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Red Deer Advocate FRIDAY, NOV. 1, 2013
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Guilty plea in escort scam BY BRENDA KOSSOWAN ADVOCATE STAFF A man who was once highly regarded in Red Deer’s Métis community was sentenced on Thursday to four years in prison for his role in an alleged escort scheme. John Florian Poitra, 31, pleaded guilty in Red
Deer provincial court to two counts of robbery and two counts of extortion in connection with an operation in which men seeking escort services were lured online and then beaten and robbed. In an agreed statement of facts prepared with defence counsel Allan Fay of Calgary, Crown prosecutor Jason Snider described an operation in which two victims were robbed of cash, credit cards, vehicles and other valuables. The first victim said he met a woman on June
Diesel refinery eyes county waste
7 and was taken to an apartment, where two men jumped him, emptied his pockets and forced him to give PIN numbers for his credit cards and bank cards. His pickup truck was taken and his cards were used to make purchases at a variety of Red Deer businesses, totalling more than $9,000.
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BY HARLEY RICHARDS ADVOCATE BUSINESS EDITOR Red Deer County’s Horn Hill waste transfer station is being considered as the site for a $45-million renewable diesel refinery that would use municipal waste as a feedstock. Cielo Waste Solutions Corp. (CNSX: CMC) announced on Thursday that it has received written confirmation from Red Deer County that the municipality is reviewing the proposed project. Cielo said it’s already had discussions with the county, and is prepared to move forward. Red Deer resident Don Allan is CEO of Cielo. He said his company would like to eventually develop six renewable diesel refineries on the Horn Hill site, which is east of Penhold. Each would be capable of using up to 200 tonnes of waste material a day and producing approximately 5.4 million litres of renewable diesel annually. The diesel could be sold to petroleum companies and blended with conventional diesel to satisfy provincial and federal renewable fuel content requirements, said Allan. Other products from the refining process would include a tar-like substance that could go into in asphalt, and sulfur that could be used to produce organic fertilizer. An automated sorting line would be part of the facility, said Allan. It would separate compost and recyclable materials like steel, copper and aluminum. Most of the remainder would go into the refinery, with paper, cardboard, cloth and plastics all suitable feedstocks, he said. “We’re hoping to use about 90 per cent of the garbage.” The refinery would also require used motor oil, which Allan said would serve as a carrier for the waste material, and a special catalyst that would bring about the chemical reaction needed to create the diesel. The process is already occurring in a small demonstration plant, which was manufactured in Germany and used for a number of years in Nevada. Blue Horizon Bio-Diesel Inc., of which Allan is also CEO, bought the equipment and operated it in Red Deer before selling the technology to Cielo on Aug. 1. Allan said the two companies operate independently, with Cielo based in Vancouver but maintaining its operational headquarters in Red Deer.
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Plains Midstream oil spill had little lasting effect on trees: study BY PAUL COWLEY ADVOCATE STAFF Mother Nature’s self-healing powers prevented an oil spill on the Red Deer River from doing any lasting harm to poplar and willow trees, suggests research done by the University of Lethbridge. A study team led by Stewart Rood, a researcher with the university’s Environmental Science Department, made three visits to the river following the June 7, 2012, spill by Plains Midstream. Up to 3,000 barrels (475,000 litres) of light sour crude oil was released into the Red Deer River from a ruptured Plains Midstream pipeline about one km north of Sundre. Plains Midstream spent tens of millions of dollars and employed hundreds of workers to clean up following the leak from a pipeline running under the river. Graduate student Evan Hillman was part of the team that made three visits to assess the environmental damage to poplar and willow trees two weeks, four weeks and 12 weeks after the spill. Graduate and under-graduate students returned last August to further study the area downstream of
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Bullet points on JFK A startling new documentary suggests that an accidental shooting is what really killed U.S. President John F. Kennedy on that fateful day in 1963.
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what is considered a relatively small oil spill. The team rated the poplar and willow trees’ health on a scale of zero to five, and charted the health and growth of oiled and unoiled trees. Thermal images were taken of vegetation to determine if oiled leaves were suffocating. Leaves were also put under an electron microscope to study how the surface of leaves were affected. “What we found was that stream-side vegetation is naturally resilient and they are accustomed to disturbances within the river valley,” said Hillman. “So based on that, we found that the stream-side plants were less affected by crude oil than we initially expected.” Leaves covered in oil fell off trees soon after the spill. “Much as the leaves fall off in the fall, it was just a lot earlier,” he said. “But the next year the oiled plants still remained healthy. They had full branches of leaves and they had an increase in height. “So in the year following the spill we found minimal difference between the health of the oiled and unoiled plants.”
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Dressed as Super Girl, Captain America and Spider-Man, Chalrene Alcon and her brothers, Jonathan and Ariel, strike their strength pose at the Bower Place Shopping Centre Thursday. The three joined many other children and their families for an evening of trick-or-treating at the mall on Halloween. Parkland Mall also held their annual Fright Night festivities as well.
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