Catface makeover begins

Both locals and visitors in Tofino have long complained that so-called Catface Mountain looks nothing like a cat’s face, but nobody has ever done anything about it. Now a philanthropic Vancouver mining company, Selkirk Metals, has stepped in to address the problem.

Catface makeover steps 1-5

“All it’s going to take is a little redistribution of the existing rock,” said Slick Veneer, media relations officer for the mining and exploration company. “It’s very much like cosmetic surgery, but on a bit larger scale. But once we remove those millions of tons of waste rock, dump it on the beaches at the foot of the mountain, build the giant ore-processing plant, the deepwater port, and create the lake of toxic waste, it’s going to be a dead ringer for that cute, fuzzy kitty-cat you loved as a child.”

The company is even going so far as to ship some of the rock away, to help the project along. “There might concievably be something useful in some of that rock, say something like copper, maybe. And because we’re a mining company committed to the environment, we’re going to do our darndest put that rock to good use, no matter what it costs us.”

Environmental groups, which rely on a continual state of impending catastrophe to keep their funds flowing, are predictably sounding the alarm, citing well-known examples of other open-pit mountain makeovers and the extensive environmental degradation they caused.

Other observers are not so worried about the environmental impact. “Ah, they’re never going to go through with an actual mine,” said lawyer and part-time Tofino resident Buster Uppanotch. “The whole exercise is all about First Nations milking the white man for whatever they can get, and the mining company pumping up its stock price to make a few shareholders rich.”

The initial exploratory drilling comes on the heels of a Memorandum of Understanding signed with the Ahousaht First Nation, in whose traditional territory the mountain lies. The band showed no interest in cooperation with resource companies in past years, said company negotiator Hannover D. Payola, who played a key part in the recent MOU signing. But the negotiations gathered momentum when band officials’ pickup trucks started pushing five years old. “We had to do something,” said a band spokesman, “the situation was getting desperate.”

Now things are turning around for the suffering town. Unemployment has plummeted, thanks to the eight temporary jobs that came about as a result of the agreement. Asked about the future of their town existing in what could effectively become an environmental toilet bowl, one chief said, “That’s tomorrow. We are focused on today.”

In fact, Ahousaht elders are now reportedly in the process of changing the Nuu-cha-nulth motto, Hishuk ish ts’awalk — “Everything is one,” a statement of ecological integrity — to the far more adaptable hishuk ish ts’amoo-moo-lah — “Everything is one big cash cow.”

Friends to change name

Thursday’s Friends of Clayoquot Sound AGM proved the enviro movement is no stranger to titanic egos, despite it’s let’s-all-just-get-along veneer. In a community-alienating move, one board nominee was railroaded off the board after agreeing to participate, because other nominees thought he might not share the Friends’ traditional “consensus approach” — because of a 10-year-old argument with one of the principals.

The would-be Friend stormed out of the meeting in anger and disgust, presumably to spread the word throughout town, while presentations continued inside on why the group seems to be losing local support.

Word on the street is that the organization may now be changing its name from Friends of Clayoquot Sound to Friends of Val Langer, but this remains unconfirmed.

District launches zero-cost recycling

With consultants’ help, district staff have hit upon an almost zero-cost solution to Ucluelet’s perennial recycling problem.

“It’s great that we don’t have to wait for those speedballs at the Regional District to come up with a plan,” said one source at the district office. “We’d be buried under our own recyclables before that ever came through.”

Instead, the district last last year hired Victoria eco-consultant firm Dumpitt & Runne on a $60,000 retainer to seek out a more immediate solution. After nearly eight months’ work, the firm came up with a cost-effective plan. “In fact, it only cost about $200 — the price of the 3-by-5 sign we recently installed at the Tofino Recycle Yard,” said Ed Dumpitt, of Dumpitt & Runne.

In a nutshell, the plan for handling Ucluelet’s recyclables involves the simple expedient of having residents drive them to Tofino and dump them at the recycling depot there. “That’s where much of it was going anyway,” Runne said, “so with the addition of a sign on the Tofino depot we can make it official, and remove any heat from Ucluelet council or the Regional District to act.”

“It might seem unfair for Ucluelet to dump its recycling problem on Tofino taxpayers,” said Carmen Runne, also a principal of the consulting firm. “But our research shows otherwise. They may spend $50,000 a year on their recycling, but they’re no angels. Tofino is still pumping raw sewage into Clayoquot Sound, and our surveys show that many environmentally-minded Tofinians are making the trek to Ucluelet to use the toilets here, because of Ukee’s sewage treatment. So we believe it’s a fair exchange.”

Others agree. “I personally know at least a dozen Tofino people who hold it for almost a week until they can get to a bathroom in Ukee,” said one village source. “So it’s all even-steven, in my books.”

No comments have been received from Tofino council or taxpayers, but the Regional District office expressed unanimous approval of the plan, as has Ucluelet council.

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!”

‘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!“

New enviro group hatches in Ukee

In a surprising turn of events, a grassroots environmental organization has sprung up within Ucluelet — but one with a peculiar Ukee twist.

Uclutians have always not seemed to care about what happens around them — except if it’s happening in their back yard, in which case they hate it. But until now they’ve never been formally organized about it.

Loosely patterned after the famous Friends of Clayoquot Sound, the new group is called the Folks who Don’t Give a Damn about Barkley Sound, or FDGDBS (pronounced “fuggeddaboudatshite”) for short.

Other green organizations have greeted the new group with mixed reactions. “I don’t believe I’ve ever seen an environmental group so single-minded, so united, so 100 percent behind its mandate,” enthused a member of Greenpeace International. “Yeah, but that mandate is complete apathy,” countered a Sierra Club of Canada press liaison.

The FDGDBS claims an active membership of hundreds — remarkable buy-in for a small town, according to spokeswoman Velvet Cactus. “Every week we hold a meeting at the Lodge,” she says, “and almost everyone shows up.”

Whereas most enviros actually lobby politicians and organize rallies to get their point across, the Ucluelet group so far has no plans for “any of that boring stuff,” Cactus said. Instead, the group is taking a uniquely Ukee approach at FDGDBS meetings: “sitting around drinking Lucky and bitching about how everything’s going to hell and somebody oughta do something about it.”

But drinking and whining aren’t the only things on the group’s agenda, as rampant, industrial-scale development looms ever closer to wreaking havoc on their town and the Barkley Sound watershed around them. They also advocate moaning, cursing and, in extreme cases, getting blotto. “Somebody once suggested we write a letter to council or something,” said Cactus, “but we put the squish on that pretty quick.”

Meanwhile, the remainder of Ucluelet’s citizens are taking a well-deserved breather from civic involvement. “We can rest easy on our award-winning OCP laurels,” said average housewife Chantal Shroompickin, “now that we’re in the hands of the Folks who Don’t Give a Damn about Barkley Sound.”