Dear Editor,
Some folks hold to the notion that government is nobody’s business but those elected or self-appointed to make all decisions. Others hold that government should reflect the wishes and aspirations of the taxpayers at the bottom of the power pyramid, those who ultimately pay for whatever government they get. I tend to follow the second of these options. So, when the study of waste management plans was commandeered to be a one-way dissemination of demands from Quebec City, I see that as mis-governing.
Administration of our local hospital has been taken away from local people, as services are drained away. How is that working out, folks? Good idea? I think not.
Similarly, the notion of a one-size-fits-all plan for collecting three streams of waste door-to-door throughout Pontiac County is doomed to failure through administrative over-reach. Door-to-door pickup is already working in the towns, such as Shawville, where 1,600 people live along 22 kilometre of streets. But in Thorne, we have 800 potential garbage-producing addresses spread along 120 kilometres of roads in winter, 180 kilometres in the summer. This is not counting the private roads. These are not paved boulevards, they are mostly gravel roads, and sometimes not easily travelled. So I submit for your consideration that a different way of collecting is more suitable for Thorne and other rural municipalities.
The individual householders are the ones who will have not only to sort plastic from metal from organics, and keep them separate until pickup, but they will have to pay the cost of a crew to drive trucks and pickup garbage on a regular basis, often enough that organic matter doesn’t get smelly in summer or frozen in winter.
The MRC administration has opted for the top-down approach, because listening to councillors on the waste management committee involved too much listening and thinking, and interrupted the process of hired ‘experts’ telling us what to do. There may soon be an opportunity for us to decide which approach to government we favour in the Pontiac.
Robert Wills, Thorne and Shawville
