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Friday, January 8, 2016
Vol.8 • Issue 55
Nelson Youth Soccer sends equipment to Kenya See Page 17
Lucas Myers remounts Campground at the Capitol See Page 11
Feds take over Lemon Creek spill prosecution
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Wanda Santos enjoyed a quiet cuddle with her newborn son at Kootenay Lake Hospital on Tuesday morning. He doesn’t yet have a name, but he’s this year’s New Years Baby, arriving at 11:26 a.m. on Monday. Will Johnson photo
Nelson welcomes New Year’s Baby WILL JOHNSON Nelson Star
Down a quiet, secluded hallway in Kootenay Lake Hospital on 415 Alexander Road, Procter Tuesday morning, new mother Wanda Santos was sharing a shad“It is my goal to work hard owy cuddle with her unnamed son. to reach your goals” HAPPY NEW YEAR! Born less than a day earlier — at 11:26 a.m. on Monday, weighing In-store Specials! nine pounds, six ounces — she had just learned that he was Nelson’s New Year’s Baby for 2016. “He talks quite a bit, and grunts,” the 39-year-old told the Star, gazing affectionately at him and running her finger through his fuzzy brown Barbie hair while he napped. Her son took Wheaton the opportunity to yawn, paw at his face and screech like a dinosaur. C: 250.509.0654 barbiewheaton@gmail.com “He’s pretty amazing.”
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Wanda and husband Randy decided not to learn the gender of their child beforehand. Because the pregnancy felt different than when she carried her son Matthew, she figured it was going to be a girl. Now all the names they’ve discussed are inappropriate for the newly-arrived infant. One option they’re considering? Alexander, after Randy’s recently departed father. “Me and my husband weren’t planning on having more kids, but then we decided we wanted Matthew to have a little brother who lives nearby,” she said. “We decided on this little guy.” The delivery was uncomplicated, according to Wanda.
“My water broke at 4:30 a.m. and I delivered by 11:26 a.m.,” said Santos, who called the delivery “very quick.” Her boy is joining a family that already includes 18-year-old Katrina and 14-year-old Nicholas, siblings from Randy’s previous relationship, as well as four-year-old Matthew. The pair live in Passmore. Wanda works for Pacific Insight, while Randy is employed by Western Autowreckers. They have family elsewhere in the country who are joining them in enthusiastically welcoming Wanda’s boy. “It’s pretty wild. I didn’t expect on Jan. 4 to have the New Year’s Baby, but it’s pretty exciting.”
The federal government has decided to prosecute the company that spilled 33,000 litres of jet fuel into Lemon Creek during a firefighting operation in the summer of 2013. “I can confirm that a decision regarding intervention has been made and the nature of that decision will be communicated at the next court date,” prosecutor Todd Gerhart wrote in an email to the Star. “That date has not yet been scheduled but is in the process of being arranged.” He said he expects that initial court date to be within the next few weeks. The charges against Executive Flight Centre are for violating Fisheries Act provisions that prohibit polluting a stream. The decision means Slocan Valley resident Marilyn Burgoon can drop the private prosecution she has been pursuing since the fall of 2014 because it appeared the federal government was not going to prosecute. Now she says she will be spared having to raise tens of thousands of dollars in
legal fees. But from Burgoon’s perspective there is a possible downside. She says that on the rare occasions the government does take over a private prosecution, they sometimes simply drop the charges. “But I am optimistic, with the new government, that they will not stay the charges and will proceed with the prosecution,” she told the Star. “A new government with a new fisheries minister and a new attorney general (and both are First Nations people) gives me encouragement because First Nations understand fisheries.” Asked for the reasons behind the decision and whether the provincial government will be named as a defendant as it was in Burgoon’s private prosecution, Gerhart said he would be open to such questions after the upcoming court date. Andrew Gage, a lawyer at West Coast Environmental Law in Vancouver, says he is cautiously encouraged by the federal government’s move. He said that since the spill the government has been CONTINUED ON A5
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