Editorial

Kudos to cleaning crew!

Thirty tones of garbage. And that’s just an estimate of the despicable crud and contaminants that all those hard working and dedicated volunteers cleaned up from the Jack Pines area northeast of Slave Lake on the weekend.
Some of the refuse was too disgusting to talk about…like the five dead dogs that were crammed into a freezer that was topped with a sheet of plywood, then a stove. And worse.
Piles and piles of shingles, loads and loads of concrete, stoves, fridges and freezers — all flung into the trees by someone too cheap to pay what it’d cost, or too lazy to wait, to use the regional landfill at Wagner. Or too mindless to know what they were doing was not just despicably disgusting, but illegal.
Some day we’re going to read that book Stupid White Men, because we believe we have some pointers on what that author missed. And after last weekend’s unearthing of disgusting paraphernalia at the Jack Pines, we could likely write the sequel.
It makes one wonder if the landfill fees are too high. But ask the landfill authority what operating such a facility costs in a single year, you’d quickly realize that it entails more than erecting an electric fence with a scale.
It’s embarrassing to say we likely know some of the people who created that mess at the Jack Pines. And we hope officials for the Municipal District of Lesser Slave River are successful in their search for culprits. (You know, the ones who carelessly toss their garbage-filled bags into the trees, never thinking anyone might sift through it and find all that incriminating mail with their name and address on it.)
Better yet, we hope they can be prosecuted to the gills.
Kudos to the organizers who stepped up to the plate to help clean up the eyesore, and to the many volunteers who gave up the better part of a weekend in response to that cry for help.
And to those who are responsible in any small way for that disgusting mess – shame on you! You are a blight on our community — in more ways than one!
Take it away Premier Ralph
We applaud Premier Ralph Klein for his promise last week to wade into the BSE border- closure fray that’s sure to cost this province millions in terms of lost wages, lost jobs and lost families.
He’ll write letters to his many contact companies who might have the smallest amount of muscle or pull with American politicians, urging each to urge their respective politicians to offer support in opening the border to Canadian – and particularly Albertan – beef.
He also promised to flex his political muscle in getting as many reporters here from Japan as possible. Let them share the word about the dilemma Japanese politicians’ decision to keep their border closed has caused in this small corner of the world.
And Klein was bang on when he suggested Prime Minister Jean Chretien should be smacking his shoe on the table somewhere, demanding a little respect and response.
It’d be an integral reaction if we had a real PM. But as it stands, we have to wonder if Japanese officials would take him any more seriously than Canadians.
Yes, come to think on it, maybe it’s better if our lame duck stays home and looks after all those important things we hear he’s doing in his riding this summer.