The powers that B --- meaning Burra, have approved this very tame one.
From my PM.
Dale Hodgins wrote:
I'm finally getting to the covert action thing. This one was totally legal and shouldn't be problematic.
In January of 2013, I got a welcome call from someone who I will not name. He had observed one of the
city's worst corporate citizens loading drywall, which is supposed to be recycled, into a big demolition trailer. We suspected that they would cover it with something and take it to a private dump site.
I hustled over and got to high ground so I could film it. The drywall was covered with a thick layer of clean
wood waste. There is only one reason why these materials would be mixed. Wood is easy and cheap to dispose of. It costs about $150 per ton to dump drywall. I filmed the loading process and then followed the truck to the dump site. We left the city and went over the Malahat pass to near the city of Duncan. Then the truck headed off the highway and down a back road and turned into the Indian reservation, where the load was dumped into a wood pile. This wood gets burned.
Once the
video was edited and labeled, I passed a copy to another anonymous person. The Minister of the Environment picked it up personally from his job site. That's when I knew that it would be taken seriously. They launched an investigation into the whereabouts of massive amounts of materials that came out of several big demolition projects that the company did in the months preceeding the film. Cameras along the route, showed that over 50 loads went to Duncan. Some of the buildings contained asbestos which was unaccounted for. I will probably never know the full extent of the investigation or the consequences. I've been told that it's not over yet. I haven't heard about fines or other punishment, but the bad guys have had lawyers on it from the beginning. It has cost them money. It's been months since they took on a big demolition
project. This means that those who recycle materials have more work.
I contacted several members of the Indian reservation. The open pit burn site is supposed to be for wood. It pollutes the
land, air and
water which belongs to all of the band members. Only a few benefit from the dump's activities. I will soon follow up on some phone calls, to see if anything has changed.