The City of New Westminster needs to protect our dwindling green spaces and vanishing wildlife before it is too late.

Currently the city has no bylaws to protect green spaces or trees or wildlife. It is the only city in the Lower Mainland to completely ignore these important issues. Trees and wildlife greatly enrich the urban ecosystem, reduce global warming, provide cool spaces in the summer heat, and boost local property values.

Many beautiful mature trees have been hacked down by city staff to make way for concrete, to get rid of shelter for homeless people, and to destroy wildlife homes. This, despite frequent protests of local residents who object to the destruction of their local green spaces and trees, and the displacement of resident wildlife and people with no where else to go.

Birds, squirrels, raccoons, coyotes, and homeless people are residents of this city too, and should not have their homes destroyed.

A city without a generous helping of Mother Nature is a city without a heart and soul. New Westminster can be run efficiently while taking into consideration the needs of the downtrodden and those who cannot speak for themselves. There is no need to abandon compassion and respect for others to expediency.

Here’s hoping New West council will take to heart the recommendations of the environment committee on these important matters, fundamental to the actual, social, and spiritual survival of us all.

Roslyn Cassells

former Vancouver park commissioner

Glad to see it go

We have a duty to be responsible stewards of the environment. So when it comes to new energy sources we have to look to sustainable practices and technologies. That’s why anyone familiar with Burrard Thermal near Port Moody will be glad to see it gone.

The world was a very different place when Burrard Thermal was built 47 odd years ago. Climate change and global warming were not even on most people’s radar, and the effects of climate change were not yet observable on a daily basis as they are today.

There were also a lot fewer people living in the Fraser Valley and Lower Mainland when Burrard Thermal was built. In fact, when it was built, Burrard Thermal was not even located near the Lower Mainland’s main centres of urban population. Back then, Port Moody’s population was about 5,000 people. Maple Ridge had fewer than 17,000 people. And Chilliwack had a little over 8,000 people.

Today, Port Moody has over 30,000 people with Maple Ridge and Chilliwack at around 75,000 each. And more than 133,000 live in Abbotsford. Burrard Thermal now sits in the middle of a very dense and rapidly growing urban population.

In total, there are over 2.5 million people in the Lower Mainland and Fraser Valley and the region is quickly closing in on three million. That’s more than half of the province’s entire population living in a relatively geographically confined area with a confined air shed unlike any other in the province.

Thankfully, Burrard Thermal has rarely been used in recent years due to the harmful emissions it generates and the high, and often unpredictable, price of natural gas. But that’s no reason to start cranking it up now to make up for lost time, especially when there are plenty of sustainable, responsible green energy sources we can access that do not add to poor air quality and environmental degradation.

I will be very glad to see Burrard Thermal gone and so will many others. Burrard Thermal looks backward to the unsustainable past not forward to the future. Thank you to the provincial government for the decisive action they’ve taken to make sure it gets shut down forever.

Mike Taylor

Coquitlam