Stop the madness!!!!

Village spring under threat

The MTQ has hired a construction firm from hell called Couillard Construction, to supply sand for the A5X highway. Problem is, they decided to excavate the sand from what myself and many others believe to be the source and filtration zone for the aquifer that feeds excellent water to our spring (yeah, just like Sarah Harmer's song about the Niagara escarpment). I talked with our councilor to make sure we were all on side, especially after talking to the owner who claimed he didn't know anything and our local councilor was a coconut! After a solid week of protests, letter writing, police and media, the good guys (SOS and friends) seem to be making some progress with getting the authorities (MDDEP) to close this illegal quarry. There's still a long battle over the "grandfather" clause that the owner likes to think he has, but many people are seeing the logic of the proponent paying for an INDEPENDENT extensive hydrology study  I think it’s absolutely imperative to investigate the hydrology and “link” to the aquifer that supplies our water. The onus should be on the owner (and partners) to show due diligence that such excavation activities are not doing damage to the aquifer. My hope and guess is the owner has made lots of money already on the sand taken and will not want to pay for hydrology studies, and just keep the site closed. So not necessarily so the quarry can continue to be used via the grandfather clause (let’s face it, it’s a lousy place for a quarry!) but to serve the greater and logical need for a source water protection strategy. Now Ian Tamblyn has recorded a protest song and we're taking back what's left of our beleaguered village.

My letter of the week goes to me for alerting townspeople to this activity in early May. No, I haven't been arrested yet but if I am, I feel this is a cause worth fighting for and being arrested if necessary...

"Has anyone noticed the excavation or is it a mining operation going on adjacent to the Rockhurst quarry and Hall’s cemetery? I watched yesterday as a digger scooped up fine brown red sand and filled truck after truckload. At first I thought someone had discovered rare earth elements and were mining it as fast as they could. I hear it’s not for more houses our condos but they’re using it for the highway cause it’s slightly cheaper than bringing it in from elsewhere (Edelweiss). I also hear they’re planning to fill in the hole with something else (clay tailing) that is not of use in the highway construction. I hope that this peculiar sandy stretch of land is not critical to the aquifer that feeds our spring with good clean water.  I wonder if this activity was part of the original MTQ plan and covered in the environmental assessment? I wonder why someone is filling in the south end of the beautiful little valley behind Giant Tiger?

I for one would like to see such environmental issues (that are chipping away at Wakefield) covered in a coherent final PPU document. Mostly I would love to see a final PPU document!"

Run out of town --

The Low Down to Hull and Back headline "Wakenet, a local Internet company, is being run out of town --" got my attention. I'm an avid supporter of Wakenet and the valuable service they provide in providing high speed to people who can work from home. My house was "triangulated" by two of the nicest guys who easily persuaded me to beam a signal to people near-by who were shut out for high speed internet. I've been helping people work from home (like myself) and getting free high speed internet for over five years now. Don't get me wrong, I'm no internet junkie and no flunky when it comes to understanding what it's all about. I'm not a full-blown Luddite, but I'm skeptical of embracing too much technology, too quickly and without adequate redundancy. And then there's those bloody towers everywhere, don't get me going on that! So I thought I'd include this letter of the day to demonstrate the logic of having a local response to a problem be considered over the dubious might of Quebec trumped up companies like Xittel. Let's keep the choice ours and slow those techno wheels down a tad eh?



Letter of the week:


On March 2, 2012 Rapide-O-Web (run by La Pêche and Vals-Des-Monts; President
is Mayor Bussière) published a request for proposal (RFP) to spend $1.3 million on high speed
in La Pêche. Wakenet is a non-profit organization which has been providing high speed
Internet since 2004.

We were shocked to find out that they designed the RFP such that we can't
bid on it! The RFP targets large corporations.  GIVING all of this money to a large
company (such as Xittel) to build towers here will likely put us out of business.

If only the problem was that "simple": In the RFP, Rapide-O-Web has asked
bidders to build towers in the areas already covered by Wakenet!  It gets worse:
Rapide-O-Web is also asking bidders to build towers in Edelweiss and other areas already covered by
Bell-DSL! And this is almost 2 years after they made a public announcement (posted on
the La Pêche website) that "Bell DSL was soon coming to the Edelweiss area".
What??!

Tax payers take note: A whopping 44% of the homes targeted in the RFP for La
Pêche already have Bell-DSL. This is over 1/2 million dollars of your tax money being
wasted!

We, at Wakenet, are making an appeal for justice and transparency with
regards to this RFP. If this plan goes through, it will not only be an enormous waste of public
funds, but will also unfairly threaten a local organization.  We have worked very
hard for the past 8 years to provide high speed Internet to rural areas around
Wakefield (we cover about 1/3 of La Pêche, in area), and we did it without receiving
one single cent of government funding!

To find out more, and to support Wakenet: http://justice.wakenet.ca