NANAIMO REGION
Tourism season looks good so far this year More visitors are in the city in 2015: Some are visiting friends and family, others include U.S. tourists. A3
NANAIMO REGION
Duffy trial resumes
Schools facilities plan on table in September School board chairman Steve Rae expects staff will try to answer all questions at a Sept. 2 meeting. A3
Nigel Wright, former aide e ay y to the PM, to testify today Nation & World, A7
The newspaper of record for Nanaimo and region since 1874 || Wednesday, August 12, 2015
» Transportation
RDN
Aircraft noise exceedingly loud, say Cedar residents
Security firm wins $276K contract ROBERT BARRON DAILY NEWS
and want short-haul flights moved to the instrument landing approach. Mike Hooper, Nanaimo Airport president said noise is a hazard when living near any airport, no different than living near a highway, but said that doesn’t mean noise complaints aren’t taken seriously. The airport set up a “noise mitigation round-table,” group more than two years ago. The group meets quarterly, “and we’ve invited these people to the noise mitigation conversation,” said Hooper. “It’s not something we ignore. Sometimes we can talk to the air carriers (or) the chief of pilots. We’ll see what we can do to help everybody as much as possible.”
Searching for fires at the Cedar landfill will be one the primary tasks for the new security company that recently won the contract to patrol the site. Larry Gardner, the solid waste manager for the Regional District of Nanaimo, which operates the garbage landfill, said security guards employed by Securiguard, which was given a three-year, $276,000 contract by the RDN last week, will look for fires as well as prevent thefts and break ins. Gardner said being on the watch for fires at the landfill has always been one of the responsibilities of the site’s security guards, but they will be expected to be even more diligent during the ongoing drought in the region. “We need to extinguish any fires at the landfill immediately after they are spotted because the challenge of containing and managing them becomes much harder the longer they are given to grow and spread,” Gardner said. Gardner said fires can begin at the landfill for a variety of reasons, including “hot loads” that are brought in that contain materials that can ignite, like left-over wood stove ash. He said organic materials can sometimes also ignite through spontaneous combustion, and chemical reactions can occur when certain substances are mixed that can cause fires. “There’s also a chance that people driving by the landfill will throw discarded cigarettes from their cars and start a fire that can spread to the landfill,” Gardner said. Gardner said there had been one fire at the landfill earlier this year, but it was noticed quickly and extinguished. He said a fire last year at the Church Road transfer station in Parksville caused approximately $20,000 in damages. “Luckily, there was a good sprinkler system at that site that kept the fire from being even worse than it was,” Gardner said.
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Don Keddy at the Nanaimo Airport. He and neighbours want flight paths changed to end what they say is a noise problem. [DARRELL BELLAART/DAILY NEWS]
Issue not the airport, but landing approaches DARRELL BELLAART DAILY NEWS
C
edar residents want pilots to adjust their flight paths to reduce a noise problem. Starling Road resident Don Keddy and neighbour Jim Sayenchuk have been asking Nanaimo Airport to do something about the problem since they first noticed it, in December. They say it’s only on certain short-haul flights between Nanaimo and Vancouver. The Vancouver-Nanaimo route follows a path that is a mix of residential and semi-rural neighbourhoods, and small farms. Nav Canada, the Crown corporation responsible for air traffic control, flight information and other air navigation services requires aircraft to fly at a minimum altitude of 1,200 feet moving through airspace over Cedar.
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Sunny High 31, Low 17 Details A2
“We’ve invited these people to the noise mitigation conversation . . . We’ll see what we can do to help everybody as much as possible.” Mike Hooper, Nanaimo Airport president
Keddy said he hears noise at his home, five kilometres from the airport, when pilots fly aircraft too low. “They’ve got their landing gear down,” Keddy said. “Whenever they’ve got their landing gear down and their flaps up, they’ve got to increase the power.” Keddy, a welder whose job takes him all over Western Canada, appreciates the expansion and improvements at YCD, but he
moved to his semi-rural neighbourhood from Nanaimo in 2003 because “it’s peaceful.” Sayenchuk, who’s retired, keeps track of which flights are excessively loud. He makes a video record of it and logs the time and date, which he correlates against website flight data. “I’m doing this because on Dec. 13 they changed the way they fly on a non-instrument approach,” said Sayenchuk. There are two different approaches to Nanaimo Airport: A path that closely follows the Nanaimo River, for larger, medium-haul aircraft that use instrument landing systems; and the non-instrument approach, over much of Cedar, used mainly by smaller airplanes such as Dash-8s. They say they’re not alone in losing patience with the noise,
Syncrude given order after death of birds
Fruit beers are a treat for summer sipping
Syncrude revealed on the weekend that 29 dead blue herons were found last Friday at an abandoned sump pond at a mine site north of Fort McMurray. » Nation & World, A7
Fruit beers complement hot weather perfectly. Tart and light, most are tangy, light-flavoured wheat beers with lower alcohol content than regular beers. » Food, B1
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