Tuesday, July 10, 2012

Mondays early light rain, fog cleared off to just cloudy and temperatures up to 19. Planes got in with a flurry, mostly people leaving town.

Today we are back to light rain, fog and time will tell if and when it clears.

It has been two weeks now since we have seen any sun of consequence. Brief burst of blue through holes in the clouds don't count.

There are several subjects I would love to comment on but cant get things straightened away on one subject when another one pops up. Having trouble prioritizing and organizing my thoughts. Nothing new there says some.

 Later:

One thing I will never understand is the constant urge to bugger up the planet in the never ending quest to make a dollar.

This on going effort to take a couple hundred thousand tones of sand from a remote beach in Northern Labrador is just abhorrent to me. And all for some abrasive and cutting material, how sick is that.

The president of Freeport Resources was on CBC the other day. She is a polished and accomplished bull shiter I will give her that.
But she failed to give a straight answer when asked how many local jobs there would be this year. What leader of a company does not know these things.
Plus the assertion that the locals just love going up that way is paternalistic at best.

And no one mentioned the barge that sank off the beach during another attempt to take samples some years back.


So many unanswered questions and no one asking those questions.

For one there is the overseer of the environment if the plan to extract goes ahead. With the area so remote who will watch over this, and who will watch the watchers. Why the ecology cant be protected here in Nain so how the hell will that work way up there.




If you enlarge the image you can see how remote the intended extraction is, its about 380 K from Nain which is just right of Kingurutik on the bottom right.

20,000 tomes a year leaves a mighty big hole. A 20 year extraction on just one beach leaves a much bigger hole. How will that be left in a pristine state when there is no overburden.

Why not leave it in its pristine state now, let the polar bears romp and roam without being hassled by bear bangers and guns.

There is both light and a black hole at the end of the tunnel looking at the Report of the commissioner for the Labrador Inuit Settlement area regional Land use plan.

The commissioner recommends changing areas like the beaches to ‘discretionary use’ from totally protected.
Others recommend that this area as well as caribou calving areas be left as is, without mineral exploration or mineral development.

One thing that is essential is for the Nunatsiavut Government be more pro active in giving people information both pro and con on these potential developments. To date this has not happened with NG just relying on proponents of projects to hold information sessions and open houses.

The above is a bit hodge podge but my mind is foggy at moment, just like outside, its after noon and no sign of fog and drizzle letting up yet.

6 comments:

Shammickite said...

You haven't been using much sunscreen in the past couple of weeks then! It was 35C here a couple of days ago. Far too hot. Nice today, had rain overnight, now it's sunny with a light breeze.

Jon Feldgajer said...

The Garnet mining story also caught me by surprise. The final draft of the LISA plan zones the beaches as "no mining". While NEC endorsed the plan last week, it hasn't been fully adopted until the Assembly agrees in September, so i guess the company technically can still explore this summer. Wonder why though, when the writing is on the wall. Something to ask you local gov't representative i suppose...

:)

Brian said...

Puzzle for sure.
Junior exploration companies use language to “encourage’ investment in their stock, Freeports web site is full of it.

In days past I followed many of the companies operating in the area, plus there are penny stock chat groups to follow.
I no longer have the stomach for that.

Freeport may just be hoping that successful results will lead to a permit to mine. Or they are just taking advantage of something that few know about and the rest of us don’t.

Mechtild Opel said...

Too bad that this "Iron Beach" is not part of Torngat National Park! It should be protected, too!

Old Brooktrout said...

Freeport has been trying to get at that Beach since the late 1990s! I just witnessed another project in the tarsands o' Alberta taking place after a land use plan was revised to allow for resource extraction. It's a slippery slope, and we all know what greases it.

Brian said...

The beach was inside the original park boundary area. Many revisions later the final draft area the beach is outside the park as well as the southern boundary being drawn back to accommodate lobbyist interests.