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damage

s Herby Squish began
pouring coffee for Sydney

Silver and himself, Percy
Sawyer entered the board room.
"Good morning,” chimed Sawyer.
"Morning," acknowledged
Squish. "Sydney, have you met
Percival yet?" ;
"Only on the phone," replied
Silver. "I’ve only been here a
week-and-a-half and for some:
strange reason I haven’t been able
to find the time to do much ex-
ploring." |
Squish laughed. He knew what
Silver was talking about. "Sydney
arrived on the scene in the midst
of Jovial’s search for an answer to
High Tower’s cliff-side disaster,"
he told Sawyer as he chose a scat
at the board table.
Sawyer finished pouring a cup of
coffee for himself, then turned to
welcome Silver with a sincere

control.

handshake. "Squish is the only one
around hete that calls me Perci-
val,” he said with a smile. "Call
me Buzz. Buzz Sawyer. Sawmill
manager." . .
"Syd... Syd Silver. Marketing."
The pair joined Squish at the

table, Silver’s chair creaking as he.
eased his 280-pound frame into the

well padded seat. -. |

"So what do you think of Jovial’s
new receptionist?” Sawyer asked
Silver.

"Mercy?"

"Yeah..."

"Uh... We've got bigger things to
worry about -right now,” Squish
interrupted. ~

Sawyer laughed. Silver cleared
his throat. He understood why
Squish felt uncomfortable with the
topic Sawyer had introduced, and
knew it would be wise to change
the subject. Besides, Squish was

right. They had a serious problem
to sort out and it might be a good
idea to do a little of. the sorting
before Milton Jovial arrived. for
their 10 a.m. meeting.

"Percy..." Squish began.

"Call me Buzz," Sawyer inter-
rupted.

"Okay... Buzz. Look. There’s no
point in beating around the bush.

ASSAD

"Right," Silver agreed. "What are
we going to tell Milton?"

"The truth," said Squish.

"You’re a brave man, Herby
Squish," offered Sawyer.

Letters to

the Editor

ee

Council’s haste ‘indecent

To the Editor;

I am appalled by the indecent
haste with which the municipal
councils of Kitimat arid Terrace
have raced to embrace Orenda
Forest Products’ most recent
proposition. Very little is public-
ly known about this latest hustle
except what Orenda has chosen
to publicize: that it will produce
143 full time jobs; that it will
consume 173,000 tonnes of logs
annually (numbers identical to
its previous Meziadin proposal)
and will be located seven kilo-
metres south of Lakelse Lake.
That... to date... is all that
Orenda apparently wants [to
divulge. And if the prospectus
for their Meziadin application is
indicative, there won’t be many
more hard facts revealed when -
the Lakelse site prospectus is
published.

Something in the closed-door
meeting between Orenda and
our municipal leaders the day
before the public announcement
of the project apparently tickled

_, the politicians’ fancies. They

have accepted Orenda’s proposi-

>... tion without reservation and

with little consideration of the
delicate balance between
benefits and costs such a project
entails.
discreetly waited a whole 10
minutes after the Orenda an-
nouncement before proclaiming
their endorsement of it. If Oren-
da has its way and the local
politicans who hastily jumped
into bed with the company on
this seem intent on satifying the
company any way they can —
the whole public ‘“‘review’’ pro-
cess will climax in just eight
short weeks with Major Project
Review approval in principle.
After that, further discussion
would be limited to Orenda deal-
ing with various regulatory
ministries, again... presumably

_. behind closed doors. Why does

Terrace officials -

Orenda appear to have such a

strong aversion to informed’

public discussion of its inten-
tions? Are their intentions not
honourable?

Much has been made of Oren-
da’s claim that its mill will pro-
duce Zero effluent; if true, that
is truly laudable. But beside zero
effluent, the Lakelse mill will
produce (based on figures for
the identical-capacity Meziadin
proposal) 30.5 tonnes per day of
sludge and boiler ash which it
will dispose of onsite in a land-
fill. Orenda hopes one day to
market this stuff, once they
figure out what’s in it. The mill
will evaporate and vent 864,000
litres of water each day. And its
boiler will be powered by burn-
ing 640 tonnes per day of hog
fuel and other wood ‘waste’ plus
another 40 tonnes of evaporate
waste. Once again, Orenda’s
published data leaves the com-
position of this concoction
largely unspecified, but we do
know that it will contain in-
calculable amounts of sulphur
dioxide and nitrogen oxides.
These chemicals are known to
produce acid rain.

This noxious stew will be fun-

Spending

nelled up the valley by the
prevailing south winds. It will
cross Lakelse Lake and the
Lakesle River valley, the

Terrace-Kitimat airport and the

Skeena river on its way to town.
Will this result in acid rain for
the lake? More missed flights at
the airport? More hazy days in
Terrace town?

We can’t assess these concerns
— and our local politicians
shouldn’t hastily dismiss them
— without the full and detailed
public disclosure that a complete
Major Project Review can pro-
vide. Orenda seems intent on
preventing such disclosures by
short-circuiting the process;
municipal leaders seem content
to let the company have its way
without the informed consent of

their constituents. This is
shameful. |

John How

Lakelse Lake

Editor’s note: Orenda’s proposal
for the Dubose. site has been
altered from the original Meztadin
prospectus in respect to boiler fuel
(Terrace Review July 10, 1991,
page A5). Natural gas will replace
wood waste to an unspecified
extent for boiler fuel.

priorities ©

called into question

To the Editor;

I've always been a friend of the
Indians, but enough is enough.
How can the government justify
closing 24 beds at Mills Memorial
Hospital and laying off hospital
staff while, at the same time, giv-
ing $157,000 to the Indians for
language training and a longhouse?
Could we lose the CT scanner to
Prince Rupert over this?

I felt the Terrace Review should

have covered both stories as front
page news, rather than burying the
B.C. government grants to the
natives in your News in Brief
column.

What is more important —

Indian language training or hospital
beds? Let’s call a spade a spade.

Bill Gyger
Terrace

The only good thing we can tell
Jovial, I guess, is that others have
paid a far greater price to learn the
‘same lesson."

"You're right about that Herby,"
Sawyer agreed, "Syd, what does
you're marketing plan look like?"

"Well, the good news is that I’ve
found a customer for all that fin-
ger-jointed material,” Silver began.
"The bad news is that they don’t
want it for three months.”

"And what about the. overseas
market?” Sawyer asked.

“Well... Lasked you last Wednes-
day what you could do to help,"
Silver reminded Sawyer. "And you

said the mill was already working.

to capacity. The best you could do
was to cut an extra fifteen to thirty
thousand board feet of the material

‘we need.

"So I’m counting on you to cut
twenty thousand over the next two
weeks. I’ve got a couple of small
local mills who have agreed to cut
two hundred and ninety thousand.
We'll be three weeks late in deliv-
ery, and get dinged with a five
percent penalty, but it’s the best
we can do.”

"Tell Buzz about the financial

side of things," Squish suggested. .

"Yeah... Milton’s not going to
like this. For the lumber being cut
in the other mills, we’re paying
$425 per thousand board feet. And
we're selling it for $425 less five
percent. The total loss, $6,162. The
total profit, zero..."

"Why pay the little guy so much
money?" Sawyer asked. "Maybe if
we gave them the logs and twenty
bucks a meter to cut them up?”

“We can’t," said Silver. "They've
got their own timber supply, their
own markets to feed... Why should
they sell us something for less
when they can sell it themselves at
$425 per thousand board feet? All
they're doing is putting on an extra
shift for a couple of weeks to sell
something now they would have
sold later, The don’t owe us any
favours and shouldn’t expect any."

"Syd’s right, Buzz," Squish
sighed as he leaned back and
stared at the ceiling. "There’s no
way to recover that loss. We'll just
have to take our lumps and like it
Those broken trees that came into
the mill represent a little better
than 1,500 cubic meters out of our

Terrace Review — Wednesday, July 17, 1991 AT

Annual Allowable Cut. And we
can’t go back out there and cut
those trees again. They’re gone.”

"The six thousand is nothing
Buzz," Silver continued. “If we
had done things right, Jovial would
have made a profit of around
$526,500 with that 1,500 cubic
meters. That’s a half million dol-
lars Milton will never see and he’s
already very aware of that fact.

"T thought you were going to
trade that finger jointed lumber
locally for overseas quality
material," Sawyer cut in. “That
would have worked."

"Can’t," replied Silver. "We're
the only mill in the northwest that
makes the stuff... The other mills
don’t have a market. No connec-
tions."

"So value-added isn’t so great
after all,” noted Sawyer.

"Value-added is great," said
Squish. "But you have to plan
everything in advance. You have
to know what you've got in the
bush, what the mill can handle and
what the market wants. You can’t
just cut trees into boards with no
plan at all and survive in this
business."

"Herby’s right," Silver told Saw-
yer. "We need a plan.”

Sawyer massaged the back of his
neck. "I’ve never really thought
about that," he said finally. "One
of Wheeler’s trucks brings me a
load of logs. I get as much export
material out of it as I can. And the
rest goes through the finger jointer
or into the chipper. That’s how the
system works. There’s no other

"Wrong," said Herby. "You're
dead wrong. Explain it to him,
Sydney."

"It’s like I just said," Silver
sighed. "We have got to have a
plan. We should be sitting down
like this every three months to
plan the next three months. Herby
knows what’s in the bush... What

we can make out of it.

"] know the market, and if I
know what we're going to be
cutting for the next three months I
can sell it before the tree leaves
the bush. You know how to tum
trees into lumber, but you've got
to know what I’ve sold in order to
turn it into the right kind of lum-
ber.

"If we can work together, we can
make this mill tick like a Swise
watch. We'll be happy, Milton will!
be all smiles, our customers will
be grinning from car to car...

. Everyone will be happy.”

"Happy?" . : _ _ .

The three men straightened in
their chairs. The hadn't heard
Jovial enter the room. How much
had he heard?

— Continued on page AS