A draft of the amended Solid Waste Management Plan, which would allow Whistler and Squamish landfills to stay open until the year 2008, was approved in principle by the Squamish-Lillooet Regional District board at its monthly meeting held Monday. The regional district’s current SWMP calls for both landfills to be closed this year. Both Whistler and Squamish councils have approved expansions which will keep their landfills open until 2008. Before the amended plan is adopted, however, a series of public meeting will be held in the fall. SLRD staff will now be forwarding the amended draft waste management plan to member municipalities and electoral area directors for comment. The board also agreed to an "equalization agreement" between Whistler, Squamish and the district which will allow for the SLRD to be compensated for the additional operational costs of running the Pemberton and Devine transfer stations in terms of the 1997 Solid Waste Management Plan. The board said it was committed to working toward a user pay system to encourage the reduction of waste throughout the district. The Whistler TV Society, which has operated a television repeater on Sproat Mountain since the early ’70s, has received a nudge toward retirement. The assets of the society are being transferred to Shane Bennett of Whistlerweb.com for a nominal sum. This will give Bennett access to the Sproat site for an internet connect structure. Members of the TV society could pick up several television channels with a special antenna. Their service area will now be wound down and funds will no longer be requisitioned. The Squamish-Lillooet Regional District board approved the move Monday. The Whistler TV Society’s CRTC licence was due to expire in August 2000. However, the land tenure on Sproat was never formalized and may not even have been surveyed. The SLRD board noted that with the advent of cable and satellite services in Whistler, the TV society's membership was falling away. The society was initiated by the late Walter Zebrowski, long before cable television came to Whistler. Bear talk will be the theme Wednesday, Aug. 4 at the Whistler Museum and Archives Society where Whistler black bear researcher Michael Allen will be hosting a slide show and presentation from 2 p.m. Admission is $1 for adults and free to those 18 and under. The talk is designed to complement the museum's current bear exhibit, put together by Allen. Allen is currently dividing his time between the Whistler bears and the bears of the Seymour demonstration forest which lies between Grouse and Seymour mountains. He has been hired by the Greater Vancouver Regional District to identify resident bears and dens and help with habitat mapping. It's time to dust off those "gently used" kids books and pack them off to Starbucks outlets. The North American java chain will in turn donate the books to literacy organizations in the areas they are collected. This is the third year of the Starbucks All Books For Children campaign, designed to help raise awareness of the importance of literacy. Over the past two years, the program put more than half a million books into the hands of kids through local schools and literacy organizations across North America. The drive is being held Aug. 4 through 24.
