Saturday, February 1, 1992 @ ’ OurWiEWS Adrian RAESIDE b r Lu = a. — S S&S Dave McCullough Publisher Advertising Manager Warren Chernoff Bureaucracy — can you blame it?. representatives. Just look at it. accused of hiding the facts. Citizens Coalition ruins council’s Christmas with a newspaper ad questioning its competency. whipping from. the public during a humorous and hostile public meeting. . suddenly-hot political scene surely has a few of our elected officials wondering whether the pocket change they make each year is worth it. Council on edge o city council is a tad apprehensive about the Coalition Unaccpeting Rash The past three months have hardly een blissful for our elected ea much-needed paving eferendum failed because council is °* a group called the Concerned e council. receives a verbal The arrival of CURB onto the The simple truth is city council has every right to be standoffish with CURB. And it should be. It has next to no idea who what and where CURB is. All it knows is there is a group out there ready to raise the rafters every time a decision is rendered. : Council has far too many questions about CURB to be openly endorsing its yet-to-be named motives. And until it is convinced CURB is a body working with and not against the political grain, don’t look for any long embraces over multi-million dollar decisions. CURB is new to the neighborhood, WRonTHEAN CaNape, BeroRe pecaie THe PUBLICLY 1 NERNED ‘TERRITORY “OFNANT i a 55 V lla so ‘saparg ee @eaece! | ‘ Aaa aes Westar Timber is no big loss Westar’s management * “So long Westar Timber. I’m not sorry to see you go. The sale of Westar Timber’s Castlegar sawmill to Pope and Talbot is the best news to hit this community since . . . well, since Westar sold its pulp mill several years back. I have nothing personal against the company once known as BGRIC; it’s just that in the last decade it has been debt ridden and Ron NORMAN Comments from the Crossroads style can best be described as “revolving door”, The sawmill had more managers in the last 10 years than Imelda Marcos had shoes. That revolving door was a symptom of Westar’s problems. Take the pulp mill sale. Westar unloaded the pulp mill for $100 million during a dip in ulp prices. Pulp prices then took off horribly managed and the local. sawmill has suffered for it. : The huge debt has been an Sanne around Westar’s neck. The company wou never have been able to afford the kind of improvements to the ee 2 i the $630 million expansion currently underway. © (Although it was able to sink $26 million in capital improvements to the Castlegar sawmill over the last three years, but more give council time. on that later). and within wy, Yee oe buying the mill, the new owners had made eanagn money to pay off the $100 million and a tidy profit. (The Chinese government, which was dipping its toe into the waters of capitalism for the first time, thought there was nothing to this market economy stuff). Once again Westar is selling off some of its assets. Once again it is doing so during a downturn in the economy please see NORMAN page 7 Heather Hadley Circulation Manager S treet WALIK Burt C. Publisher Emeritus LV. Campbell Aug. 7, 1947- Feb. 15, 1973 Florence Horcoff Castlegar Nobody’s got jobs. There should be more jobs for people.” Tim Stoochnoff Castlegar “The way the economy is going, everything is falling.” Question: What are your thoughts on the recent Cominco sit : t pai es a Anne Batting Robson ie! feel sorry for the people of Trail.” ‘Russ McEwan ‘Castlegar “It’s too bad they’re getting laid off. It’s happening all over.” Marcella Cherno Castlegar “] think they should start laying off from the top.” _—~ @ Saturday, February 1, 1992 Please address all letters to: Letters to the Editor 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 9am. and5 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. Other VIEWS } Letters coWHE EDITOR Shocked at utility T believe it is incumbent upon me to relate the following little story involving a power disconnection last Halloween night. It is ironic that this happened to me since I continue to be active in a local consumers’ or- ganization concerned with matters of electric power. With our father’s passing in 1987 and mother moving to Chase last spring we decid- ed, somewhat reluctantly, to rent out the old Killough family home — built in the 1920’s and occupied by ourselves since 1942. The first tenant.stayed four months and then moved out on the afternoon of October - 31st. Several hours later on this cold, dark Halloween night I got a phone call to say — much to my dismay — that the power had been disconnected. Not only were tempera- ture lows running at. minus 12 degrees cel- sius and lights neeeded to deter vandalism but this power also serves a pump which sup- plies water to three separate homes in addi- tion to Mother’s. Regrettably this disconnec- tion was made without any attempt — by West Kootenay Power or the departing tenant — to notify me, the caretaker, working a short dis- tance away. Only a meter-reading was needed since new tenants were coming the following morn- Concerned that four homes were cut off from their water source and Mother’s water pipes were in danger of freezing, I phoned and insisted on immediate reconnec- tion. A friendly young man goon arrvied and restored the service but I was later billed an emergency call-out charge of $128.40 includ- ing our beloved GST. Believing WKP’s con- duct to have been less responsible and consid- erate than it was in earlier days, I wrote let- ters of complaint to company officials and the B.C. Utilities Commission all to no avail. Therefore, I offer this advice to those who would rent out their private homes — advice which unfortunately is not forthcoming from either West Kootenay Power or the BCUC: ei- ther arrange to keep the power (and gas) util- ities in your own name and set the rent ac- cordingly, or be sure to contact WKP well ahead of time when a change of tenacy is about to occur. Otherwise you may be in for a rude awakening by our local corpoate ghost. y our once-friendly power company has become so trigger-happy is hard to under- stand, especially at a time when a large rate increase is.planned. : It was, of course, out of concerns of this na- ture that the Electric Consumers Association was formed and opposed the foreign take over in 1986. Perhaps it is more than coincidence that I should have been one of the first to feel the sting of the new corporate policies of our power company. Company officials maintain that they have no obligation to notify the home owner before a disconnection is made and that they act solely on the instructions of the departing tentant. If this is true then I would suggest it is time some changes were ordered by the B.C. Utilities Commission, the bossman over pub- lic utilities in this province. H. F. Killough Castlegar Unhappy with the UN It is now a year since the U.S.-lead coali- tion drove Iraq out of Kuwait. Apart from the short lived euphoria of yet another American victory over an inferior military force I am not sure what has been ac- complished. Saddam Hussein still remains in power. The duplicity of Western European, Soviet and North American governments in creating this monster continues to trickle out in British Parliamentary hearings and a Ger- ‘man government criminal investigation. Likewise some of the Iraqi atrocities have turned out to be the orchestrated imagination of the Kuwaiti Emir’s relatives, an American advertising agency and a leading Republican senator. Turkey (who invaded Iraq briefly to attack some Kurds), Syria and Israel are still in vio- lation of UN Security Council resolutions. Saudi Arabia, Oman and Kuwait still remain among the dozen or so UN countries who do not hold elections . . . and are now joined by Algeria. 5 Above all I feel enraged by the UN’s impo- tence in front of Israel’s intransigence. Israel continues its policy of resettling 100,000 mostly former Soviet Jews on the West Bank. What about the 100,000 Palestinians scat- tered around the Middle East and the world? Do they have no right to a homeland too? And who cares about the Kurds? ‘ They can simply continue to die like flies in the mountains. So much for the New World Order. Meanwhile the Japanese, Swiss, Swedes, Taiwanese, etc . .. those countries who have not wasted billions of dollars arming them- selves and other countries are getting ready for the 21st Century. Are they now to become the new enemy? Andy Shadrack Kaslo Use some initiative Although the land use initiative is an urban decision made to appease big city” special interest groups, everyone including rural B.C. must give it a chance. For the initiative to work everyone must be responsible for their actions. Forest companies must make a real effort at preserving jobs. The fact that some of the alternate logging sites are just too far from the original areas to be of any real value to local operations will be a challenge. This must not however be used to justify lay-offs. The Sierra Club, Western Canadian Wilderness Committee and Greenpeace must stop all activity related to international boycotts. They must stop supporting and promoting fringe groups involved in criminal activity and road blocks. If they want to be seen as responsible players, then they must act accordingly. Resource dependent communities and families have a responsibility to convince the NDP that they are the government for all of B.C. not just Victoria and Vancouver. The land use initiative must be givena chance. It will fail if it is allowed to be used as a smoke screen to tie up areas while road blocks and protests just move to the next valley. Steven Owens, we hopé public Participation will also include rural communities. We wish you luck. Art Duhame Woss, B.C. Norman continued from page 6 -Once again at firesale prices. Don’t these guys ever learn? Pope and Talbot is picking up the sawmill for a paltry $22 million (U.S.), which includes the rights to about three- quarters of Tree Farm License 23. That’s less than what Westar spent fixing the mill up in the last three years. In effect, Westar is giving the. mill away for free. All I can say is I’m glad the people in charge of Westar weren’t offering me advice on my family finances. I couldn’t'afford it. But enough about Westar. That’s yesterday’s news. Today’s news is Pope and Talbot. What we do know about this company? We know that it is an old company. It was founded in 1849 as a barging company in San Francisco by Andrew Pope and Frederic Talbot. Today it is still controlled by a Pope: Peter Pope, who is chairman, president and | chief executive officer. No longer in the shipping business, Pope and Talbot has its finger in wood products, fibre products and consumer products. And its headquarters is now in Portland, Ore. Pope and Talbot-has five sawmills: Port Gamble, Washington; Newcastle, Wyoming; and: Spearfish, South Dakota in the U.S. and Midway and Grand Forks in B.C. It also produces pulp for newsprint and tissue at its mill in Halsey, Ore. Its consumer products. division manufactures disposable diapers for private labels (like K-Mart) at five U.S. facilities and a line of private label tissue products (napkins, facial and bath tissue and paper towels) from 100 per cent recycled paper at three U.S. facilities. @ In all, Pope and Talbot has some 3,000 employees. Until recently, Pope and Talbot’s wood products were centred in Western Oregon and Washington. (It bough the Midway and. Grand Forks mills in 1969). But that is changing. Citing increasing timber costs, Pope and Talbot sold its only Oregon sawmill three years ago, and in the last two years has unloaded its Oregon timberlands. It has also reduced its Port Gamble sawmill operations. The company is shifting its emphasis to B.C., where it says “there is an adequate supply of reasonably-priced timber”. That’s why Pope and Talbot purchased the Castlegar sawmill. . The Castlegar mill will be one of the biggest in the company’s stable, producing 200-225 million board feet a year. Right now, Pope and Talbot’s five other sawmills - .produce just 500 million board feet annually. And how did Pope and Talbot Position itself to buy the local sawmill during such tough economic times. It reduced its debt during the good times so it. would be able to pick up good buys like:the Westar mill during tough times. Buy low. Sell high. It works every time