As a resident of Chase, I am dismayed and disappointed that Pinnacle Energy is abandoning their plan to locate here.
I thought that it was an opportunity to revitalize the community with a core of younger residents.
The irony here is the inclusion of Chase in the “Project Comeback BC,” a concept to attract younger people back to the home of their youthful roots. Then, with a quality of insouciance, promptly drive away the one industry that is willing to locate and give these younger people hope. Hang your heads in shame.
Chase is not a bedroom community to Kamloops or Salmon Arm. Granted, some residents of Chase commute to these other centers due to the lack of employment in Chase. At best, Chase is a resort community with a purported population of roughly 2,500 people. Half of these leave Chase in October for the warm and sunny climes of Arizona, returning at the beginning of April.
To the self-serving naysayers think that Chase is pollution free, it just isn’t so folks. Chase is not pollution free.
Many trains pass by daily, all engines exhausting copious amounts of nitrogen oxides. Some of these trains are coal trains, rendering coal dust to the atmosphere as evidenced by the black accumulations found on cars and decks of homes situated adjacent to the rail right of way.
These same naysayers have the audacity to suggest that council re-zone the property again. They also have the indignity to postulate their belief that the owners of the property should make good by turning the property back into residential for community – approved housing. Not to mention the grandiose ideas of a retirement center, or perhaps a trade or art school!
I ask, how about a prison – would that sanctify your minds?
Dennis Youchezin,
Chase