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Years est. 1954
Volume 60 No. 06
Sentinel
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Northern
www.northernsentinel.com
Kitimat changes being watched Cameron Orr After three visits to our community, researchers at the University of Northern British Columbia (UNBC) have released their second interim report, titled “Tracking the Social and Economic Transformation Process in Kitimat, BC.” Researchers Laura Ryser, Gerald Pinchbeck and Greg Halseth come to Kitimat at least once a year to ask a series of questions to local residents, picked out of local government, community groups and others. “What we’re hoping to do is just track the changes as it’s going through all of these transformations,” Ryser told the Sentinel, noting that research will continue until the community is through the bulk of its changes and transformation. The report itself doesn’t track local satisfaction with the community, but merely seeks to record what changes are happening, such as changes to the retail sector or to community services. Among the report’s positive findings is that people are reporting that the town is giving attention to temporary and long-term housing needs, businesses are expanding to fill need from industrial growth, and there’s ongoing continued efforts to renew relationships with industry, First Nations and community stakeholders. Service providers and community groups share 25 per cent each of the persons interviewed for these reports. The local government represents approximately 27 per cent of respondents, and businesses provide 11 per cent. The rest is shared among industry representatives and seniors. The report tracks positive changes as well as pressure points, but Ryser says it’s hard to pinpoint any particular area as that of greatest need. “Even if you get a housing pressure, you can’t say that’s more than something else because often that will snowball into something else.” For instance she said the pressure could begin with more workers coming into the community, which then puts pressure on people without industry wages, which opens up needs for other services. “You really do need that comprehensive look at it.” But she said tracking these changes is helpful to other groups and communities. For instance towns in the Northeast of B.C. are looking to see how Kitimat handles changes, just as Kitimat at times looks to them. Under retail changes from their latest report, a majority of people identified Tim Hortons’ arrival. The PTI Lodge proposal topped housing issues. Meanwhile under services the Food Bank took up the top three spots on that list. Traffic was also seen as a large issue for transportation.
Wednesday, February 5, 2014
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1.30 INCLUDES TAX
Tenan-sea? A converted ferry is en route to Kitimat to house workers for the Kitimat Modernization Project. See page 3 for the story. Wikimedia Commons photo credit
Where hath our winter gone? Cameron Orr You’re not imagining it, it has been warmer and drier than usual for this time of year. Winter has hardly seemed to have materialized in this corner of the world, even as severe weather has at times ravaged parts of the country out east, and in the United States. But in Kitimat we’ve enjoyed what seems like a prolonged spring. David Jones, a meteorologist with Environment Canada, said a high pressure system is the culprit for keeping winter at bay. “The short term and the proximate reason is because we’ve had this massive ridge of high pressure across the west coast of North America that just won’t go away,” he said. “It comes and goes and keeps re-establishing itself and it’s blocking all the storms from moving onto the coast, mostly to the south.” That same pressure front cuts down on precipitation as well. “It’s a pattern that we don’t have an explanation for at this point, it’s just one of the extremes that we can see here in
A small pile of snow hints to the weather we usually have. A high pressure ridge is keeping a true north winter out of reach. the winter time.” That said, just the fact that it’s warm this season doesn’t mean that Kitimat is looking at a trend for future years. He said next year’s winter could easily be one of the region’s normal ones. “It’s unusual, it’s not frequent but it’s weather and it’s part of what weather is. Weather is the extremes, it is the unusual as well as the average,” he added.
Using the data from a weather station in Prince Rupert, he noted that for the past 30 days as of January 30, the temperature had been four degrees more than the average. He said in Vancouver the temperatures have been 1.5 degrees more than the average for the past 30 days as well, while Whitehorse has been an astonishing nine degrees above the average.
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Winterfest is returning ... page 3