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THURSDAY, JUNE 7, 2012
Proudly serving Williams Lake and the Cariboo-Chilcotin since 1930
VOL. 82. No. 43
$1.34 inc. HST
WL baby dies Big Bike brings in big support in Kelowna Monica Lamb-Yorski Tribune Staff Writer An eight-month-old boy who had currently been living in Williams Lake died in Kelowna on Monday morning. He was staying in a motel with his family when he began having difficulties breathing. When the family contacted BC Ambulance, the call was also referred to the Kelowna RCMP. “At about quarter to ten in the morning we received the report. When we arrived both the ambulance and fire department were on scene and had commenced life-saving efforts, but when the boy was transferred to hospital he could not be revived,” says Kelowna RCMP Cst. Kris Clark, adding the infant’s death is not considered suspicious. “It will be up to the coroner. The autopsy may show more, but right now we have no cause for suspicion,” Clark says.
Inside the Tribune NEWS Court house locked down.
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SPORTS A12 Soap box derby coming up. COMMUNITY A18 Alice — A Wonderland on stage. Weather outlook: Mix of sun/ cloud, chance of showers today, high of 14 C. Showers Friday, high of 14 C.
Greg Sabatino photo
The City of Williams Lake, the Cariboo Regional District and the Royal Bank of Canada ride the Heart and Stroke Foundation’s Big Bike through the lakecity Tuesday afternoon. The bike, which is on its way across the province, helped the organization raise more than $10,000 in Williams Lake through pledges raised by riders from multiple teams who participated.
Contaminated soil to be cleaned up Monica Lamb-Yorski Tribune Staff Writer It is anticipated that soil contamination at the old fire training area at the Williams Lake airport will be cleaned up by 2015, says acting chief administrative officer Geoff Goodall. “The city’s understanding is that the site will be cleaned up earlier than anticipated,” Goodall said. “They have a mobile system that comes up to the airport for pumping ground water out.” Mayor Kerry Cook requested the item be discussed at Tuesday’s city council meeting after she, other councillors and city staff members were contacted by Joe Minor, a biologist from Hamilton, Ont., who has been advocating on a local level that the federal government clean up similar contamination at the Hamilton airport. Reading from a report prepared by chief administrative officer Brian Carruthers, Cook said the city entered into an agreement with the
federal government for transfer of the airport to the city in July 1996. At the time, Transport Canada contracted UMA Environmental Limited to conduct a baseline study of the airport. Soil contamination was identified at the fire training areas and Transport Canada confirmed in a letter date Nov. 29, 1996 to then chief administrative officer Wayne Thiessen it would perform the required remediation. That work would involve remediating contaminated ground water and surface soil contamination at the existing fire training area and remediating deep soil contamination at the existing and former fire training areas. The consultant’s report identified a number of priority items; however, it stated there were no known threats to human health or safety. Of those priorities, 28 were noted around violation of federal, provincial and municipal law, 21 for noncompliance with a policy, guideline, and code and 16 not reflective of
good environmental practices. Under a contract with Public Works Canada, a private environmental engineering firm began the remediating work in 2005 and has continued every year since. Coun. Ivan Bonnell asked about changes in the timeline slated for cleanup at the airport. Originally it was 2038, but has now been reduced to 2015. “I don’t know what the impact of all that means,” Bonnell said. Minor told the Tribune Tuesday morning, the main thing Williams Lake should worry about is that for several years running the federal government said it would stay and help Williams Lake clean up this mess until 2038 and on May 4 of this year changed its mind and decided it was going to leave in 2015. “All that pollution will become the city’s responsibility, he warns, adding the city needs to be told more by the federal government about what’s happened. Because it hasn’t been cleaned up, it will continue to spread, and you’ll be responsible
for figuring out how far it’s spread. That costs a lot of money, that ongoing monitoring.” Minor voiced concerns about the water affecting nearby wells; however, Bonnell said he thinks that people in Hamilton probably think the airport is closer to residential areas than it actually is. Minor described Hamilton and Williams Lake as two cities linked in a tale-of-two-cities-kind-of-way, because both airports were “badly” contaminated with chemicals. “I was the person, as a citizen volunteer, who figured out that these chemicals were leaching off Hamilton’s airport into a local waterway where they were badly contaminating fish and making them unsafe to eat,” Minor said. For more than a year Minor has attempted to retrieve information about what chemicals were used in Hamilton and in Williams Lake. See ONTARIO Page A3