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Lettres - Letters
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12 décembre / December 12
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City unveils new waste disposal plan:
brown bins, big blue bins
Julie Murray
Beginning May 1, citizens will no longer have to sort their recycling material and the city will deliver, upon request, waist-high 360-litre bins on wheels, free of charge, though the city will continue to accept smaller bins and blue bags. Recyclable material will be collected every two weeks. These were part of the city’s waste management plan announced, December 6.
Kitchen wastes in brown bin
In 2009, the city will begin a selective collection of kitchen wastes in certain neighbourhoods, with the collection spreading to the entire city by late 2011. Along with table scraps, peels, egg shells, pet food and coffee filters will be collected, and residents will be provided a 45-litre brown bin free, which should be sufficient for most households, though people can request a second.
During the winter, two-compartment trucks will collect garbage and household waste, alternating with recyclable material and household waste. The practice reduces the cost of collection because two types of waste are collected at the same time, resulting in less truck traffic, greenhouse gas emissions, and lower fuel costs. In the spring, summer and fall, trucks will collect green residue, such as grass clippings, every week. Green matter will be delivered to a site on Pink Road.
Green wastes
The Pink Road site will be an open-air composting site. The idea of a closed site was rejected by council last April 17; only Councillors Frank Thérien, Alain Pilon, Louise Poirier, Luc Angers and Yvon Boucher voted in favour of a closed Pink Road site. City administrator Roland Morin told Le Bulletin that the private Cook Road green waste composting site, Les Fabricants d’Humous, will remain open.
By 2011, a trans-shipment, sorting, and composting facility will be constructed at the Aeroparc industrial park, located near Highway 50 and Airport Boulevard in the Gatineau sector. This will be a closed facility and will require a gradual increase in taxes from $111 per household to $189. Once it is built, the city will stop sending its recyclable material to the Cascades facility in Chelsea.
According to Councillor Alain Riel, a member of the Environment Committee, the city must pay $11 million annually to have 100,000 tonnes of material taken to the dump, but 40% of this garbage can be composted. “Composting can save nearly half of our garbage costs. It reduces transportation, cutting down on greenhouse gases and road damage.” Noting that between 1994 and 2004, the amount of garbage going into Quebec dumps has risen by 62%, he told Le Bulletin, “Environment is not talk. We need to step up to the plate and make responsible choices. Composting is socially, economically, and politically sound.”
Long-range plans
Along with other West Quebec municipalities, the city will study a regional solution for end-of-the-line garbage, which is waste that can neither be recycled nor composted. “Technologies such as plasma gasification are evolving very rapidly,” says Mr Morin. “We want to find the most environmentally responsible way to dispose of this material.” He believes it will take seven to ten years for a regional solution to be put into place, so that the city must continue to dump until 2015 or 2018 at the latest. As an example, Mr Riel points to Sweden, which “has the same population, the same education level, and the same climate as we do. They have twelve incinerators. They don’t have the space we do, so they need to deal with their garbage.”
The city expects a participation rate of around 70% to 80%, according to engineer Francoise Forcier, whose firm, Solinov, studied the choices for waste disposal. To ensure maximum participation in the new program, the city will launch a communication blitx over the next three years to help residents recycle and compost. This includes information sessions for journalists, a phone line dedicated to questions, an awareness campaign during Gatineau Week and Garbage Reduction Week, information booths at shopping centres, and composting workshops. “We need citizens to participate,” says Mr Morin. “We can’t reach our goals without the help of the people.” If all goes as planned, the city will be able to reduce its waste by 65%. The province has demanded a 60% cut in garbage to dumps.
If Toronto serves as an example, the program should be popular. Over 90% of households participate in the program to compost kitchen waste and organic material. “Over 1,300,000 homes are served,” says Ms Forcier. “Toronto officials did not expect such a high rate of participation.”
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Manque de civisme??
Très intéressante, la lettre que j’ai lue dans le dernier numéro du Bulletin d’Aylmer, et qu’avait envoyée un Monsieur Allan Tremblay. Ce Monsieur avoue qu’il est résident depuis peu (décembre 2000), et n’habite peut-être même pas à Aylmer (tout dépendant du côté du boulevard Taché où il se trouve). Il n’a visiblement pas compris qu’Aylmer est bien plus qu’un « secteur » (ou toute autre hallucination bureaucratique du genre).
Aylmer a toujours été et demeure encore une collectivité bien définie, avec ses chicanes de famille, mais aussi avec sa richesse culturelle, son sens du patrimoine et sa solidarité à toute épreuve, une collectivité qui s’admini strait fort bien, merci, avant de se faire déposséder, par un coup de force bureaucratique et en dépit de la volonté de la population, des moyens démocratiques d’assurer elle-même son développement comme elle l’entend. Pas étonnant que l’immense majorité des Aylmerois et des Aylmeroises continuent de s’identifier d’abord et avant tout à Aylmer, et n’aient aucune espèce de sentiment d’appartenance à cette pseudo-ville complètement artificielle appelée « Gatineau ».
Et quand on considère tous les scénarios d’horreur qu’on avait vu venir en 2001, et qui sont présentement en train de se concrétiser ( sous-représentation chronique, déboisement sauvage, développement immobilier anarchique, infrastructure routière déficiente, transport en commun digne du Tiers-Monde hors des heures de pointe, perte de pression d’eau, rouille dans l’eau, perte d’installations de loisir, etc. ), Monsieur Tremblay ne saurait en vouloir à la po pulation aylmeroise de ne pas partager son engouement pour cette grosse machine bureaucratique inefficace, et d’espérer voir le jour où Aylmer retrouvera les outils démocratiques qui lui ont été enlevés de force.
C’est à Aylmer que se trouvent le courage et la fierté de ceux et celles qui sont aylmerois depuis toujours, ou qui le sont devenus par choix. Et ça, c’est du véritable civisme.
Michel Parent
Aylmer
Pour un pont près de Quyon
Le Comité du pont de Pontiac continue à recevoir l’appui pour un pont à côté de Quyon. Jusqu’à maintenant, plus de 3 000 personnes de l’ouest du Québec (Pontiac, Gatineau, etc.), la région d’Ottawa (Nepean, Barhaven, Kanata, etc.), l’ouest de Carleton (Constance Bay, Fitzroy Harbour, Dunrobin, Carp, etc.), et la vallée de l’Outaouais (Arnprior, Renfrew, Cobden, Pembroke, etc.) ont signé <> en ligne et sur papier.
De plus, 11 municipalités dans la région du Pontiac et de l’Outaouais ont envoyé au Comité du pont de Pontiac des lettres d’appui pour un pont près de Quyon. Entre autres, Alleyn et Cawood, Bristol, Bryson, Campbell’s Bay, Cantley, Clarendon, L’Ange-Gardien, La Pêche, Portage-du-Fort, Shawville et Thorne ont exprimé leur appui. Également, plus de 10 entrepri ses au Pontiac ont envoyé au Comité du pont des lettres d’appui.
Le Comité croit, tout comme d’autres, qu’un pont près de Quyon du côté de l’Ontario aiderait à (a) stimuler le développement économique au Pontiac et (b) soulager la circulation routière au Pontiac en utilisant le pont Champlain et les ponts Chaudière et Portage Hull.
Pour de plus amples renseignements veuillez consulter l’adresse suivante http://www.ottawavalleybridge.ca
Si vous aimeriez appuyer l’initiative du pont, veuillez signer notre <> sur le site web.
Bob Dawson Président, le Comité
du pont de Pontiac
Quyon
Allaiter est bien, mais ne préviendrait pas l’obésité après tout
L’allaitement est très bien pour la santé du bébé, mais contrairement à certaines études publiées auparavant, cela ne préviendrait pas l’obésité chez les enfants.
Ces résultats proviennent de l’essai PROBIT, financé par les Instituts de recherche en santé du Canada (IRSC) et le plus grand essai clinique randomisé dans le domaine de l’allaitement. L’équipe internationale a étudié plus de 13 000 enfants du Belarus de la naissance jusqu’à 6.5 ans. L’article est publié dans l’édition de décembre du journal The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. L’auteur principal de cette étude est le Dr Michael Kramer, Directeur scientifique aux Instituts de recherche en santé du Canada. L’article est disponible sur demande.
David Coulombe
Gatineau
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STO didn’t win this driver over
My car was in for repairs and so I decided to try out the bus to Ottawa. I caught the #52 to Rivermead at around 9:40 a.m. I had plans to meet my daughter at St. Laurent Shopping mall at 11 a.m. I asked the bus driver if the #59 to Ottawa would be waiting at Rivermead when our bus and the other route, #51, would get to Rivermead. He assured me it would be there. Well, it wasn’t. There was a 15 minute wait in the open. The glass shelter was full so most stood in the open in the strong wind. Rechecking the STO schedule, indeed the #59 should have been there. It did not pull in until 10:20.
Once on our way the bus stopped at most points along Taché and through the usual grind of traffic around Place du Portage. At last, we pull into the Rideau Centre at 10:50. Luckily, Ottawa has fast transit and the #95 pulled into the St. Laurent mall at 11:10.
The ride back home was no better. The #59 pulled into Rivermead and, again, no connecting bus. The driver informed us his route changes into the #53, so we stayed on. It’s just a ten minute ride to Galeries Aylmer, right? Well, this particular route travelled through Deschênes and on through Wychwood to the mall.
I was exhausted with cold feet from the slush and so grateful this whole bus experience was over. That was 3 hours of travel time which otherwise would have been 25 minutes by car.
Come January, 2008, there will be fare hikes. Is it worth it? How about routes over the Champlain Bridge or a bus lane down Lucerne and onto the bridge? I’ve taken that bridge for years and the bus lane is rarely used by STO, but remains vacant while traffic is squeezed and congested into one lane.
There has to be a better way to get from point A to B. Until STO comes up with better planning to accomodate Aylmer’s fast-growing population, I am not prepared to go through another day with the current system.
A transportation system that entails three hours of travel time is not user-friendly and will not encourage patrons to leave their cars at home.
P. Mitchell
Aylmer
The best place for a bridge over the Ottawa River
I would like to thank Steve Taylor at Roche NCC for accepting my proposed corridor for the study. The opposition to bridge corridors in the Andy Haydon Park is understandable, as is opposition to the Kettle Island crossing. No opposition has been voiced to a crossing which makes the most sense, the Pink Road to Riddell Drive corridor.
Imagine a six-lane, high-speed highway running east to west from the Pink/St.Raymond junction all the way across the new bridge, joining up with the 416 at Hunt Club West.
I have been proposing this corridor for two years and hope the study will show this is the best option. I cannot agree with Brigil developers that a ferry crossing will do any good; it would take an hour to cross the river by boat west of town. The corridor from Pink Road to Riddell would accommodate transport of merchandise, commuters, and tourists, as well as bus lanes and/or high speed rail links.
Bridge design should be a suspension structure so as not to disturb boaters using the Ottawa River and it could be a potentially beautiful structure drawing tourist dollars. A fully automated tolling structure could pay for these investments without slowing down the flow of traffic.
I hope our elected officials jump on board this corridor and give it full support. Let’s get all levels of government involved and make this bridge and corridor a crown jewel of our region.
Lee Bourdon
Aylmer
The Conservatives’ budget statement
These tax cuts are not the priority. And average families will see very little of it, compared to the big banks and oil industries.
We have a surplus of 14 billion dollars. Instead of tax cuts, we could have put :
• 5 billion in infrastructure and transportation ;
• 2 billion in education ;
• one billion on childcare ;
• one billion on homecare for seniors;
• one billion in Pharmacare ;
• and still have 4 billion for other things : helping the manufacturing sector, international aid, the environment, etc.
These numbers are simply given as an example. But it shows what you can do when you to decide to prioritize investing in communities and people instead of simply gutting the ability of the federal government to act for the common good.
Pierre Ducasse, NDP
Hull-Aylmer
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