Ian Gartshore

My fellow community members: Fred Pattje You may not be aware that Nanaimo’s city councillors and mayor have taken a huge pounding over their decision to disallow a leadership conference in May. While they regret their decision, and apologised for it at last evening’s special council meeting (July 3/14), they are still getting pounded. I consider that campaign to be psychological warfare. The councillor who moved the motion to prevent the event, and who yesterday bravely moved the motion to rescind that decision, is councillor Fred Pattje. He has been the one who has taken the greatest hit from these phone calls and e-mail’s. This has been a dark time for him. Quite apart from the rightness or wrongness of his original motion -it is how he has been treated, mostly by people living outside of our city, that has gone far beyond disrespectful. One writer wished him to die of AIDS. I appeal to you to do one simple, yet humane thing : write him a one or two sentence ...

The City of Nanaimo has just released its proposed Transportation Master Plan . This plan is designed to take us 25 years into the future. Very tragically the proposed Plan does little to take us away from the very expensive existing car-centric city we currently pay for. In this 13 page document I outline how it could be vastly improved so as to save us money and improve the city's sustainability, leading us to better health, lower costs, and far more. It requires us to work together, adjust to significant (positive!) changes. It means making it possible to cycle safely, use buses that are frequent and fast, invest in infrastructure and in carsharing, and more. To view the slides and text to my 5 minute presentation to City Council May 26, 2014, click here. To see the Council meeting and the 10 presentations about the Transportation Plan, including mine (second one on the list) you can view it here . The presentations start at about 15 minutes. The picture above could ...

Pictured: Ian with a piece of Styrofoam; Photo credit: Terry Lee Wagar RDN presentation March 25, 2014   25 years ago the NRE led all of us into becoming one of the most progressive communities in Canada. They inspired us to do more. As you know the letters, petitions and phone calls to you Directors indicate the importance of this community leader. Unfortunately the previous staff report on the value of the NRE failed to capture its true value.    1)    As is the practise in solid waste management, the weight of the materials the NRE diverts from the landfill was reported to be very small. (Show Styrofoam). This material represents up to 20% of the volume of landfills, yet weighs way less than 1% of the total material. If the NRE did not collect Styrofoam our landfill would fill up much more quickly. This is but one example of the visionary leadership of the NRE that we fail to appreciate.    2)    The NRE is an inspir...

Background: pressure is being applied to the Regional District of Nanaimo to allow a proposed Waste to Energy (WTE) incinerator to be built near Nanaimo in order to burn garbage from the lower mainland. So far they've turned this down, and likely could use some support from us. This is my letter of support. To: corpsrv@rdn.bc.ca cc'd to  Michelle Stilwell MLA ; Len Krog MLA ; Doug Routley MLA Dear Directors of the Regional District of Nanaimo, I would like to applaud your decision in 2013 to oppose the building of an WTE (Waste to Energy) incinerator facility in our area to burn Metro Vancouver's garbage.  Given the lack of industry in our area, and the resulting lack of tax revenues to Nanaimo from the Duke Point industrial area, I can appreciate that this may be a difficult one for the city councillors in particular. I believe there is a better way. I have just learned that Nanaimo has been chosen to be the site of the next annual conference ...

Should Nanaimo be the site to burn garbage from the lower mainland? As I see it: Pro: As an energy advisor I know that the more local source of electricity we generate the more stable the electrical grid becomes.  The proposed plant would yield little actual power output; not much more than the potential of power being generated from our drinking water supply (gravity-fed from the mountains). But every bit of power counts. It is FAR better to burn garbage than it is to landfill it in terms of greenhouse gas emissions. Why? Rotting compostable materials in the absence of oxygen (typical in dumps) create enormous amounts of methane gas, thousands of times more powerful in changing climate than is the carbon dioxide created when incinerating the same material. Local construction and maintenance jobs would be created. Local garbage could be incinerated. The waste heat could be used by another facility (which would then be responsible for the emissions, giving t...