The Prince George
Citizen
WEDNESDAY, JULY 21,1993
51 CENTS
(Plus GS1
Low tonight: 9 High tomorrow: 19
Quints suing city
Rains worsen floods
11
Bantams not bothered
13
Dunaway tries TV
21
Phon#: 562-2441 Classified: 562-6666 Circulation: 562-3301
INDEX
Ashley Nesdoly was attacked by a dog Monday afternoon.
dog attacks tot
'Gentle’
by SHERYL THOMPSON Citizen Staff
When Gale Nesdoly saw her children playing with a neighborhood dog Monday afternoon she wasn’t worried — until she heard her son scream that his two-year-old sister had been bitten.
Sitting in her Genevieve Street home with her children Tuesday, the single mother of three related what happened.
Nesdoly had watched her nine-year-old son go next door to pickup his football. Ashley, a two-and-a-half-year old, followed him. So did the dog.
“I saw the dog lunge at he* but I thought the was playing with her. . .Then I heard Jason scream “Ashley’s been bit.”
“He carried her back and we rushed her to emergency.”
The toddler needed more than a dozen stitches on both sides of her face — and very close to her right eye.
“I thought she lost her eye at first,” Nesdoly said.
“She’s okay,” Nesdoly said, adding that everyone was pretty sleepy having had a tough night.
Nesdoly’s three children and three of her friend’s children had been playing with the dog and had given the Husky bowls of water during the day. He seemed to be gentle, Nesdoly said Tuesday.
The dog had been seen in the neighborhood for about a week. Usually, it was at a nearby service station, Nesdoly said.
Everyone in the neighborhood thought the dog was friendly, she added.
When Nesdoly returned home from the hospital, the Husky was sitting in the driveway — that’s when the city animal control officers apprehended the dog.
“I don’t want any child to go through it again,” she said.
City bylaw supervisor Norm Hudon said today the owner received a ticket for having a violent dog at large — the ticket carries a $200 fine.
The owner signed a release and the dog is being destroyed today, Hudon said.
BCR strike
options
pondered
by PAUL STRICKLAND Citizen StafT
Many companies are making alternate arrangements to ship goods by truck or CN Rail as the strike at B.C. Rail continues into its third day.
“We have looked at and are in the position of using some other options,” said Bill Theessen, media relations spokesman for Northwood Pulp and Timber.
Northwood operations in Houston and Upper Fraser, as well as the pulp mill here, have access to CN Rail lines, he noted.
“The strike is a concern for us, and means more costs,” he said. “But it’s still not going to affect our production. We’ll continue to operate.”
Theessen said he could elaborate on alternate transportation arrangements because of the competitive aspects of that industry.
CN Rail has lost the coal traffic-from the Teck and Quintette mines near Tumbler Ridge, which is transported by B.C. Rail and handed over to CN at Prince George, said CN’s media spokesman Christine Skjerven. CN then takes that coal to Prince Rupert for shipment overseas.
That coal traffic is about half of its business, she said from CN offices in Edmonton.
On the other hand, shippers of pulp, lumber and petrochemical products in Prince Goerge and the Northern Interior are using CN Rail as an alternative, where they have access to CN Rail or can truck products a short distance to a CN terminal, she said.
This isn’t enough to make up the loss of 50 per cent of its business from CN Rail, but is keeping workers busy as companies ship through CN to Prince Rupert, Vancouver or east to U.S. destinations, she said.
B.C. Rail is losing about $800,000 a day while the strike continues, said Barrie Wall, the Crown corporation’s manager of public affairs and advertising.
“I’m wondering why there is a strike,” he said, referring to what he claimed were minor differences between the joint council of unions and the company over money and benefits.
“It’s a dumb strike.”
Union spokesman Vic Greco disagreed.
“We’re always ready to go back to the table,” said Greco, who is the negotiating member of the council of trade unions for Canadian Union of Transportation Employees (CUTE) Local 6.
“We keep hearing Barrie Wall on the radio saying the company didn’t give us their firm position,” he said today. “I was there, and I got the message quite clearly there was no more there and that was the company’s final position.
“If the company has some new negotiating position to put to the council, I think now would be a good time to do it.
“They’ve got 1,500 workers on the bricks. If the company has another position, they should bring it to the council. All they have to do is pick up the phone and call Ray Callard, chairman of the council, or Jim Breckcnridge (unofficial mediator).”
B.C. Rail won’t be asking the provincial government for intervention in the dispute, Wall said.
Tuesday Transportation and Highways Art Charbonneau said Victoria would not seek to intervene immediately, but might have to at some future point, Wall noted.
MLA Paul Ramsey (NDP, Prince George North) agreed.
“Art Charbonneau will monitor the situation very carefully,” he said from Victoria. “Everyone in an area served by B.C. Rail is concerned that it be resolved quickly.
“But there are no current plans for intervention in the collective bargaining process.”
The last B.C. Rail strike occurred in 1990, lasted 25 days and cost the Crown-owned railway $12.5 million in lost revenue.
Wall, who said B.C. Rail is the.' third largest in terms of tonnage carried and employees, said the company had a profit of $51.3 million last year on revenues of $325 million.
1
Citizen photo by Chuck Nisbett
Flaws seen in Kemano water plan
by MARILYN STORIE Citizen StafT
Those opposed to the Kemano Completion Project say a provincial review of Alcan’s cold-water release plan to preserve Nechako River salmon stocks has revealed flaws proving the ineffectiveness of the plan.
Kemano opponents believe it will put the 1987 agreement between Alcan Aluminum Ltd. and the provincial and federal governments into jeopardy if all the technical information is put on the table.
Calling information revealed in a June 19 letter “critical,” New Democrat MP Brian Gardiner (Prince George-Bulkley Valley), said he believes it is the first time technical confirmation has leaked that salmon stocks may be jeopardized if the project goes ahead as planned.
‘ ‘The agreement between Kemano and government is contingent on the proper operation of the cold-water release,” Gardiner said.
The agreement allows Alcan to divert water from the Nechako River system west into the Kemano River system. Critics of the project say that would reduce the Nechako to 14 per cent of its original flow and would also impact on the Fraser River. Tlie potential effects on the Fraser River are not under review.
The half-finished $1-billion project would supply electricity at the company’s Kitimat smelter, about 655 kilometres northwest of Vancouver, and additional power would be sold to B.C. Hydro and U.S. customers.
The Kemano opposition is basing their criticism on a June 19 letter sent to a Gordon Hartman, a retired Department of Fisheries scientist. The Prince George Citizen received a copy of the letter from Cheslatta Indian Band researchers.
The letter was written by Dr. Gregory Lawrence, one of two scientists hired to analyze Alcan’s cold-water release data when the provincial review of the project was announced in January.
Hartman wrote to Lawrence, requesting his opinion on whether the facility proposed by Kemano would meet cold-water release requirements. “The cold water release requirements might not be met in an unusually warm year if winds induce significant internal wave activity,” Lawrence writes.
‘Number of concerns'
Lawrence also says that he has a “number of concerns” as to the validity of the hydrothermal modelling of the Nechako Reservoir. The modelling was performed by J.E. Edinger Associates and Triton Engineerings for Alcan.
“Although my concerns have been expressed through the Nechako Fisheries Conservation Program, the responses have been far from satisfactory and did nothing to quell my concerns,” Lawrence tells Hartman. “I cannot support the claim that the hydrothermal modelling demonstrates that the temperature requirements will be met.”
Lawrence did not not return phone messages Tuesday and today.
The second scientist who took part in the data analysis, Paul Hamblin of Burlington, Ont., could not be reached for comment today.
Al Martin, heading the Nechako Fisheries Conservation Program and the technical committee member who hired the scientists to perform the provincial appraisal of the data, is away from work until Thursday.
Approval for the Kemano Completion Project was formalized in 1987 in what is now referred to as the Nechako Settlement Agreement. It was to see a cold-water release system constructed in the Kenney Dam to drain less but colder water from deep in the reservoir into the Nechako River. Prior to the agreement, Alcan had threatened to go to court to determine whether the company or the federal government’s Department of Fisheries and Oceans had the right to determine the water flows.
The agreement gave Alcan the water flows and the temperatures it wanted. Control of the water flows in the river went to a committee of scientists who are not required to report to the public.
A May 3 letter from John Crosbie, federal minister for Fisheries and Oceans, to Gardiner states, “The (federal) government is satisfied that the water flows, provided for in the settlement agreement, are adequate for the protection of fish and fish habitat” Crosbie told Gardiner, “On a final note, in your letter of January 15, 1993, you raise questions about a final design for the Kenney Dam cold-water release facility. For your information, this has been the subject of discussions between DFO and Alcan, and DFO has agreed with the conceptual design for the coldwater release to be built at the Kenny Dam.”
Crosbie also assured Gardiner that extensive model testing and analysis by Alcan has shown the release facility would meet DFO’s stringent criterion.
Man faces 22 sex charges
WHITEHORSE (CP) — A man will appear in court in Terrace, next month on 22 sex-related charges involving native boys.
Jerzy MacZynski, a resident of the Yukon community of Watson Lake, is accused of molesting boys at a residential school in the northern B.C. community of Lower Post.
The alleged offences took place between 1953 and 1963 when MacZynski was a dormitory supervisor.
Watson Lake RCMP said the MacZynski, 60, is not in custody and is scheduled to appear in court Aug. 6.
“Don’t you have anything smaller?"
STORY ANGERS PREMIER
Logging image ‘bum rap’
by Canadian Press VICTORIA — Premier Mike Harcourt said Tuesday he’s getting tired of the “misrepresentation” of logging practices in Vancouver Island’s ancient rainforests.
Harcourt reacted angrily when he was shown the front page of Monday’s San Francisco Chronicle. A feature story about Vancouver Island logging carried the headline Ancient Trees Disappearing in Brazil of North.
“It’s an ignorant bum rap,” Harcourt said. “I’m getting tired about some of the extreme misrepresentation that’s going on.”
The newspaper reported on the provincial government’s decision to allow logging in Clayoquot Sound, a region on the west coast of the island that contains some of Canada’s oldest and largest trees.
The area has been the site of daily protests by anti-logging activists this summer. More than 50 people have been arrested on log-ging-road blockades, including four on Tuesday.
Harcourt said some environmentalists are unfairly depicting logging practices in the province, especially to foreign journalists.
The “Brazil of the North” tag is
one often used by opponents of the government who compare logging in British Columbia with the deforestation in South America rainforests.
He said comparing British Columbia and Brazil on the issue is “repugnant.”
But Julie Draper of the conservationist Friends of Clayoquot Sound group said the comparison is valid.
“Anyone who doesn’t believe it should just take a plane flight over Vancouver Island,” Draper said. “There’s hardly anything left.”
Ann Landers 8
Bridge..................24
Business 12,13
City, B.C...............24
Classified .... 22-27
Comics..................20
Crossword...............23
Editorial................4
Entertainment . 20,21
Family...................8
Horoscope...............24
International ... 7,11
Movies..................21
National..............6,10
Sports...............15-18
Television..............25
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