Hoisted On Their Own Petard

The Fraser Valley’s most celebrated pseudo-environmentalists were at it again earlier this year when, as Chair and Vice Chair of the Fraser Valley Regional District Sharon Gaetz and Patricia Ross spent some of your money on their political campaign fighting the paper tiger of Vancouver’s Waste to Energy plan which will divert enormous amounts of garbage from landfills to be used as energy.

Gaetz and Ross have been arguing for years that the effluent entering the atmosphere from the state-of-the-art incinerator will threaten the Fraser Valley airshed. None of the ‘science’ so far alluded to by the FVRD puts much strength behind their argument. In fact, one of their scientists came to his conclusions before doing his report.

The ad campaign Gaetz and Ross unleashed earlier this spring used the pure, innocent image of a child just trying to play soccer amidst a dark, polluted background, ostensibly created by a Waste to Energy incinerator and not the other 80 percent of the pollution in the Fraser Valley created by vehicle emissions in the automobile-dependent communities Ross and Gaetz have been busy building throughout their political careers in Abbotsford and Chilliwack.

The diesel fumes currently spewed into the Fraser Valley airshed by the double semi-trailer loads of Vancouver’s garbage being trucked daily up to a landfill in the interior are apparently more to Gaetz’s and Ross’ liking than the cleaner, safer and less CO2-infused result of Vancouver’s proposed Waste to Energy incinerator.

Vancouver has debunked the lame attempt by Ross and Gaetz to wrap themselves in environmentalist clothing [Metro Debunks Danger To Fraser Valley Air] and, seemingly oblivious to the damage she is doing to her own credibility with environmentalist, Gaetz has allowed a toxic waste facility to sneak through the approval process in Chilliwack with very questionable public information tactics and almost no consultation with citizens. This has resulted in her City landing in court to defend itself against a large group of environmentalists, fishers and community groups [Let’s Hope A Judge Can Protect Us From Sharon’s Folly]

We thought that since Ross and Gaetz felt empowered to spend your money coming up with a one-sided political campaign we could use our talents (such as they are) to reply and hoist them on their own petard.