Co-op fights global warming

In a break with its long-standing tradition of not giving a damn for anything but its own bottom line, Ucluelet Co-op this week revealed an ambitious plan to fight global warming.

The key to the initiative is the massive new bank of freezers installed over the past months as part of the Co-op’s store-wide renovation. The gigantic refrigeration array is being started up in stages, under the careful supervision of BC Hydro, lest the power surge black out half of Vancouver Island.

Once fully operational, the freezers are expected to lower the average year-round temperature in the Ucluelet area by as much as half a degree.

Atmospheric experts estimate this is equivalent to a reduction of approximately 350,000 tonnes of carbon emissions per year. The Co-op will soon announce a program offering these carbon credits to consumers at a low introductory price price of just $8 per tonne.

So in addition to giving Uclutians unprecedented access to over-processed frozen foods, the Co-op will help them continue driving their over-sized, over-powered vehicles free of guilt — “a definite win-win for the community,” says the press release announcing the program. “It’s the Co-op way!”

Johnny Hart takes on Ukee’s town motto

‘Send us your bags!’

Close on the heels of Tofino’s controversial resolution to ban plastic bags in that community, Uclutians have sent out the message loud and clear to their neighbours to the north: Bring us your bags!

“We love them,” said local power shopper Sarah Debbit, in the Co-op parking lot as she loaded 37 plastic bags of groceries into her minivan. “It’s just like curbs and sidewalks, or paved parking spaces — more plastic bags means more progress.”

“That whole ‘cloth bag’ thing is way too hippie,” said Darrel Stumpf, local construction worker, who pulled a packet of gum he’d just bought out of a plastic bag. “And as everybody in Ukee knows, hippies suck. But plastic bags rock,” he added, tossing the bag to the ground.

Ucluelet has no plans to follow Tofino’s lead with a plastic bag ban, according to the district office.”We actually prefer to put petrochemical plastic waste into the west coast landfill,” said a spokesperson for the Ucluelet Economic Development Corporation. “That’s why we shut down our recycling program eight months ago — it’s all part of our long-term plan. Twenty years from now we’ll have fished out the salmon and hake, and tourism may be declining, but the UEDC will be putting in bids to remediate the toxic leachate coming from our landfill, thanks to all those plastic bags. Between that and the projected new cancer wing for Tofino hospital — and plastic waste is a key part of rising cancer rates — employment should be booming on the coast by 2025! And fifty years beyond that, when all the oil has run out, we’ll be mining the landfill for those precious petrochemical plastic bags.

“You see, we’re always thinking ahead!“

Flip-estate comes to Ukee

Real estate is no longer a smart choice for the savvy west coast investor, according to real estate consultant Atilla Deadwood, of REAM/AXE Realty.

“The old way of buying a house and living in it — or even just renting it out for a few years — is now dead, dead, dead,” said Deadwood. “Only a hopeless housing romantic would operate under that paradigm, now that the dogs of greed have been unleashed,” he adds.

The alternative? “Unreal estate,” Deadwood quips. “What we in the business call flip-estate.”

With a flip-estate investment, he explains, people can buy investment property in Ucluelet in the morning and sell it that afternoon for as much as 30% more than they paid for it. It’s not just that they don’t have to live in it — they don’t even have to see it, Deadwood says.

“This is especially important for out-of-town investors looking at those rickety, 20- and 30-year-old mold traps now being vacated in great number by former residents forced out of town by rising prices and falling opportunities,” Deadwood said. “I mean, it’s dangerous to your health to go anywhere near one of those sinkholes.”

Now people from the city can buy them, basically off the Internet, and get rid of them the same way. They realize a handsome profit and the house will sit there empty, waiting for a flip-estate transaction next week — sometimes even the next day.

But what if somebody should actually want to buy a house and live in it and be part of the community?

“Come on, get serious,” Deadwood says.

Trailer park to join gated communities

From Tattler contributor Westerly Gale–

Expanding on the growing Ukee trend of exclusive, gated communities, Whispering Pines Trailer Park has recently applied to council for a zoning change to “Gated Community” (GC-1).

Proponents presented council with details of a slick marketing campaign soon to be launched, and showed pictures of a “new concept” gated trailer, soon to be in operation as a sales office in the trailer park.

 

Trailer parks were once considered affordable, lower-class housing for community residents, but in Ukee’s insane housing market are now regarded as highly desirable properties. “So now we gotta keep the riff raff out,” said Whispering Pines resident Jack O’Bertin, gesturing to the wheel-less cars in his yard that apparently require protection from “unsavory elements” — a reference, O’Bertin confirmed, to the many transient workers now flocking to town to fill the tourist service jobs that seem to be our collective future.

In order to preserve the high level of development that Ukee is aiming for, staff has proactively introduced a bylaw spelling out the height and mesh size of chain-link fencing to be required for all gated communities, including the already-zoned Sunset Point and Signature Circle, along with Whispering Pines. The bylaw also details the quality of the razor wire, the required number and breed of guard dogs, and of course the appearance of the KEEP OUT and TRESPASSERS WILL BE SHOT signs.

 

It’s a slugfest out here, people!