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City woman makes it her mission to save the poppies
He’s passionate about the piano PAGE 15
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Police to remove vagrants
For safety’s sake Burnaby’s BCIT was the site of a mock earthquake June 9. The exercise was to practise emergency response plans. For the full story and more photos, see page 11.
Homeless people given notice to pack up and leave park Janaya Fuller-Evans
staff reporter
The Burnaby RCMP and the city’s parks and recreation department will be asking homeless people in Central Park to vacate the area on Monday, June 21. The move was initiated by the RCMP, according to Dave Ellenwood, the city’s director of parks and recreation. “They’re usually responding to a complaint,” he explained. There hasn’t been an increase in homeless people sleeping in the parks this year as compared with past years, Ellenwood said. “There’s not a spike beyond the usual levels,” he said. “There’s not more complaints.” Often there is a seasonal increase, as the weather gets warmer, every year, he added. The city has a bylaw that prohibits overnight camping in Burnaby parks. The RCMP go in with park staff, and often workers from the Progressive Housing Society’s homeless outreach program, and give the homeless campers 24 hours’ notice to vacate, Ellenwood said. After the 24hour period, park staff goes in and removes any structures that have been left behind. Wanda Mulholland, who is
Larry Wright/ burnaby now
Oil on beach concerns biologist Areas outside of leak zone could be contaminated with oil Jennifer Moreau staff reporter
A biologist from the David Suzuki Foundation is raising concerns about the leaking oil at Burnaby’s Chevron refinery. On April 21, during a routine inspection, Chevron discovered gas, diesel and crude oil seeping from the refinery into a gravel ditch beside a railway track in North Burnaby. Some material was also found on a 25-metre stretch of beach, below the tracks. John Werring, an aquatic habitat specialist with the David Suzuki Foundation, visited the site and said the substance appeared heavy and unrefined. “It was seeping out of the hillside in a ditch line along the railroad tracks over a distance
Homeless Page 9
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of about 60 metres, and it’s been doing this for well over a month,” Werring said. “This suggests to me that the ground upslope of that particular area is saturated with some kind of oil.” But Werring said he also saw areas along the beach with discoloured sand outside the section that Chevron has cordoned off with a boom. “When you pick that sand up, you can actually smell hydrocarbons in it. So, there are areas outside of that particular leak zone where there is contamination,” Leaking: Oil in the ditch by the train he said. “It’s been known for long peri- tracks. od of time that the groundwater at that site is contaminated,” he added. Lord said “Groundwater goes offsite. There’s no way
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they can control that. What it’s doing is it’s coming up on the beach, and as a consequence, the beach sands are contaminated over a fairly significant distance, in my view. It needs to be established just how contaminated they are.” Werring said potential contamination is a concern for people using the beach. “They go down there on a sunny day. There’s kids, there’s dogs, there’s people harvesting shellfish down there during low tide, so I would be concerned about potential human health impacts,” he said. Chevron spokesperson Ray they have no reason to believe Chevron Page 10
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