How easy it is to support an ecological and environmental disaster, with a lack of information and for a promise of wood and cement.
When I was born in 1951 in France, ecology and environment did not exist in anyone's consciousness, I spent 13 years in school without ever hearing these words.
The Environment was “la campagne”, where we had a picnic on a Sunday drive, or the campground that we drove to in Southern France for the long summer holiday camping trip .
I became educated in my later years, along with society, as we slowly and painfully emerge into a true awareness of our impact on the world around us, and we try to take responsibility for the near irreversible damage that we caused.

There are some among us, for whom the words ecology, environment, foot print, are elements in a socialist plot, that aim to control the rights and opportunities of the deserving ones, and to stop them from taking whatever they can, from the world around them, and do with it whatever they want.
The relentless, insatiable exploitative greed , unable to find an intrinsic value in the beauty and life giving presence of Nature.
Island United settled on Cortes for the same reason most of us do, a civilized remoteness with 2 ferries, a low regulation environment, minimal rules, a respectful resilient and independent population that apparently minds its own business and hopes for the same in new-comers.
Here is the difference, all the people that I have met in the 15 years that I have lived here, are conscious of their foot prints and do try to maintain some balance with what is given and what is taken.
They try to be a reasonable example of what they expect from their neighbors. Naturally there are always a the few small scale exceptions.

How can I be confident that Island United will abide by their application when no principal of the business has even bothered to read the text of their application.
Let us even imagine for a moment that they read it, how can I trust them, when they did not care to correct any of the glaring mistakes and misinformation, and the plain lack of research in their application.
How can I not feel disrespected when I have only one month to respond to an application posted 3 years ago.
How can I not be made to feel irrelevant when Island United shoots fire works at the height of the fire ban, to the dismay of their neighbors, and that of the fire department, sadly powerless in the face of a closed gate, and the arrogance of those to whom rules do not apply.
How can I be confident that Island United will even remediate the quarry site when it buried one of the few wet lands on Cortes under a hundred truck load of rocks to build their yard.
And when really there will not be any real repercussions to the company if the site does not regenerate in our life time.
I would like to believe that those who support Island United to enlarge the quarry and destroy that 12 acres, when there is not a business case, or a social case or an environmental case for it, do so because they are misinformed.
Since the support comes from the South End, one must ask, would there be the same enthusiasm if the project was to take place at the gravel pit on Sutil point road?
And the stunning ignorance of applying herbicides in a watershed that supports fish streams and also leads to the Gorge.
I think that Cec Robinson's proposal to only double the current foot print of the quarry is most reasonnable.