A B6 Castlegar News July 13, 1991 astronomer Bill Burny By BARBARA TANDORY Special to the CasNews Once more local residents got a closer look at the stars when the Star Truck returned to the area in the first week of duly. The annual star show, pre- sented by community astronomers from the H.R. MacMillan Planetarium and Southam Observatory in Van- couver, was a big hit with astronomy buffs, casual star- gazers and campers who hap- pened to catch it on the evening of July 3 at Syringa Creek Provincial Park. Elaine Kruse, co-ordinator of the park’s summer pro- grams, said the travelling astronomy tour, which offers viewers a look through the largest portable telescope in Canada — a 63 cm. Dobsoni- an reflector — has yet to be a disappointment. The show has been running there since it became a provincial park in 1968. “People just crowded in,” she-said of the amphitheatre packed to standing-room only capacity for the slide show portion of the program. “The astronomer is really entertaining,” she added. Soleal Pattishall, 12, is one Castlegar stargazer who doesn’t need to be sold on the program’s popularity. Soleal has been catching the show at Syringa for a number of years. And follow- ing this year’s show, he and his mother Leslie followed the star truck to its final show in the area at Kokanee Creek campground north of Nelson. There he saw Venus and Albireo, a double star in the constellation called Cygnus the Swan which runs through the plane of the Milky Way overhead. He also glimpsed the ghostly circle of stardust, known as the Ring Nebula which is the most observed nebula invisible to the naked eye. Community astronomer Bill Burnyeat, 37, has been on the road with the star show for seven years. He too is impressed with the consis- tently good turnout in the West Kootenay. “The biggest crowds from the (provincial) communities are here, in the Castlegar and Nélson areas,” Burnyeat said at Kokanee Creek. The astronomy show opened its road tour June 28, CasNews photo by Barbara Tandory - Solea! Pattishall of Castlegar (right) steps up to view the stars i} le tel cope, while Stargazers get closer look and will have visited 49 inte- rior B.C. communities by Aug. 31. Burnyeat, a former news- paper reporter in Vancouver, says the strangest question he was ever asked as an astronomer was when he was talking about space explo- rations and mentioned the 1976 Viking mission “Someone (in the audience) asked me how did Viking get to Mars,” he remembers in amusement. But despite the ongoing program of public education by the planetarium, Burnyeat says many people continue to mistake bright, ‘flashing stars for UFOs, particularly in the summer months. “We've received 4,000 UFO reports at the planetarium since 1976,” he said, noting that most have been “a planet or a bright star.” As an astronomer, he doesn’t believe in UFOS, he added. He said he also feels that some professional astronomers are raising unnecessary alarm through the media about an asteroid believed headed towards Earth. “It is not unusual for a large asteroid to come close to Earth,” he explains. “Every- time it happens, people specu- late it’s going to hit us; it hasn’t happened yet.” He added that'over the past one hundred years, only four gomets or asteroids have come close to being a threat to Earth — in 1980, 1938, 1965 and in 1989. Burnyeat said the most spectacular astronomical event of the year — ‘the longest total eclipse of the sun — happened on Thursday but was nat visible locally. The three-planet j ion, like- BUSINESS PHONE 365-5210 New insertions, copy change: Directory will be accepted up to 5 p.m. Thursday, July 26 tor the month af August, DIRECT nd cancellations for the Castlegar News Business PHONE 365-5210 A OUNTING Brian Li Brown “CERTIFIED GENERAL ACCOUNTANT 270 Columbia Avenue Castlegar © 365-2151 Gordon A. Read & Co. Certified General Accountant Office 368-6471 \ Residence 365.2339 1250 Bay Ave., Trail AIR CONDITIONING ARROW LAKES AIR CONDITIONING & MECHANICAL SYSTEMS * Plumbing * Air Conditioning © Refrigeration * Furnace Service & Installation Controls 24-HOUR Y SERVICE ttt ty te Feaene tyne “Two eighty-five? Here, take the $3 and drive another 100 yards.” WEST K CONCRETE LTD. 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Repair aluminum truck boxes, your place or ours, bull boards, iron railings. stairs, steel fabrication and erection YOU NAME IT WE CAN DO IT! \ al WEDNESDAY July 17, 1901 Vol. 44, No, 57 Castlegar, B.C. 2 Sections (A and B) <> 75 cents sue province -.-A2 Oe e Valley residents| Castlegar artist |Navigation — featured at NEC| charts arrive Castles; “ \\ oe -_ _«ws Aquanauts, in pool ...51 City appoints twinning group By CasNews Staff Castlegar council appointed seven people Tuesday to its Castlegar international twinning committee which will help the city establish and maintain twinning relationships with communities in other countries. Appointed were John Lebidoff of Celgar Pulp Co., Leonard Voykin of the Union of Spiritual Communities of Christ, Castlegar school trustee Mickey Kinakin, Myler Wilkinson of Selkirk College, CasNews columnist John Charters who will represent the Castlegar Rotary Club, former city administrator Dave Gairns and Jacquie Hamilton, Castlegar’s director of finance. The committee's purpose is to “foster educational, social, cultural, industrial and commercial ties of friendship and mutual understanding between Castlegar and its twin cities and through them further similar ties between Canada and other countries. Some of the ways the committee intends to achieve that goal is through youth exchanges, mutual visits between groups, cultural exchanges and the sharing of information. LOTTERIES 49, 55 July 14 2, 16, 17, 24, 29, 34, 48 46, July 13 2, 3, 4, 16, 20, 33, 40, 60 july 1 1, 2, 10, 11, 21, 34 , 14, 30, 31, 36, 39 , 23, 26, 32, 40 SOBs 2362672, 2435828, 2725040, 3114259, 3428000, 3612826, 3815686, 3967265, 4185072, 4710483, 2e-Nxe Tonight: Isolated showers but otherwise mostly sunnier, drier and warmer weather. The probability of precipitation is 60 per cent tonight and 40 per cent on Thursday. Residents out of patience Noise, smell, dust and vibrations listed among complaints By DONNA ZUBER Staff Writer Between the noise, the smell, the dust and the vibration caused by operations in the gravel pit at Ootischeni ighboring resid are fed up. “I think we’ve had enough of it ... it’s time we got shotguns,” quipped Bob Moffatt, an 18-year resident who admitted he’s nearing the limit on his patience. - Moffatt and five other residents — Walter, Tomilin, George Moxham, Chiyo Syrja, Garry Graham and Gail Oglow — recently banded together, after years of individual attempts, with the support of about 15 other residents to try to change what they call irresponsible operations dt the pit. The-pit, owned by the Ministry of Transporta- tion and Highways, but used by independent com- panies as well as the ministry, has never had a plan or a recl ion plan, they said. To form part of their communications with var- ious government officials, Oglow and Graham pro- duced a video of the pit while a batch plant (which produces asphalt) and rock crushing operations were going on. The video highlights the concerns of the residents which include: a * The berm, the id “only p ion” from noise, fumes, dust and falling rock, has been please see GRAVEL page A2 Westar sale worries city, mill workers By SIMON BIRCH and DONNA ZUBER The pending sale of Westar Group's timber assets must not threat- en the continued opera- tion of the company's Castlegar- sawmill, Mayor Audrey Moore said. City council voted Tuesday to write a let- ter to Minister of Forests Claude Rich- mond expressing coun- cil's concern with the sale of Westar Timber and urging “that the economic viability of the sawmill at Castle- gar not be jeopardized in any way.” Council also voted to establish a three-person committee “to review the proposed sale and devel- op appropriate policies and actions,” The fear is that who ever buys Westar's local assets won't want to keep the company's (? hectare) tree farm licence No. 23 intact, which could mean logs currently sent to the Castlegar mill from the northern part of the TFL would be sent to other sawmills. ed “I think it's very important that we make sure that that mill has enough sawlogs to operate,” Moore said. Moore is not alone in her position. Sawmill employees are also worried they will lose their jobs once the mill is sold and are calling for government intervention to protect them. Tony Ferreira, president sub-local 1-405 of the IWA, said the workers fears are well-founded. “The mayor of Revelstoke is really putting a Jot of pressure on the Ministry of Forests that that timber should be allocated to Revelstoke,” Fer- reira said. “That’s what our concern really is: I know that mayor is really, really pushing. “There's a lot of timber through this mill ‘80 we're very concerned that if (the TFL) is split in any shape or form, it would be devastating to our community.” * And aside from the employment implications, Ferreira said it wouldn't make sense to split up the TFL because of Westar’s connection to Celgar AUDREY MOORE ~ mill important The Highways Ministry's gravel pit in O ‘with operation of gravel pit Health, safety violations normal, Celgar says By ED MILLS Staff Writer A Workers Compensation Board report cites Celgar Pulp Co. for five breaches of the industrial health and safety reg- ulations relating to the compa- ny’s pulp mill expansion and modernization project. But the mill’s general manag- er and WCB itself is playing down the findings saying that the breaches are expected in projects of this nature. A union official, however, says the report's findings deal- ing with alleged gassings of workers on the site, is some- thing the union had been trying to.get Celgar to address since the project began five months ago. The report, issued July 5, said. the company is failing to meet the regulations on every- thing from adequate training of safety personnel to preparation for a serious di or chemi- sible to minimize the exposure of these gases,” said Cal Him, second -vice-president and spokesman for the Pulp, Paper and Woodworkers union. Celgar general manager Jim Browne said the report “isn’t serious” and is just one of many that the WCB will conduct as part of the an on-going process of making the workplace as safe as possible for the workers. “What the report is saying is the plan that we've put in is basically good, but it doesn’t catch everything, so he (Mitchell) wants us to have it more secure, more all-encom- passing and make sure that it doesn’t miss anything, any sin- gle solitary case,” said Browne. Contraventions cited in the report by the WCB were: ° Use of gas-testing equip- ment and interpretation of results indicated that the train- ing and supervision of industrial hygiene personnel is incomplete. * Celgar is not ensuring that coordination of construction and production are being used to minimize construction workers’ exposure to pulp mill gases. * Several "gas outs” have*not yielded any noticeable corrective measures being take to prevent their re-occurrence. (Mitchell said this complaint will be struck from the report because he didn’t have all the pertinent information). Meanwhile, the WCB, Min- istry of Environment and the Central Kootenay Health Unit will meet in Nelson this Friday to discuss issues related to the expansion project. Mitchell said the meeting will discuss, among other things, the noxious gas situation and the work camp on the site. cal leak. The report, written by WCB industrial hygienist David Mitchell based on information * gathered from a regularly sched: uled one-day inspection of the work site two weeks ago, gives Celgar 30 days to comply with the regulations. Mitchell said the overall report isn’t a bad one for Celgar. “Given the nature of the pro- ject there was just a few things that need to be cleared up, and it (the report) was just to bring them to their attention,” Mitchell said from the WCB’s Nelson office. A union official representing workers inside the mill called the report “excellent” and added that gas releases from the mill have been seriously threatening the health itside workers. “I think it's fortunate that the WCB has taken a decision to act on these gassings, and (the report) makes it clear that Cel- gar has not done everything pos- Noxious gases no threat to public ByEDMILLS © Staff Writer Castlegar have to wor! gar residents, the health unit would be involved. “We're not directly involved ©