LETTERS TO THE EDITOR — Harcourt and company `myopic

The following is an open letter to Michael Harcourt, premier of British Columbia, in response to his government’s decision to expropriate the Windy Craggy copper project in favor of creating a provincial park:

I am a professional mining engineer and in my career of 42 years have been involved in exploration in northwestern British Columbia, the Yukon and Labrador, followed by waste-water and solid-waste disposal projects (landfills) with the municipality of Metropolitan Toronto. Currently, I work as a business person in the supply of process and pollution control equipment for mineral processing.

As premier, Mr. Harcourt, one of your greatest responsibilities is to encourage investment to create jobs which, in turn, results in tax revenue both from corporations and working people.

Another equally important responsibility is to establish reasonable but firm guidelines safeguarding the esthetics of pristine surroundings as well as pollution control measures, whether they be for a recreational park or a producing mine.

These guidelines would be incorporated in the overall feasibility cost study and the decision to proceed should really be up to the mining companies, their bankers and their bonding companies. Certainly, if the banks and the bonding companies are not supportive, there will be no mine. If the capital and operating costs associated with these guidelines are prohibitively high, then and only then should a project be abandoned. I believe most mining professionals such as myself became involved in mining initially because of our love of the north, the outdoors and Mother Nature. We probably rank first as naturalists and, in the process, contribute infinitely more than the people with whom you seem to have become associated. As it stands, you and a small group of myopic idealists (including the Duke of Edinburgh and the vice-president of the U.S.) have denied the people of British Columbia what would have been a major contribution to the province’s economy.

George Griffiths

Dagex Process Separation

Willowdale, Ont.