It's appropriate to expropriate

Brian Wilford, Oceanside Star
Published: Thursday, October 01, 2009

BC Rivers Day, a creation of the provincial government, underscores how pitiful it is that groups of local residents have to beg logging companies not to destroy their watersheds.

And the logging companies, many of them foreign-owned, are required to do nothing more than feign interest for public relations' sake.

It's time the BC government, in bed with the forest industry since the days of H.R. MacMillan, moved to protect the interests of everyone and everything that needs water.

It wasn't that long ago that the province expropriated properties for the Nanaimo Parkway and the Inland Highway, even carving off a corner of the Morrell Nature Sanctuary.

All that was required was fair market compensation and that's all the forest companies are due, as well.

It's time BC grew up and stopped being subservient to resource extractors. Protecting watersheds is not an attack on free enterprise; it's just common-sense survival.

So much of the world has either lost its clean water or is spending billions trying to recreate it. They must look at us and just shake their heads.

http://www2.canada.com/oceansidestar/news/opinion/story.html?id=6fcf5dc7-a69b-4c58-b713-06828ff433a1