THURSDAY AUGUST 13, 2015
Black Press C O M M U N I T Y
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DOCTOR SHORTAGE
GOLDEN EAGLE IS RECOVERING
OHC, Qualicum each lose family doctor in two-week period
Read the details in today’s Wild ’N Free column by Sylvia Campbell
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RAVEN COAL MINE PROPOSAL
‘Time to fish or cut bait’ There’s still one more deadline and company says it will meet it CANDACE WU news@pqbnews.com
Compliance Coal Corporation has less than three weeks to save its bid to build a coal mine near Buckley Bay, less than 50 kilometres from Qualicum Beach. The Environmental Assessment Office (EAO) is giving Compliance until August 28 to submit more information about its proposed Raven coal mine operation. The added pressure from the EAO comes two months after CoalWatch Comox Valley Society — a group critical of the coal mine proposal — asked the EAO to terminate the project. CoalWatch president John Snyder argued “Under the Environmental Assessment Act and the Prescribed Time Limits Regulation, the executive director under the act may suspend or terminate an EA (environmental assessment) if the information required by the Application Information Requirement Guidelines (AIR) has not been provided within three years.” See ‘TOO LATE’, page A7
PARKSVILLE CITY HALL
Flip-flop hiring JOHN HARDING
editor@pqbnews.com
Rejected in April, embraced in August. Parksville city council members voted Monday night in a special meeting to add an Occupational Health and Safety Officer to staff, an addition they rejected during budget discussions in April. The health and safety officer will cost the city $87,500 a year and will start in November. The city says this will not change the property tax increase for homeowners set on April 24, which was 1.5 per cent for 2015. “The addition of the Occupational Health and Safety Officer will provide much-needed relief to senior staff,” said a staff report considered by council on Monday night. See GREIR ‘FED UP’, page A7
PHOTO BY MATTHEW MURNAGHAN, COURTESY CANADIAN PARALYMPIC COMMITTEE
GOLDEN MINISTER: Michelle Stilwell, MLA for Parksville-Qualicum and B.C.’s Minister of Social Development and Social Innovation, is show above with her gold medal Tuesday for winning the women’s 100M T52 in the CIBC Athletics Stadium during the Toronto 2015 Parapan American Games. Stilwell posted a time of 19.58 seconds, one second shy of the world record she set back in 2012. This is the first of two events for Stilwell at the 2015 Parapan Am Games — she’s set to compete in the Women’s 800M event today (Thursday) at 12:42 p.m. Pacific time.
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