No bus mining in my backyard: a lesson in community power and the need for clean energy

I spent the week in Saskatoon dealing with uranium mining waste disposal.  Confidentiality precludes me writing about it, so I will instead tell a story about my townhouse and buses.  The story has nothing to do with mining and everything to do with mining.  Every miner will recognize the people involved and the issues at stake. 

The sun has returned to Vancouver and it filters down through the tall trees onto the patio outside the townhouse.  This house is but one of a about 200 in a complex high up the hills of the North Shore.   When I bought the house in 1980, the trees were small and the sun came down directly onto the patio.  To the west, along the river was an active landfill where the gulls swooped as each new load of rubbish was dumped.  Today the landfill is a horse stable and a playing field and people amble along the river with excited dogs keen to nip the heals of the horses. 

To the east and north was a forest and a small building.  Today the forest is gone and the small building is a vast complex making up Capilano College.  The college continues to grow.  A new road up the hill and along the south perimeter of the townhouse complex brings bus-loads of students and deposits them near the southeast corner of the townhouse complex.  In the snow I catch the bus and enjoy the safety of a ride to the SeaBus and to work.  

To encourage more bus use and to reduce the need for more cars and more parking, the college students’ union fought and won a battle to have the transit authorities give students a monthly bus pass for about $40 a month instead of the $140 it would cost me for a similar monthly bus pass.  The students were delighted at this environmentally sound and cost-effective solution. 

The transit authorities promised to double and treble the number of buses coming up the hill to the college.  All they needed was a more convenient route and more space to park the buses as they offloaded the hoards of students.  They saw an easy solution: let the buses go around the townhouse complex on the west, north, east, and south side, and take up fifteen parking spots for an extended terminus. 

All hell broke loose in the townhouse complex.  Neighbors gathered on walkways, on road, in garages, and in each others’ house to moan, groan, complain, and organize.  Many, like me, had bought when the complex was isolated and surrounded by forests; now they face the prospect of living in the middle of a loop of fume-belching buses.  Personally it won’t affect me, as my townhouse is in the center of the complex and well insulated for road traffic with its attendant noise, fumes, and contaminants.  So I said little.  But I could not remain aloof: the members of the board came around with smiles and pleas and of course I signed the petition.

The oldies around here know how to organize and protest: not in my backyard.  At the meeting convened by the transit authorities to discuss the issue, 200 from our townhouse complex raged and rampaged.  Few if any students came to argue their right to low-cost public transport and freedom from the tyranny of needing a car as a poor student. 

The transit authorities took fright: this morning’s newspaper reports they have scrapped the plan and are going back to the drawing boards.  The townhouse residents are elated and jubilant.  There was a smile everywhere I went this morning.  The authorities are muttering something about building a new terminal to the north of the college campus at a cost of about $1 million, and not knowing where to get the money, or even where to put the terminus.  Who cares as long as we do not have to put up with surrounding buses and loss of parking. 

Funny thing to me is that there was no discussion of gas powered vehicles, the common good, air pollution, or green-house gas emissions.  But maybe that is as well for maybe we would not have prevailed if logic and the public had prevailed. 

Now every miner faces similar issues, so I leave you to fill in the blanks of this story.