March 22, 2004

To:

Gary Holman, Director, CRD Board

Alan Summers, Manager Solid Waste Division CRD

John Craveiro, Assistant Manager, Solid Waste Division, CRD

cc. The Honourable Murray Coell, Minister of Community, Aboriginal and Women's

Services, and MLA, Saanich North and the Islands

Don Amos, Chair, CRD Board

Wayne Quinn, Director of Local Planning Services, CRD

David Cubberly, Chair, CRD Environmental Committee

From: Elaine Kozak and Marcel Mercier

1880 Fulford-Ganges Road, Salt Spring Island, B.C. V8K 2A5

Re: Issuance of Class One Waste Transfer License

to 124 Lee Road Waste Transfer Operation on Salt Spring Island

___________________________________________________________________________________

On February 10, we and over 20 of our neighbours on Lees Hill, Salt Spring Island, sent you a letter outlining our concerns about the above-referenced proposed waste transfer operation.

We have not received so much as an acknowledgement of receipt of this letter. Following on your dismissal of some of our neighbours as "trouble-makers" in the local paper, we can only conclude that you view us and our very profound concerns about the operation with contempt. This is a peculiar notion of public service.

Your organization has as much, if not more, responsibility to protect the environment that we live and work in as it does to facilitate a business operation. We are very afraid of what this dirty, smelly, noisy operation that sits at the top of our watershed and handles materials containing toxins and pathogens will do to our natural environment, our means of earning a living, and our health. You have done nothing to demonstrate that, against all indications otherwise, this is an appropriate site for such an operation and that these threats do not exist or will be satisfactorily and permanently contained.

Walkerton was, one would have thought, an abject lesson in the responsibilities that public agencies charged with protecting drinking water have to their constituents. Please do your duty to us.