Larry Pynn details the ongoing controversy over Metro Vancouver’s waste incinerator in The Sun: Burnaby incinerator emissions expected to fall: engineer.
In the story, he quotes my colleague at SFU, Mark Jaccard:
FVRD is “incredibly hypocritical” and engaged in sleight of hand, said Mark Jaccard, a professor in the School of Resource and Environmental Management at Simon Fraser University. …
“When I go out into the valley I am always appalled,” he said. “All these things we know about sustainable energy, greenhouse gas emissions, transportation and how we can have a much lower impact development, and they seem to do very little if any of that.
“When I hear them complain about the incinerator, my reaction is it’s hypocrisy.”
I jump in:
Gordon Price, a former Vancouver city councillor who is now director of The City Program at SFU, agreed that Abbotsford is “staggering in its car dependence.
“They’re planning on the assumption that pretty much everybody drives everywhere for everything. That’s not an exaggeration. When you go there, it’s clear … it is being designed in the post-War American model.”
South Fraser Way corridor, Abbotsford
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Metro’s most vocal critic on the incinerator is Patricia Ross, the Fraser Valley Regional District vice-chair and an Abbotsford councillor. She seems offended at our criticisms:
Ross replied that the Fraser Valley is not perfect when it comes to environmental issues but neither is Vancouver and that for anyone to suggest the valley “shut up and take whatever poisons anyone wants to send our way is shocking and irresponsible.”
No apologies. Mainly because we’re not saying ‘shut up and take it.’ Jaccard and I are saying to those responsible for this:
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… that the result is inevitably this:
Metro Vancouver reports that per capita emissions in Metro are about 40 kilograms per person compared with about 70 kilograms per person in FVRD.
And those concerned about air quality in the fast-growing parts of the region would make it a priority to do something about it when that’s the primary responsibility within their jurisdiction.
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[More here: The End of the Strip Mall – Abbotsford. We need an update.]
