Northern Daily News
Tuesday, January 8, 2002
Editorial
 
Watershed reached?
 
The Timiskaming Federation of Agriculture public meeting Saturday on the proposed Bennett Environ mental soil decontamination facility proved to be a  watershed of sorts. At least, we hope so.
 
Concerned over the possibility that the new plant might pose a threat to the agricultural environment, the TFA managed to attract about 150 farmers and environmentalists to the Northern College auditorium to question Bennett officials and to hear the view opposed to Bennett from their own invited experts.
 
That was evident from the first was the fears many people have over the proposed plant, despite the many open house events hosted by Bennett in the last two years when company officials were on hand to explain in depth just what they are planning.
 
What both sides appeared to agree on is that there is a definite need to clean up contaminated sites that are currently threatening North America and beyond.
 
The disagreement is how the job should be done. So far, Bennett has come up with a proposal. The naysayers haven't. It would seem by their attitude that we should just bury the problem and hope it will go away.
 
TFA environmental speakers, who by the way are experts in the field, say PCBs should be chemically reduced. Bennett agrees this can be done but the problem is that not all PCB contaminates can be reduced that way. The only way to get rid of them all is to incinerate.
 
Environmentalists are opposed to this method because they fear some contaminates will escape through the stack and they refuse to accept Bennett's engineering data from their Quebec facility that indicates little or no such emissions occur.
 
We agree that the public should be concerned about the environment and the possibilities of something going wrong.
 
After all, nobody or nothing is perfect.
 
And all the more reason that not only should the plant be built here and the PCB contamination issue addressed, but we should also insist the province establish a ministry of the environment facility to monitor Kirkland Lake's new environmental industry. The town would certainly welcome any addition to its industrial complex and to its business community.
 
What the meeting brought out Saturday is the necessity to do something about a world that is continuing to be contaminated by our increasingly complex lifestyles and industries. It is not enough to say that our children should look after the problem.
 
Interestingly, many of our southern neighbours were impressed with Bennett's corporate responsibility and the fact company officials aren't running away from the public that they are prepared to listen to concerns of people in the south end of the district who are very unlikely to be affected by the plant's operation.
 
This attitude on the part of Bennett should certainly help reduce the evident fears and animosities.