bridge so it will be a sruggle.

It seems the facts and commonsense are there but we don't have a machine to inform or spin it to people.

Perhaps we could borrow the Mayor's committee?

That's a ha ha.

Instead of being so trite. I wish I had said we need to get hazardous goods out of the airshed.

The bridge only adds to the length of not looking at this problem