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THE DECISION to build

a controversial emergency

helicopter landing site on Grand Boulevard is still up in the
air after North Vancouver City Council deferred a recent
motwion to prepare a rezoning bylaw for the site until a full
complement of aldermen is present for the vote.

With Ald. John Braithwaite
unable to attend the resumption
of an Aug. 27 council meeting on
Aug. 28, and with Ald. Frank
Morris and Ald. Rod Clark
dismissing therselves from the
discussion after citing possible
conflicts of interest, council was
left split 2-2 on the issue.

Both Morris and Clark sit on
the Lions Gate Hospital board,
and Clark is the chairman of the
North Shore Union Board of
Health.

Council has been wrestling with
the issue of building a formal
landing site on Grand Boulevard
since 1987.

According to city administrator
Gerry Brewer, the B.C. Am-
bulance Service now refuses to use
the site because it has no lighted
landing pad.

But he said that in a life or
death situation pilots can_ still
legally land on the Grand Boule-
vard strip in order to evacuate pa-
tients to LGH.

If approved, the $40,000 tem-
porary pad would be used until
LGH_ builds an on-site landing
pad within the next three years as

By Elizabeth Collings

and Pamela Lang
News Reporters

part of the hospital's master plan,
which is subject to council ap-
proving changes in the city’s of-
ficial community plan.

But Uli Haag, LGH vice-presi-
dent of human resources, said the
hospital board plans to pursue an
on-site landing pad regardless of
the master plan's fate.

temporary

Sunday. September 9, 1990 - North Shore News -

Helicopter pad decision delayed

LGH wants $40,000

helicopter

site on Grand Blvd.

landing pad.

“In one case we know of, that
was detrimental to the care of the
patients. That delay may have ag-
gravated that brain injury.’ Fris
said of an accident victim who was
flown from Blackcomb during the
£989 Sea Festival.

See News Viewpoint: Page 6

Meanwhile, doctors at
continue to be frustrated with
council’s delierations.

In the past, LGH has been the
designated receiving hospital for
trauma victims from the North
Shore-Howe Sound-Squamish
area.

But Dr. Robert Fris said that
since the B.C. Ambulance Service
placed its embargo on landing on
Grend Boulevard, helicopters have
been forced to bypass LGH and
travel to Vancouver, usually land-
ing at the Kitsilano Coast Guard

GVRD regional

recycling
stirs up

plan

controversy

THE GREATER Vancouver Regional District (GVRD) was

given an unequivocal

“*thumbs-down’’

reaction to a

multi-material regional recycling recommendation by par-
ticipants in a recent public forum organized by the Recycl-
ing Couxcii of British Columbia.

GVRD staff have recommended
that the contract for the process-
ing and mayketing of recyclables
from membur municipalities be
granted to Waste Management
Inc. (WMI), a multi-national
company that was one of seven
groups who sutmitted a contract
proposal.

Speakers from focal recycling
industries joined in criticizing the
recommendation, saying it lacked
the input of the GVRD Recycling
Advisory Committee, the Recycl-
ing Council of B.C., local recycl-
ing industries and the public at
large.

“To date the GVRD has largely
ignored the concerns of communi-
ty stakeholders,” charged Tony
Boydell, speaking on behalf of
members of the local recycling in-
dustry. *‘This current process will
exclude them entirely in the long
run.’*

The MacLaren Report on
recycling, commissioned by the
GVRD in 1989, recommended that
the regional district ‘‘identify the
capacity of existing facilities in
order to determine the need for
additional facilities,"" but ‘‘a
comprehensive assessment of ex-
isting capacity has not been un-
dertaken,’’ Boydell said.

Both non-profit and local for-
profit. recycling groups are con-
cerned that the awarding of a
regional processing and marketing
contract to WMI would result in
the loss of their livelihood,

Renie D'Aquila of the [f-year-
old non-profit Delta Recycling
Society said the GVRD can “build
on (the segiet’s) Pi-vear tradition
or eradicate it with a wave of its
magic watnd.”

By Peggy Trendell-Whittaker
News Reporter

Local citizen Nancy Cox summ-
ed up the feelings expressed by the
speakers when she said ‘‘the pio-
neers of recycling in this province
are feeling excluded and threat-
ened.”

Responded GVRD
coordinator Toivo Allas:

recycling
“The

GVRD is indeed interested in the

WEST VAN Mayor Don Lan-
skail... ‘‘personally disap-
pointed the (local companies’)
bids were not more effective.”

welfare of the stakeholders....We
feel this is a monumental task chat
will take the efforts of each of us.
If we all pull together we can get
the job done, We will get it dene
satisfactorily and with no one go-
ing out of business.”

West Vancouver

Mayor Don

LGH'

Because St. Paul's and Van-
couver General Hospital were fill-
ed to capacity, the patient had to
be taken by ambulance to LGH.

Fris said the hour-long am-
bulance trip took longer than the
flight from Blackcomb because
heavy traffic forced the am-
bulance to take the Second Nar-
rows Bridge.

“It doesn’t make sense to
bypass a hospital that can handle
(a patient) and proceed to a hos-
pital that's further away,"’ said
Fris.

Formerly the chairman ot
LGH'’s trauma commiuce,  Fris
said he resigned from the position
in frustration.

Since the ban on landing on
Grand Boulevard, Fris said the

number of trauma patients at
LGH has been dramatically
reduced.

“T think it's a matter of time
until we lose someone,’’ he said.

At the Aug. 28 council! meeting,
Ald. Stella Jo Dean moved that
council receive and file a report
dealing with the landing pad
despite staff recommendations
that a rezoning bylaw be drafted
to allow construction of the tem-
porary Grand Boulevard facility.

“I’m against rezoning a park
for any other use,’’ said Dean,
adding that she was against the
pad primarily because the area
residents are opposed to the noise
of helicopter landings, but also
because of the pad’s expense.

Ald. Barbara Sharp supported

Dean, and said that while she was
not apposed to the current
emergency use of the site, she is
against its non-emergency use.

Sharp also doubted that the site
would be dismantled after a pad
had been put in at the hospital.

“1 don't believe that after we've
spent the money, that it's (the
pad) going to come out in three
years,"’ Sharp said.

But Ald. Bill Bell said later that
council members opposed to the
pad were bowing to the pressure
from residents.

“Certain council members are
vetting edgy because it’s ap-
proaching election time,”’ he said,
adding that it was high time
council made a decision on the
longstanding issue.

And until LGH gets a perma-
nent emergency pad, helicopters
will continue to land in a way that
is not safe, he said.

““What we need in the interim
until LGH has a permanent heli-
pad is a place that’s safe.’’ Beil
said.

Bell added that future councils
would be faced with the same po-
litical question because helicopters
flying into LGH would also have
to come in over residential areas.

Braithwaite said he could not

comment on the issue until it was
before council again on Sept. 10.

NEWS photo Terry F. eters.

THREE LITTLE pigs sniff out visitors at the Maplewood Farm in North Vancouver. The pigs tive
together in a sturdy stall at the popuiar farm where there is no big bad wolf.

Lanskail, chairman of the GVRD
sub-committee on recycling, told
the News that he was ‘‘personally
disappointed the (local com-
panies’) bids were not more effec-
tive,”’ and said that the WMI
proposal! was most cost-effective.

But he said he doesn’t believe
that the fears of the local recycl-
ing companies and non-profit
agencies are justified: “Our in-
stinctive feeling is that there's go-
ing to be enough work for
everybody.”’

Speakers at the Aug. 30 forum
also raised concerns about WMI's
co-mingling system, in which
recyclables are not sorted at the
curbside but in a processing plant,
and about 2 number of WMI
criminal convictions for bribery
and price-fixing in the United
States.

Allas said that once the GVRD
makes a final decision, member
municipalities do have the option
of choosing nol to participate in
the regional plan, but he added
that each municipality. must be
responsible for achieving a 50 per
cent waste diversion by the sear
2000.

AL Lynch. coordinater of the
North Shore Reeveling Program.
said the North Shore's five-year
recycling contract with) fate

tional Paper Industries, who also
submitted a proposal to the
GVRD in conjunction with
Wastech and Laidlaw, includes an
escape clause that would allow the
North Shore to participate in a
regional GVRD program.

He said a regional approach is
“‘theoretically, a great idea,
because if you have one organiza-
tion that’s handling all the
member communities, then you
theoretically reduce your costs.""

But he said that source separa-
tion rather than co-mingling of
recyclables is ‘‘the way to go.”
because it leads to a much lower
contamination rate and heightens
the environmental awareness of
individuals.

But Don Kueass of WMI said
that residents would not be ¢o-
mingling any more than they are
with current. blue-box | systems,
and insists that the factory, rather
than curbside, separation of goods
is a cost-effective strategy.

He abo said at was unfair that
his company was being faulted for
its environmental infractions,
when such oilractions had in-
variably been detected by WATT's
4 BT cariy-warieny SS Stems,
reported to the praper quthoriges
and subsequently remedied hy
WALL.

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