EAGLE VALLEY
NEWS
Artists’ works to adorn walls around town Page 7
4-H club not only about agriculture Page 8
Wednesday, April 18, 2012
Vol. 53 No. 16 Sicamous, B.C., • 1.25 (HST included) • www.eaglevalleynews.com
Records reveal province used Agent Orange Toxic herbicide: Malakwa man claims to suffer the effects of exposure. By Lachlan Labere Eagle Valley News
Larry Heal believes he has been suffering the effects of exposure to industrial herbicides used in the province during the ’60s and ’70s. In 1964, the U.S. military was already two years into its herbicidal warfare program known as Operation Ranch Hand, spraying millions of acres of the Vietnamese landscape with defoliating chemical agents referred to as the rainbow herbicides: Agents Pink, Green, Blue, White, Purple and Orange. Heal, who currently resides in Malakwa, says he was exposed to similar chemicals during his childhood in Cherryville, and that he has been suffering ailments of one kind or another ever since. He found some relief this month, though, with the release of a CTV news exposé, in which the news organization purports to have “several hundred pages of documents” that support the story Heal has been telling for years: herbicide combinations that comprise Agent Orange and other rainbow herbicides were used by the B.C. government around power lines near his family
Agents exposed: Malakwa resident Larry Heal says Agent Orange and other “rainbow” herbicide mixtures were used in B.C. in the 1960s and ’70s, and that he was exposed to them in his youth when hydro lines were treated near his family’s former Cherryville home. Photo by Lachlan Labere
See Herbicides on page 2
Tax increase less than projected for Sicamous residents Different approach: Council finance committee cuts tax increase from 2.5 to 1.25 per cent. By Lachlan Labere Eagle Valley News
Sicamous residents can expect a 1.25 per cent increase in residential taxes for 2012. With a zero per cent increase in 2011, the district’s 10 year financial plan had projected a tax increase of 2.5 per cent for 2012 and 2013. “We came in at 1.25, and we still accomplished a lot of things that we wanted to get done,” says Mayor Darrell Trouton, noting district financial services director Ruth Walper will be making a public presentation on this year’s budget in May. This year council took a different approach to the budget, creating a finance
committee to see O b v i o u s l y, to its complethere’s a concern tion. Coun. Greg with a zero tax Kyllo chaired the rate – as we’ve We had to do quite a bit of committee. He seen in other juggling and budget cutting said the 1.25 per municipalities, it in order to achieve that. We’ll cent increase was certainly catches still try and maintain the same something the up to you,” said level of services… committee felt Kyllo, noting Greg Kyllo would be more that in the TownCouncillor palatable to the ship of Spallumpublic, while not cheen, residents putting the disare bracing for a trict in a position where it would have to 12 per cent tax hike after seeing low tax inlook at more substantial tax hikes down the creases in previous years. road. “We felt coming out with a very conser-
vative number of 1.25 per cent was something that was reasonable and attainable,” says Kyllo. “We had to do quite a bit of juggling and budget cutting in order to achieve that. We’ll still try and maintain the same level of services within the community.” Being new to council, Kyllo called the budget a learning experience for himself, as well as Couns. Joan Thomson, Terry Rysz and Mayor Darrell Trouton. That said, Kyllo is confident the district’s best interests have been looked after. “I felt really comfortable at the end of the day that the fiscal shape of the community… It’s been well looked after and we’re still in good shape,” says Kyllo.