LAST NIGHTS' BIOFUEL RALLY

The Rally/Community Event was held despite the rain with nearly sixty people in attendance. Two young men provided "ambience" with their music and popsicles were handed out to the kids. Several speakers gave background information including Michael Purves Smith, Sebastian Seibel-Achenbach and Dan Holt. The microphone was essentially shared both for people in the audience asking questions as well as to other speakers such as Gerry Heidibert, Vivienne Delaney and Shannon Purves Smith. Some of the information that I was looking for was up and posted on boards such as specifics as to what kind of raw materials will be used at the plant. Both the upcoming Mediation and the Ontario Municipal Board Hearing were also mentioned. Sebastian advised the crowd about some of the research he had done and it included the information that European facilities tended to only use local within 30 km. sources of organic wastes versus the much larger range and hence transport for the proposed Elmira facility. Secondly Sebastian was advised that all of these facilities smell hence in Europe they keep them out of residential neighbourhoods. All in all I'm beginning to see a picture emerge of our provincial green energy plans. Something is very wrong when someone such as myself, who has a clear bias in favour of green energy, is finding that the province are simply jumping on a bandwagon and attempting to mimic success elsewhere while studiously avoiding the known pitfalls. Simply calling it green doesn't make it so.