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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