PEACE RIVER, Alta. — Dan and Huguette Ropchan stand on the grainy edge of ice-crusted Lac Cardinal in northwest Alberta and worry that in a decade they’ll have to raise their wheat and canola in the shadow of monster nuclear cooling towers. In Peace River, a 15-minute drive down the road, contractors for Bruce Power put the finishing touches on a storefront office.
The walk-in shop, says Bruce Power president Duncan Hawthorne, will give residents the straight goods on the nuclear plant proposal and balance what he calls the misleading data of the intractable “ideological opposition.”
Across town, Brenda Brochu of the Peace River Environmental Society distributes statistics that show going nuclear is the surest way to contaminate soil and food, and raises the odds a child will contract blood cancer.
South of Lac Cardinal, area reeve Veronica Bliska fights to keep control of a council that has flipped, flopped and flipped again on an issue that is spawning grassroots protest groups, sparking feuds on editorial pages and turning longtime friends against each other.
Drive the highway through the Peace Country — halfway between Edmonton and the Northwest Territories — and it’s evident the land here is linked to livelihood. There are farms, logging trucks, pumpjacks, horse trailers.
Full article
The walk-in shop, says Bruce Power president Duncan Hawthorne, will give residents the straight goods on the nuclear plant proposal and balance what he calls the misleading data of the intractable “ideological opposition.”
Across town, Brenda Brochu of the Peace River Environmental Society distributes statistics that show going nuclear is the surest way to contaminate soil and food, and raises the odds a child will contract blood cancer.
South of Lac Cardinal, area reeve Veronica Bliska fights to keep control of a council that has flipped, flopped and flipped again on an issue that is spawning grassroots protest groups, sparking feuds on editorial pages and turning longtime friends against each other.
Drive the highway through the Peace Country — halfway between Edmonton and the Northwest Territories — and it’s evident the land here is linked to livelihood. There are farms, logging trucks, pumpjacks, horse trailers.
Full article