Maple Ridge News, April 19, 2013

Page 1

Health Care Ignore hospital’s D grade. p6

Referendum on new TLink taxes. p16

THE NEws

Real Estate save power, stay cool in summer p31

www.mapleridgenews.com Friday, April 19, 2013 · serving Maple Ridge & Pitt Meadows · est. 1978 · 604-467-1122 · 50¢

Propane fire in home injures man Fire department says quick thinking saved house by Ne i l Cor be tt staff reporter

Colleen Flanagan/The news

End the word Sisters Summer and Tori Brack have started a campaign to get rid of the R-Word - retard- a name which has been used in the past to describe their brother, pictured behind them, who has Down Syndrome. They gave a presentation to their peers at Garibaldi secondary on Tuesday. see story p4.

The hose on a propane tank became dislodged and caused a fire that seriously burned a homeowner and damaged his house on Tuesday evening. The fire broke out at a duplex in the 22100 block of Cliff Avenue around 9:30 p.m. Neighbours reported seeing a man with burns and a blackened face. Fire chief Peter Grootendorst said there were about six people at the house when the fire broke out, and several were in the working garage. After smelling propane, the homeowner went to a 100-pound cylinder to turn off the tap. As he did, the hose somehow became dislodged. Under pressure, it whipped around and sprayed him with liquid. see Fire, p10

Medical pot bylaw raises a stink But a proponent says that’s because there are no standards yet by Phil M elnyc h u k staff reporter

Plans to allow medical pot operations in Maple Ridge farm areas got a rough ride Tuesday at a hearing held to sound out the public’s views. “Somebody makes a mistake and the next thing you know you have a Bacon-like … at your doorstep with an AK-47,” Ken Stewart

told council. The former councillor and MLA was worried about crime associated with marijuana production as well as fire, safety and odour problems. The federal government is phasing out thousands of personal-use medical marijuana grow licences in favour of fewer, larger operations, with the new regulations coming into force in April 2014. Stewart lives in on a rural area in Stewart north Maple Ridge and says two medical grow operations nearby are decreasing real estate values.

He claimed Maple Ridge already has more than 500 grow operations and that the district simply has the option of banning any medical pot grows, adding the bylaw doesn’t deal with most of the marijuanagrow operations that are run for recreational use. “I certainly don’t see it as fixing the problem.” The legislation does nothing with 90 per cent of the grows ops running today, he added later. “So what are they going to do with them?” People aren’t against the concept, but just

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wanted the size of parcels for medical marijuana productions increased and to ensure they don’t go in rural residential areas. And what will happen to current medical marijuana producers who will see their licences supposedly phased out? Instead, Stewart likes Coquitlam’s approach which directs medical marijuana operations to site-specific industrial areas. Terry Dumas had similar thoughts. “This bylaw as it’s written, is a really, really bad idea.” More work and discussion is needed to deal with odour, security and waste treatment concerns, she added. see Marijuana, p8

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