Saturday, July 18, 1992 @ PAGE | = = = OurViEWS AdrianRAESIDE op Dave McCullough Publisher Scott David Harrison Editor Mickey Read Composing Room Foreman Warren Chernoff Accountant Heather Hadley Circulation Manager Burt Campbell Publisher Emeritus LV. Campbell Aug. 7, 1947- Feb. 15, 1973 Castlegar confused There seems to be a double standard at work at Castlegar city hall. Despite assurances of open and honest communication with the public, city council is holding out on us. Take a Price Waterhouse report, for example. A taxpayer-funded study, the 1990 report reviewed everything from council efficiency to the worth of city employees at a cost of $24,000. Strangely, though, the report has been buried. Efforts to have this hush-hush document released have been thwarted from the top down, leaving one to wonder exactly what kind of backroom politics are at play within our city. Was the report so damaging that the city was embarrassed to release it? Did it praise the city for wise investments, good government and progressive management? One can only spectulate at the contents of the two-year-old report until the city sees fit to give the public a peek at something it paid for. Public pressure forced the city to revéal the money it paid out to released employees. Similar public pressure can be used to force the city to air this load of dirty laundry. ; The Price Waterhouse report is a skeleton in Castlegar’s closet. If the city is bound and determined to touch base with its citizenry, it must release this doucment. Castlegar can’t continue to pay lip service to ideals it refuses to follow. Confusion surrounds Medicare II Medicare II. No, it’s not the sequel to some Hollywood blockbuster. It’s the new buzzword for health care in the ’90s. (Though to the B.C. Medical Association it’s a lot like a movie: a horror show). And Premier Mike Harcourt’s New Democratic Party government says it’s here to stay. But just what is Medicare II? I’m not sure anyone knows. Ron NORMAN Comments from the Crossroads That’s the provincial politicians’ fault. They should be making the future health care system in B.C. an issue for public discussion. But the media are also to blame. The media so far have focussed on the reactions to the first stages of Medicare II: doctors closing their offices and hospital bed cutbacks. That, to use an Certainly, not the man and woman in the street; not the doctors and health care workers I’ve talked to or those I’ve seen quoted in the media; and, I’m willing to bet, not even Health Minister Elizabeth Cull herself. It’s this fuzzy approach to altering the very fabric of our health care system that concerns me. ; The funny thing is, nobody’s talking about either the confusion we’re all feeling or the grand new design for health care. appropriate metaphor, is simply treating the symptom and not the disease. Instead of a blow-by-blow account of Cull’s response to the BCMA’s response to Cull’s response ad nauseam, the media should be informing us of the complications of health care changes and pressing politicians and Health Ministry bureaucrats for a better idea of what the health care system of the ’90s will look like. - please see NORMAN page 7 | Street TALK Roy Miljanic Castlegar “In 1980.” James Berekoff Castlegar “['m not a member of any church.” Question: When was the last time you attended a church of your choice? % Shelley Holmgreen Blueberry “I’ve never attended a church.” Linda Yaseniuk Lindsay Madge Castlegar Penticton “Yesterday.” “On Sunday.” Other VIEWS Please address all letters to: Letters to the ditor Castlegar News P.O. Box 3007 Castlegar, B.C. V1N 3H4 or deliver them to 197 Columbia Ave. Letters should be typewritten, double-spaced and not longer than 300 words. Letters MUST be signed and include the writer's first and last names, address anda telephone number at which the writer can be reached between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. The writer's name and city or town of residence only will be published. Only in exceptional cases will letters be published anonymously. Even in those cases, the name, address and phone number of the writer MUST be disclosed to the editor. The News reserves the right to edit letters for brevity, clarity, legality, grammar and taste. Letters WHE EDITOR May 27, 1992 entitled, “Fish Stocks Dying at Keenleyside”, I would like to provide additional in- formation of which your reporter was apparently unaware. Gas supersaturation, resulting from the entrainment of air in wa- ter, occurs in both natural and man-made situations. In nature, supersaturation is associated with waterfalls or windblown lakes while, among man-made situa- tions, spilling water over a dam is a major cause of supersaturation. The operation of the Hugh Keenleyside Dam causes relative- ly high supersaturation levels be- cause of the conditions of the spill, the depth of the plunge pool, and the action of an energy dissipation device located immediately down- stream of the spillway. When the Keenleyside dam was built in 1968 the impacts of high gas supersaturation were not well understood. In fact, the mecha- nisms by which supersaturation harms fish are still being deter- mined by research biologists. What is known is that most fish can handle levels of 110 per cent pressure. It is also well known that fish can avoid the effects of supersatu- ration by moving to depths where pressure counteracts these effects or by seeking areas such as tribu- taries and their confluences with the main river where saturation levels are low. B.C. Hydro has had fisheries crews studying the Columbia Riv- er below the Keenleyside dam for five of the last 10 years. This effort has shown that less than one per cent of the sports fish and three per cent of suckers in- spected have shown signs of gas bubble trauma, as the condition caused by supersaturation is called, and no fish with gas bubble trauma symptoms have been found dead. Since the gas supersaturation levels below Keenleyside are high enough to result in severe damage, fish are assumed to be using the strategies mentioned above to avoid gas bubble trauma. Their success in handling this problem is further evidenced by the strong sports fishery found in the river. As such, we believe your May 27 headline overstated the problem. Environmental considerations in the operation of existing facili- ties are important to B.C. Hydro. In the case of gas supersaturation at the Keenleyside dam, field crews began to evaluate the'level of damage to fish several years ago, and meters were installed in the last year to measure accurate- ly the saturation levels in the Co- lumbia River. Physical changes to the dam and discharge facilities may be the most effective means of dealing with the phenomenon. In the ex- treme, this means installation of power turbines, an option about which your readers are no doubt aware. At this time, however, electrici- ty requirements in the province are such that there is no need for additional generative capacity from Keenleyside. Supersaturation could also be reduced to some extent by releas- ing water through the eight low- level ports at Keenleyside as op- posed to the sluiceways. Until recently, the sluices were preferentially used because the original designer were concerned that vibration of the gates might occur at higher heads and over time this could affect dam safety. For this reason, the ports are used only when the differential head is less than 35 feet, and port openings are also partially re- Something fishy about News headline With regard to your article of . stricted under various operating regimes. The study being initiated this summer, in co-operation with provincial and federal fisheries agencies, will investigate the ra- tionale behind existing limitations on port use, and will seek to maxi- mize port usage whenever possi- ble. In addition, a predictive model will be developed to indicate the ef- fects of operating strategies on gas supersaturation levels and the fish species found in the river. This model will in turn be used to fine- tune the operations of the dam to meet environmental needs. The present budget for this study is not the $15,000 to $25,000 noted in your article but $240,000 and the work is now underway. In our haste to address environ- mental issues, we sometimes ne- glect to fully inform the public of our efforts. For this reason, we are particularly pleased when the me- dia presents an issue. Hopefully this letter will fill in some of the missing information in your recent article. J.P. Sheehan Vice President Environmental and Corporate Affairs A few months prior to the Earth Summit, delegates meeting in New York took out all the language from all the documents té be signed in Rio that would have required countries to actually do something to conserve the primary planetary life support systems. Mia Robinson is a Canadian environmen- talist who witnessed the debacle in New York. Her report contained this paragraph: “I had an opportunity to attend presenta- tions by the Business Council for Sustainable Development and to talk to CEOs from a num- ber of multinational corporations. Both for the record and more dramatically off the record, they are quite explicit as to their global agen- da, their world view and from whom they think their greatest challenge will come — us (ie. en- vornmentalists). Governments as key stake- holders were not even discussed except in the context of who would control them. As people involved in social change movements we have to recognize the reality of the situation...” Exactly how far we are from recognizing this reality can be seen in NDP environmental policy pronouncements. The social democrat- ic movement, to the extent that it recognizes NDP’s environmental policies are unacceptable the ecological problem at all, has adopted the same language and goals that the multina- tional corporations have. By its successful co-opting of so many envi- ronmentalists (Colleen McCrory returned from Rio and demanded that the B.C. forest indus- try live up to the “principles of sustaigable de- velopment”) the social democratic movement continues to aid those in denial, stifle debate, and prevent understanding of a most crucial issue. David Lewis Crescent Valley Norman continued from page 6 Even worse, the media treat these symptoms in isolation from each other. Hospital downsizing and a cap on doctors’ global billing are not separate items; they are two of the means by which the NDP government is trying -to transform health care into a com- munity-based system. But how can we tell if they are the right moves if we can't see the whole picture? Is there a “whole picture” yet, given the fact that the govern- “ment has appointed a committee to examine ways to implement the recommendations of the Seaton commission on health care and costs? You wouldn't know it by some of the government’s changes. (I better say here that not all the changes have been negative. The government has advertised nationally for 700 health care workers for the transition to a community-based system and has increased funding for mental health patients and seniors.) For instance, I had a local doc- tor point out to me that my col- umn last week applauding the provincial government for its ceil- ing on doctors’ global billing over- looked one thing: that there is still no budget for individual doctors, other than their individual salary caps. Doctors — and there are some 6,000 in the province — will only find out there are no more funds left in the overall budget after the ceiling has been reached. ; Can you imagine our hospitals working the same way? They would all have access to a pool of money and whichever happened to send in its bills first would get the dough. The rest would be out of luck. It’s a crazy way to operate a health-care budget. A ceiling on doctors’ billing is needed, but so is a way to ensure funds are distrib- uted to all areas equitably. It’s also crazy to have a limit on spending while continuing to al- low unlimited access. It’s like blowing up a balloon: you can’t just keep on blowing because sooner or later the balloon is going to pop. One of the ways the govern- ment is considering controlling how much air goes into the bal- loon is by de-insuring medical ser- vices we presently receive for “free”. Cholesterol testing and eye examinations are examples of ser- vices that may no longer be cov- ered. And doctors arén’t the only ones concerned about the changes. B.C. Nurses’ Union president De-_ bra MacPherson has called the change in health care “frighten- ing” and “out of control.” Admit- tedly, there is no way to avoid a certain amount of confusion, dislo- cation and controversy as a health-care system created in the ’60s is reshaped for the ’90s. But that doesn’t mean the gov- ernment shouldn't be doing every- thing in its power to explain and minimize the effects of its changes.