Editor:
Port Metro Vancouver is not satisfied with destroying the fish environment at Roberts Bank by not bridging the causeway to allow for the natural flow of tides and currents at the mouth of the Fraser River estuary. It now wants to place a coal pile miles up the Fraser River's mouth to the Fraser Surrey Docks and destroy the Fraser River estuary's very biodiversity that is so vital to the survival of the
salmon fishery.
What insanity!
They propose to bring coal trains from the U.S. through White Rock, across Boundary Bay and along the border of North Delta's residential area to the Fraser Surrey Docks.
I was on Delta council when they first brought coal trains across Delta to Roberts Bank and you would have thought the locomotives were still burning coal with all the coal dust that came off the train cars.
We fought hard to get them to recognize there was a problem and they alleviated it to some extent by spraying the cars with water before they left the mine, but this would only last for a while until the cars dried out.
Then they tried another form of spray coating, which stopped most of it, but even today there is coal dust escaping from the cars. It was too expensive to put a lid on the cars and install silos to store the coal.
Then you have the coal pile at Roberts Bank that spews its coal dust as far as the Point Roberts Marina on a stormy day. There a few, if any, crabs in the vicinity of the coal pile and any that are caught in that area are generally infected with coal dust.
They are about to spend millions more to try and prevent this from happening in an area that is somewhat isolated from the mainland. If this is a problem there, why would you put another coal pile right in the middle of a residential area and destroy its livability as well as the delicate ecosystem of the Fraser River estuary that is the greatest salmon-bearing river in the world and has recently been declared a world sanctuary under the Ramsar dedication?
Will the powers that be not be satisfied until they have destroyed our very living environment? We must not let this happen.
Douglas Massey
