Metaneos

CBC News Vancouver's Downtown Eastside, which is often associated with despair, poverty and addiction, now has a grim new claim to fame. I lived in the Downtown Eastside for a short spell. Yes, the latter two do exist in prevailing amounts, but despair? Dunno. I lived in poverty, too, there. The hardest thing to get was a good meal. Oh, food itself was plentiful, but good healthy food, not so much. There's dozens, if not hundreds, of incredible volunteers, each working to make life even a little easier for the residents there. As for the mortality rate, I'm not surprised. Vancouver's on a slope, and the drain is in the Downtown Eastside. Everything washes up there. As for the study, good on UBC for undertaking it.

Vancouver Sun It shouldn't have done, though. This is probably something PIEVC would've discerned, had they the resources. As it is, now, we can only guess as to what will happen. Our current scientists and engineers have done their best, but without the full support and backing of both provincial and federal governments, the best we can do is probably just not good enough. Is this storm a one-off? Or will there be more in the future? Should we expect this sort of pattern every year, now? Or is this a fifty year event, and we can take our time in bolstering our power lines throughout the province? What about roads? What about the buildings being built, now? How about guidelines for trees on properties near buildings? What of snowfall? What of storm water in the spring? How about our soil? Our lakes? Our rivers? Our trees? BC's at risk for forest fires. Will they increase, not only in frequency, but also in size and ferocity? Listen, if the federal government won...

CBC News "We will spend what we need," said Clark. "If more resources are required we will get them." Wonderful! But just a quick question. Where's she going to get the manpower from? Most of the fire fighting crews I know have disbanded with the members finding employment elsewhere. Actually, that's a lie. All the crews I know of are disbanded. Fires in the prairies are already employing almost all the big union crews. Will BC need to call in the military, too? Listen, Premier Clark! It takes time to train people to fight fires. You need experienced, grizzled veterans who know and understand how fires act and react, especially in uncontrollable conditions. You can't have all-rookie crews running around in the damn woods fighting these fires. They're too uncontrollable, both the fires and the rookies! Accidents and injuries will happen, and even deaths. You need the right people in the right places. Most of the small crews are gone, and ...

Vacouver Sun Damn straight. Nothing institutional has ever really changed for First Nations. Many departments that are ostensibly for First Nations are operating with the same spirit as they were for decades prior, which often times takes the form of colonial style management over First Nation lives. Even worse, many of these same departments also haven't really seen any sort of increase in funding for First Nations in those same decades. These are departments that are operating under outdated rules, working on shoestring budgets, handling problems they can't overcome. To solve these problems, First Nations have to be brought into the process, making the important decisions on how these problems should be tackled. First Nations should be allowed to take the lead on this issue.

The Prince George Citizen A tailings pond that breached Monday, releasing a slurry of contaminated eater and mine waste into several central British Columbia waterways, was growing at an unsustainable rate, an environmental consultant says. This company,  Imperial Metals Corp., has been facing these problems since 2011. "More water's coming over the year than they could deal with," Olding said. "They just kept building the walls up higher and higher every year and it got to the point where that was untenable." Where was the regulation? Apparently, this is more of that 'self-regulation'. Bill Bennett: "They've been monitoring it and reporting to the ministry every (day) since then." Wonderful. Except the feeling I'm getting from all this is, this happened because a mining company didn't care enough to correct its problems, partnered with a ministry that didn't care enough to help it. Both are already subtly implicating eac...