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LETTERS: Two sides of train relocation

Editor: Re: Rail route, Oct. 28 letters.

Editor:

Re: Rail route, Oct. 28 letters.

People in the Communities of White Rock and South Surrey carry a “big stick” when it comes to rail safety and relocation.

While it’s true that the Transportation Authority has no legal authority to order a railway to move its operations, there can be new legislation to regulate what is allowed to be transported via rail.

Our local MPs, along with Premier Christy Clark can, on our behalf, push the need to regulate shipment of highly dangerous, toxic goods travelling in densely populated locations and environmentally sensitive areas. The federal government can create regulations to specify what can safely be transported in our beautiful beach front and popular tourist destination.

BNSF would likely welcome the relocation of the trains if such legislation controlled their movement of goods on the waterfront.

Unfortunately it all comes down to money, and that’s why it’s up to each voting citizen to contact their MPs and push for new legislation for our safety and environment.

These rails were not built for today’s long, heavy trains that carry highly dangerous goods. Most have no idea what is being moved on the rails every day, but to say it’s a disaster in the making is an understatement.

The cost, both human and environment, is not worth the risk so let’s be proactive and speak up for what we value as priceless!

C. Kendrick, White Rock

• • •

Reading the Oct. 28 edition of the Peace Arch News has caused me to do something I have never done before – write a letter to the editor.

That edition contained not just one but two fabulous letters, one by James Milne of White Rock and the other by Stephen Morris of Surrey.

I will cut them out and frame them! How refreshing it is to read well-researched letters speaking common sense.

I never miss reading the letters-to-the-editor section of the paper, but I do so generally for tragically comic relief. Mostly, they serve to prove how small and uninformed minds have been so easily distracted by the two municipalities’ narrow-minded, self-serving and shortsighted politicians.

Both city councils blether on about pie-in-the-sky ideas rather than focusing on issues of real substance. Meanwhile these bodies, which are supposed to have the interests of the citizens who elected them at the forefront, treat issues like official community plans as if they were inconvenient obstacles on the road to what the politicians consider progress.

Citizens are further insulted by the fact this action usually takes place in meetings that are closed to public scrutiny.

Please re-run these letters every couple of months – they are real gems. Well done both gentlemen!

Bill Holmes, White Rock