The Similkameen News Leader
Editorial - October 17, 2006
C.R.O.P.S. or P.O.S.S.E.?
Maybe it was the result of too many late night meetings in a row, but it was bound to happen.
While sitting in the back row of one meeting last week we drifted into a daydream about another meeting we attended a night or two before.
The 'daydream' meeting was to pull together a local citizen driven steering committee to tell the "other side of the story" regarding the Compliance Power Plant. We're pretty sure what was meant by "the other side of the story" was not the fresh smelling, happy horizon of invisible mercury emissions story we've all been spoon-fed by Compliance.
The part of the meeting we were actually daydreaming about was the struggle of this local citizen driven steering committee to come up with a name that has a snappy acronym. Which, by the way, we think is far less important than the actually substance of the committee: the purpose.
Anyway, we started working on names. Remember, it was at a late night meeting that seemed to be going nowhere when we thought about the local citizen driven committee meeting that seemed to be going somewhere.
Then we decided it was time to S.L. A. P. (Saving the Land Around Princeton) ourselves to wake up. It was really that S. I. M. P. L. E. (SIMilkameen People Lovin' our Environment). Before we knew it, it was hard to S. T. O. P. (Someone's Taking Over Princeton). It was only about C. O. A. L. (Compliance Offers Another Laughable project) and B. I. O. M. A. S. S. (Better Industry Offers More ASSistance).
We tried to make them G. O. A. W. A. Y. (Get Out Already, We All don't like You) then we wanted someone to P. R. O. V. E. I. T. (PROtecting our Valley and Environment, Including the Town) because it sounds at times like a bunch of C. R. A. P. (Compliance Ruins everything Around Princeton) which made us think about the C. R. O. P. S. (Compliance Rips Off Princeton/Similkameen) in the Keremeos area.
Then it occurred to us. What we really need is a local citizen driven steering committee with the skill, drive and determination of a P. O. S. S. E. (Protecting Our Special Similkameen Environment).
