[All] Environmental Election Forum Question on Water

[Gregory C. Michalenko]

Dear Alicia,

I believe that all parties are now opposed to the quarry.  If so, maybe it would be better to ask another question .  Check with the progressive conservative party first however, in case I am mistaken, but my cousin, who works for the party and has been training Mr. Hudak for the leaders' debate (by pretending to be Dalton McGuinty in mock practice debates), said they are opposing the quarry.

My general position on questions for events like this is not to use up the time with questions where everybody agrees or where you will only get a bunch of rhetorical or parenthood answers. There may be other pressing water issues that could work better for Waterloo Region.  John J and Susan B have both been engaged with water questions - sound them out.

- Greg Michalenko
________________________________
From: all-bounces at gren.ca [all-bounces at gren.ca] on behalf of Alisa McClurg [alisa.mcclurg at sympatico.ca]
Sent: Tuesday, September 20, 2011 11:17 AM
To: all at gren.ca
Subject: [All] Environmental Election Forum Question on Water

Hello,

A number of environmental/conservation groups are working to organize an environmental election forum for next Thursday, Sept 29 (7-9 pm). We are seeking to identify questions from a variety of topics (energy, food, transportation etc.). One of the topics is water.

To identify a question on this topic, I approached Louisette Lanteigne and a couple other groups (BYOB  - Bring Your Own Bottle, SWIGS - Students of the Water Institute, Graduate Section). Unbeknownst to me, however, the organizing committee would like to identify the groups who have posed these questions.

So...the question I have for GREN is, what are your thoughts on having the below question being identified as a question relating to water from GREN?

There is a proposal to build the largest limestone quarry in all of Canada in Melancthon Township north of Shelburne.  The quarry would be over five kilometres wide and deeper than Niagara Falls.  It would lie in the midst of a highly sensitive water recharge area that serves over 1 million Ontario residents, including those of us living in the Grand River Watershed. There are serious concerns over water safety, as the area contains karsts, underground caves and rivers, which make it very difficult to predict the impact of quarry operations on the watersheds.

If elected, what will your party do about the Melanchton mega-quarry?

Ideally, if the answer could be provided by today, that would be helpful. We would like to distribute the questions to the political candidates shortly.

Note: The other groups organizing the event include: Architectural Conservancy of Ontario, Community Renewal Energy Waterloo, Greening Sacred Spaces Kitchener-Waterloo, Local Initiative for Future Energy (LIFE), rare, TriTAG, TransitionKW, and WPIRG. The event will be held at Rockway Mennonite Church sanctuary (in the rear of the Zion United Church building at 32 Weber St. W., Kitchener - http://mapq.st/o4u8j5).

Cheers,

Alisa McClurg

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://gren.ca/pipermail/all_gren.ca/attachments/20110920/2c82ce2d/attachment.html>