SATURDAY Castlegar, B.C. 2 Sections (A & B) 75 Cents New coach just around corner WEATHER Tonight: Clear with some cloudy periods, Lows around 7C. Su Sonny with elterneon cloud bul and a risk of isolated showers, Hi ‘eround 24C. The outlook for ond 40 per cent on Sunday. a FEB: . sg Moga Madness photos --- AZ island link started By SIMON BIRCH Editor A new causeway to Zuckerberg Island will be completed early next week, Castlegar’s director of engineering and public works said. Kenn Hample said he expects em- ployees of Argo Industries Ltd. to put the finishing touches on the job Monday or Tuesday. Photo, page A2 “They’ve got the culverts in now and raised the elevation of it,” he said early Friday morning. All that remains is to finish the surfacé of the causeway with gravel and place rip-rap along the sides to secure the structure, Hample said. Reconstruction of the causeway, washed out several times by high water, is good news for members of the Castlegar and District Heritage Society who have been lobbying the city, which owns the island, to fix the only access to the island for emergency and maintenance vehicles. “After years of anxiety and weeks of intense negotiations and debate, the society is delighted to see the work started before rising flood waters makes the operation im- possible, and loses a structure of in- valuable importance to the citizens, present and future, of Castlegar,”’ said John Charters, past-president of the society. ‘‘The society wishes to thank Frank Doucette and Ken Wade of Argo for their generosity and patience and Celgar for essential materials and the citizens and media of Castlegar for their steady sup- port.”* Argo volunteered workers, equip- ment and material to rebuild the causeway several weeks ago after the company received a request for help from the heritage society. After the city appeared to have all the necessary approvals for the project lined up, the plans hit a last- minute legal snag when the city’s lawyers advised that the city could be liable for a greater amount of damages if it authorized reconstruc- tion of the causeway without proper approval from a gi hnical SOLD, BUT NOT FORGOTTEN Fred Marsh bool pensese a a director of the Electric ¢ Consumers Association, which wants to see West. d to C ip. issue in thew Gptewsii provincial election. The ECA pions to make repatriation an CosNews photo by Borbara Tandory Fight over WKP sale not over yet Group wants utility repatriated By BARBARA TANDORY Special to the Castlegar News A lot of water has passed through West Kootenay Power’s dams on the Kootenay River in the four years since it was sold to the U.S.-owned Utili Corp of Kansas City, Miss. But the consumers group which opposed the 1987 sale is determined not to let the issue pass into history without another fight engineer and ‘someone was sub- sequently hurt while using the causeway. Pressed by the need to get the ap- proval quickly before next week's anticipated high water in the Colum- bia River, Hample scrambled to find a geotechnical engineer to OK the plans. He finally succeeded in getting an engineer from Klohn Leonoff Ltd of Vancouver, the geotechnical engineers working on the Celgar pulp mill expansion project, to examine the causeway plans. After receiving the firm's commen- ts, the city gave the green light to Argo to rebuild the causeway. “There's always going to be a question. of liability,"" Hample said. **But the city can demonstrate now that we have taken ible action Al a for repatriation of the power by the Kodi Electric Consumers Association, spokesman Don Scarlett said last week the group will challenge all political candidates on the issue between now and the upcoming provincial election ““We can certainly say we feel strongly that West Kootenay Power needs to be repatriated,’’ Scarlett said in a telephone interview from his home in Kaslo “We intend to make it an election issue.”’ Scarlett, 43, has been involved with the grassroots consumers group since the B.C. Utilities Commission hearings into the sale in late 1986 and 1987 where he represented the ECA, volunteering his technical expertise as an electrical engineer. He also ran, unsuccessfully, as a candidate in the federal election in 1988 in the Kootenay West-Revelstoke riding. The ECA membership, meanwhile, has dropped slightly from about 8,000 at the time of the final BCUC hearing in Kelowna, in February 1987, but Scarlett said the group is still going strong with to reduce the impact of any future circumstances.”" The. possibility of not getting the causeway rebuilt had Ald, Bob Pakula steaming at a council meeting Monday. Pakula, who is reponsible for parks and recreation and is council's liaison to the heritage society, made a motion to “‘get that damn thing done and done right now.” “Somebody wanted to something for nothing and we're just batting him around, "’ Pakula said. “We're not building the Tower of Piza. We're going to be responsible no matter what.”” Council finally decided to authorize Hample to proceed with work as long as it's “supervised by the appropriate professional.”’ Pakula voted against the motion, fearing it would delay the project. p of about 7,400 Its bank account is also strong at over $10,000, said Scarlett, who called it ‘‘our war chest."” He compared the continued financial support from members to the reported 200 people who purchased UtiliCorp stock, after it was listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange in accordance with conditions of the sale imposed by the BCUC. “We're able to say that there are more people willing to invest in repatriation of the company than there are people supporting UtiliCorp as the owner,”’ said Scarlett, who remains the Kootenay vice- chairman of the ECA WKP president Joe Drennan confirmed last week that about 200 WKP employees have purchased UtiliGorp stock at the 10 per cent discount offered them. However, the value of the stock isn't known, In keeping with the company’s policy, Drennan declined to comment on the consumers group's initiative, but said general relations between the 93 year-old utility and its consumers remain as good as ever. “Our customers are getting the best service that we at West Kootenay Power can provide,”’ Drennan said from the company head office in Trail “UtiliCorp has not made any changes,”’ he said, adding that operational changes, such as the recent proposal for higher hook-up deposits and reconnection fees have come from the power company, not its U.S. owner But Drennan also said the new deposit scale has not yet been approved by the B.C. Utilities Commission and thus is not in effect “*UtiliCorp has not been involved with anything of this nature because they’re not the operator. They're the owner.’” Public gets say on taking out trash Plan aims at cutting waste by 50% By SIMON BIRCH Editor The Regional District of Central Kootenay is ready to seek public in- put on an ambitious plan aimed at cutting in half the amount of waste going to area landfills by the year 2000. The solid waste management plan also calls for environmentally sound disposal of the remaining garbage at a reasonable cost. The regional district and its con- sultants will seek public input on the plan at meetings throughout the region. A° public input session is scheduled for June 17 from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. in Castlegar at the Com- munity Complex. “Theoretically we can do it, regional district recycling coordinator Michael Jessen said, referring to the goal of cutting waste by 50 per cent. _ The regional district’s recycling depot in Nelson recycled about 400 tons of material in one year, Jessen said at a news conference Thursday in Nelson attended by regional district directors and representatives of the district’s consulting firm. “But that’s only about five per cent of the waste stream,” he said; adding that the target of 50 per cent is ‘a big task.” The regional district’s waste management consultants agreed. “1 think it’s going to be a challenge,"” said Todd Peterson of R.W. Beck and Associates of Seattle, a firm which specializes in recycling programs and has created waste plans in W state. The company is working as a sub-contractor to Stanley Associates Engineering Lid. of Kamloops, the consulting firm hired by the Regional District of Central Kootenay to come up with a waste management plan for the district “Fifty per cent is an ambitious goal,”’ Peterson said The consultants are studying all aspects of waste disposal, including recycling, composting, landfills and incineration, a news release says. But details of the solid waste plan must be tailored to CASNEWS FEATURE WKP’s reported profits in 1987, the year of the sale, were $6.8 million. In 1990 that figure rose to $9 million. Of that last figure, $5 million has gone to the parent company, UtiliCorp, in div idends. In the same time, the U.S. family-based utility business of Richard Green, of Kansas City, has almost doubled its: corporate worth. UtiliCorp reported $970 million in assets for 1987, which rose to $1.8 billion for 1990. Because of the magnitude of the local outcry against a foreign takeover at the time of the hearings into WKP’s sale, the provincial utilities commission set limits to profits UtiliCorp would be allowed to take from the WKP operations, ruling also that the dividends be kept in Canada and re-invested in WKP in the immediate future. That however, is not yto ECA members like Fred Marsh, an ECA director who lives in Robson. “This money has been left here in Canada but it’s not owned by Canadians," said Marsh, a retired production supervisor who worked at B.C. Hydro’s Kootenay Canal generating station Electric consumers like Marsh and Scarlett are also concerned over the closing gap of hydro rates between WKP and B.C, Hydro. Historically, WKP rates have been one of the cheapest in North America, a result of @ fortunate historical accident WKP plants being built for the most part earlier in the century and paid for But even Drennan acknowledges that the trend in power rates is upwards, with residential rates still generally lower than the Crown corporations but industrial-commerical rates coming close to Hydro’s After a two-year freeze imposed by the BCUC, WKP has gone to three rate increase hearings, obt please see UTILITY page A2 each community's needs, so input from the public will be essential to its success, the consultants said “The types of issues we're looking GEORGE CADY . public wants plan at in terms of broad options are cer- tainly a number of different recycling alternatives,"’ said Don Johnson, B.C. interior manager for Stanley Associates. ‘‘What we need is the public input, what the people are in- terested in seeing."’ George Cady, chairman of the regional district. board, said: the public wants a waste management thing is driven by the * Cady said. ‘‘The people are more ready than the politicians are.”” The public’s comments at the up- coming meetings will help form the basis of a solid waste management discussion paper. Once the con- sultants have compiled the public in- put in the discussion paper, the second stage of the plan will weed out inappropriate waste management strategies. A preferred option, or mix of op- tions, will be presented at a second set of public meetings for further study The regional district has budgeted $1.2 million for waste management this year “That's to bury it in the ground and the minimal recycling program we've got going in Nelson,"” Jessen said Development of the solid waste management plan will cost the regional district $179,000 this year The provincial government has told regional districts they must come up with waste-management plans by 1995. Celgar touted as buyer of sawmill By ED MILLS Staff Writer Now that Westar Group Ltd.'s Castlegar sawmill is for sale, the logical thing, according to those who would like to see it happen, would be for Celgar Pulp Co. to buy it “| think from a community point of view, from an integrated forest management, forest use point of view, the best situation that could happen to the people of our com munity was if the sawmill was owned by the pulp mill,"’ said Ed Conroy. Conroy, the NDP candidate in the Rossiand-Trait riding and a spokesman for the Arrow Lakes Tugboat Society, whose members operate the tugboats that tow logs to the sawmill, said the two mills naturally complement each other and worked well under single ownership before Westar sold the pulp mill five years ago. “It would just seem to me to make sense,"’ Conroy said But logical or not, Celgar apparen- tly isn’t interested Wilf Sweeney, manager of the pulp mill expansion project, said that in his opinion, as long as current contracts between Westar and Ceigar are honored by whoever buys the sawmill, then Celgar doesn’t need to buy it “We might be another pulp mill bought Westar Timber, but our concern is the fibre supply, not in running the sawmill, 1 would hesitate to say in my opinion that (the sawmill) would be the best thing for us to buy.”” As for potential buyers of the Castlegar mill, which was put up for sale last week along with Westar Group Ltd."s entire timber industry assets, there is only speculation at please see SAWMILL page A concerned if