INSIDE: Cops seek witnesses to senior punched in parking lot Pg. 3 T U E S D A Y
December 18, 2012
10
Chiefs back to winning ways
N E W S , S P O R T S , W E A T H E R & E N T E R T A I N M E N T chilliwacktimes.com
Results of test now in question Mayor jumps on comments made about toxic fly ash
Out of range
BY PAUL J. HENDERSON phenderson@chilliwacktimes.com
T
Putting a silencer on gunfire not in the immediate future
Paul J. Henderson/TIMES - file
Sgt. Robert Tan from the Lower Mainland Emergency Response Team in 2009 at the RCMP’s PRTC firing range in Chilliwack. BY PAUL J. HENDERSON phenderson@chilliwacktimes.com
I
t’s exam time at the University of the Fraser Valley (UFV) and a dozen students pore over biology textbooks and political science notes. They sit in chairs at study carrels along the south facing glass wall of the library at the new Canada Education Park campus in Chilliwack. The only sounds are clicking laptop keys, shuffling papers and distant chatter among library staff in the distance. Suddenly, just after 1 p.m., the quiet is shattered by the sound of multiple bursts of 9mm pistol fire from RCMP officers training less than 200 metres away. Volleys of gunfire can be unnerving to the uninitiated, disruptive
to the studious or a mild irritant to those resigned to the fact that their school, their classrooms, their labs are right next to an open-air firing range. A Dec. 10 Tweet from a UFV student with the handle @JakeKubanski says it all: “I’m such a dumbass... go study in the Chilliwack campus library that’s a brilliant idea. I mean its right beside a active firing range.” UFV owns the land where the RCMP’s Pacific Region Training Centre (PRTC) firing range is located, and administrators’ response to the situation remains diplomatic yet defiant. “We at UFV really recognize the service that they provide,” UFV facilities director Craig Toews told the Times. “We want to support them meeting their education
“. . . gun noise is definitely a disturbance on campus and we have received some complaints from students and faculty.” Craig Toews goals. Having said that, gun noise is definitely a disturbance on campus and we have received some complaints from students and faculty.” UFV ’s new campus building is surrounded by the RCMP. The force’s main Pacific Region Training Centre (PRTC) campus is to the north, parking is to the east and the firing range is to the south. Thousands of RCMP members receive training every year at PRTC,
as do Department of Fisheries and Oceans officers, Canada Border Service Agents (CBSA), Corrections Canada officers as well as men and women from municipal police forces. The CBSA no longer uses the open-air firing range as it installed 18 modular units at a cost of $3.9 million in June of 2010. At that same time, complaints to Chilliwack city hall led to consideration of the city’s noise bylaw, which the PRTC firing range violates. City council decided not to enforce its own bylaw out of goodwill for the federal agency, but that doesn’t mean the mayor is unsympathetic to complaints. “It’s not acceptable to have that noise happening on that site,”
he Fraser Valley Regional District (FVRD) has seized on inconsistent test results of toxic fly ash from Metro Vancouver’s Burnaby incinerator as further evidence that burning garbage is a bad idea. Ash samples taken in the summer were found to have leachable cadmium above acceptable levels, results that were later questioned by follow-up tests. The uncertainty led Metro’s manager of solid waste Paul Henderson to question the test they use. Henderson was quoted in the media as saying “it showed us absolutely there’s a possibility of failure” in reference to standard protocol testing. In a press release issued Friday, Chilliwack Mayor Sharon Gaetz, in her role as FVRD chair, reiterated concerns. “By questioning their own tests, Mr. Henderson is throwing all previous testing and the existing protocols into doubt,” she said. Both Gaetz and Cache Creek Mayor John Ranta have questioned Metro’s logic of retesting only the failed samples at a different lab. See TESTS, Page 4
See GUN RANGE, Page 14
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