It did not matter that this meeting was for Board members only to debate the pros and cons of issuing a stop work order against WFP; the people would wait. For seven hours, they kept vigil.
And, when the doors of the building were closed for the day, the people moved outside and continued to wait.
They waited to let the Board know that they believed in this cause; that this was a worthy fight. They wanted the Board to know they expected them to have the courage to act.
This are the people who set up and manned the barricades; who have stood on the street corners trying to convince their fellow citizens that this was an issue important to everyone. These are the people who wrote to the politicians and when that failed were willing to face the courts.This battle to save the Chapman Creek watershed began with our senior citizens. People in the sixties, seventies and eighties have led the way. They have been joined by young mothers bringing along their children while their husbands worked. Now, our youth has joined the cause and while our seniors continue to stand and wait for our politicians to act, the young have been in the watershed at the logging sites. They have been watching every tree fall and now understand the message our seniors have been trying to deliver these many weeks: it is life, itself, they are fighting for.
1 comment:
It is too bad that our government fails to address or talk about the adverse effects of watershed logging from a real scientific perspective.
The real problems are:
1) logging is well known to increase peak runoffs (mainly because of decreased evapotransiration) and thereby increasing water turbidity making disinfection more difficult as organisms are able to "hide" in the particulates. When using chlorine, increasing turbidity increases the production of trihalomethanes and other carcinogens. There is an accepted link between chlorination and bladder cancer.
2) logging roads increase human access which is a well known risk to watersheds used for human consumption. This is why Seattle, Vancouver, and Portland legally prohibit public tresspass into their watersheds.
3) logging causes compaction of the soils and so that the forest floor no longer absorbs and filters water as it does in an undisturbed area. Roads where compaction is worst, are used for travel by animals and people which often leave their wastes which now wash off the road unfiltered, into a culvert and directly into drinking water sources.
Dr Lee Hutton, Pathologist, Nelson
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