[LookOutSugarLake] Week's Mail

[handr at telus.net]

Hi all,

A NEW FORUM!

As you know the lookout listserv was established to organize action  
concerning the Kokanee Lodge 100% sewage outfall development. Most  
members signed on because of that one problem, and some are objecting  
to receiving emails not directly related to the Kokanee Lodge  
effluent issue. This is why we now send other emails in this WEEK"S  
Mail and have now also put up a FORUM on http://sensociety.org/forum

Join our open forum for Shuswap water issues by clicking on LookOut! 
SugarLake to read existing posts. They will all be kept on the site,  
organized by topic, by member, and of course by date.

To be able to post, look at the top right of the screen for a  
"Register" link. After you register (takes about a minute), log in  
and give us (and all members) your contribution, and make it a habit.

As of the end of March, there are few members. This present message  
is reaching a mailing list of 200.

Those who want to exchange opinions related to the w.p.beetle might  
like to subscribe to the SEAS mailing list, which is open to all and  
includes BCFORESTWATCH. They have been covering the beetle epidemic.  
Write to Jim Cooperman at mailto:jcoop at ribaa.ca.

*********************************

The Toilet Papers! by Catherine Hansen

Have you seen the book The Toilet Papers:  Recycling Waste and  
Conserving Water  by Sim Van der Ryn Foreword by Wendell Berry? Used  
and new copies are available at Amazon ~ a book worth reading and  
passing on to others....  also available at the library....
here is a quote from the Foreword ~

"If I urinated and defecated into a pitcher of drinking water and  
then proceeded to quench my thirst from the pitcher, I would  
undoubtedly be considered crazy.  If I invented an expensive  
technology to put my urine and feces into my drinking water, and then  
invented another expensive (and undependable) technology to make the  
same water fit to drink, I might be thought even crazier.  It is not  
inconceivable that some psychiatrist would ask me knowingly why I  
wanted to mess up my drinking water in the first place.  The "sane"  
solution, very likely, would be to have me urinate and defecate into  
a flush toilet, from which the waste would be carried through an  
expensive sewerage works, which would supposedly treat it and pour it  
into the river ~ from which the town downstream would pump it,  
further purify, it and use it for drinking water.   Private madness,  
by the ratification of a lot of expense and engineering, thus becomes  
public sanity.  This is permitted by our habitual disregard of  
consequences.  We live by buying and selling the causes of every  
conceivable blight from cancer to famine to holocaust~and are  
continually astonished to find that these causes have their  
inevitable effects.  As a society, we never look behind us at the  
generations that will follow us and at the impediments we are  
throwing in their way. "  Wendell Berry

**********************

Changing the MSR

As you know, the Municipal Sewage Regulation is the document that  
allows developers to simply register an effluent discharge to water  
without requiring a permit as long as it meets the standards in this  
document. I have been asking for advice regarding how to go about  
changing it to reflect all the new knowledge we have about the  
dangers of those practices. Here is what I'm being told:

The best way to affect changes to the MSR is to make things as  
uncomfortable as possible for the sitting government to maintain the  
status quo.  Get people to write letters.  Form a coalition of  
opposing groups and write letters yourself on behalf of the  
coalition....go as far and as wide as you can...contact groups like  
the Sierra Club, Western Canada Wilderness Committee, BC Federation  
of Fly Fishers, BC Wildlife Federation, Nature Canada, World Wildlife  
Fund...all of these groups should have and interest in this.  Get  
them to agree to sign on to your cause....then write a letter...

Start the letter off something like this:

I am writing to you on behalf of the A group, B group ....Y Society  
which all told represent XXX,XXX voters in this riding and across the
Province..

And then make your demands that the MSR be changed....that will get  
their attention. Send the letter to the relevant minister and cc  
Campbell.

Also, type up a generic letter to government that anyone can sign and  
place them in strategic locations...like tackle shops, local grocery  
stores (any esses that will support and promote your cause).  Include  
postage paid envelopes if you can and have as many as possible sign  
and mail them.

In the meantime stage demonstration events that you can get as many  
people out to and alert the media.  See if you can get Mr. Floatie  
out to your events or invent your own mascot that will draw attention  
to the issue.

If you want fast action from politicians, you have to bring the  
matter to them and force them to take action.

Demand that they respond

Short of that...we're all on the slow track to inaction if you don't put
it square in their faces.

Please let me know your reactions to this,
huguette



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