As a year-round cyclist that does a lot of miles per week in the area, I am far more concerned with the diesel exhaust that poofs in my hip as I ride our roads, but I accept it anyway and it is a brief encounter at that.
When I smell outside smoke from a fire, I am comforted knowing that it was done in-situ instead of yet another truck load of debris taken to a recycling station which then has to either grind it using diesel generated power units, or to burn it which also utilizes machinery to move it around.
Your editorial comment is packed full of fear that your child could be the next victim of a respiratory disease. If it were a free-standing, natural forest, our area would be subjected to forest fires on a regular basis but we have taken this component out of the natural carbon cycle that the earth otherwise goes through.
It appears that the editorial department of the Citizen is in fact trying to set the tone and opinion of where the direction should go when it comes to burning refuse. The main argument is based on vague statistics without mentioning the influx of people that have moved here from other areas of an urban upbringing, and the fact that we need to get with the times. So to say that this isn’t a question of trying to impose an urban value on a rural area, I would disagree with this. David Lowther’s letter addressing the refugees who crowd across the straits in their tens of thousands, is something I would take a look at.
Gord Hutchings
Cobble Hill