Northern Daily News
Saturday, January 19, 2002
Page 3
 
Councillors angered over stalled meeting
 
Rick Owen
Northern Daily News
Kirkland Lake:
 
Todd Morgan, a Kirkland Lake councillor, is not happy that the citizens Advisory Council meeting about Bennett had to be cut short because of "belligerent actions."
 
Morgan, who attended Thursdays meeting, said, "Its belligerent behaviour and it ruined it for everybody else."
 
What Morgan was referring to was when Ambrose Raftis got up to ask a question, but instead began making a speech. The chairman of the meeting Robert MacDonald, who is also the chair of the CAC, asked Raftis three times for a question and then called the meeting to a close. Morgan does not believe that people opposing the Bennett Environmental proposal to bring a soil treatment facility to Kirkland Lake will be able to stop it. "If they had legitimate concerns, absolutely (they could stop the project), but they don't. There is no basis to anything they have said so far, They've thrown out ridiculous red herrings so far. The Ministry of Environment is not stupid. They'll listen to legitimate concerns, but they're not going to listen to somebody standing on their soapbox trying to discredit everything and everybody."
 
Despite this, Morgan believes the first part of the meeting the technical part, was excellent. He said it gave members of the public a chance to get their questions answered.
 
Kirkland Lake Mayor Bill Enouy attended the meeting as well, but was out of town on Friday and therefore unavailable for comment.
 
Kirkland Lake Councillor Al French also attended the meeting and was disappointed that people with legitimate questions didn't get a chance to ask them because the meeting ended early.
 
He described the information provided by the consultants as being very interesting. French said that while some of it was very scientific, most people were interested in the conclusions of the studies and these conclusions indicate the facility meets all the requirements and environmental standards with a large margin for error.
 
French noted that the studies were conducted based on the plant treating 300,000 tons of material when in fact, if approved, it will only be processing 200,000 tons.
 
The councillor noted that all the numbers that were presented were very conservative.
 
French said that given the fact that other things have to be done, he is comfortable with the proposal to locate a soil treatment plant in Kirkland Lake.
 
Morgan said that being a member of the CAC, he has been involved with the project from the "get go" and every public concern that has been raised has been addressed.
 
Because of the large safety factors built into the various studies and their conclusions, Morgan is convinced the Bennett proposal is safe.