Dear Editor:
I am always impressed with the way science can knock down decades of baseless, misguided rhetoric and innuendo. Take the individuals and organizations who thrive on spreading baseless information; people with one axe or another to grind. A good scientific study or two can easily shut them down cold with inescapable facts.
A case in point can be found in the Sept. 16 edition of The Vancouver Sun: "Fracking doesn't ruin nearby ground water supplies." The article reports on two different scientific studies, in two geologically different areas of the States, that prove fracking does not pollute ground water - even 18 months after the fracking has been completed.
Here in B.C., there is over a decade of research showing that B.C. lakes and waterways often have a mineral content much the same as the surrounding rocks and ground. When tested, the water and sediment in some B.C. lakes and waterways resembles the natural mineral concentrations found locally in the area, and the levels are sometimes near to, or even above, the levels considered safe for humans and fish.
That is why I strongly suspect science will soon conclude, as it already seems to be doing, that the "contaminant" minerals found in and around the waterways near the Mount Polley mine breach are much the same as the mineral profile of local rocks and ground sources. These so-called "contaminants" are minerals that have been working their way into the region's waterways for centuries and even millennia through natural erosion - and
without harming fish or humans.
Stacked up against the science, the sensationalistic alarms being sounded by individuals and organizations with impure agendas will fade away before too long as they search for something else that they can hitch their baseless, misguided rhetoric onto.
Pamela Gardner, Burnaby