09 January 10, 2009 - ObserverXtra

THE OBSERVER | Saturday, January 10, 2009 NEWS | 5
Wellesley to
benefit from
gas taxes
Wellesley Township will receive
just over $300,000 per year from
2010 to 2014 in federal gas tax
funding.
The four-year extension to the
gas tax agreement was officially
signed Dec. 23. under the agreement,
Wellesley Township will
receive $301,109.64 each year in
two equal payments made in july
and november.
Woolwich Township will receive
$604,680.08 per year over the
four-year period. The City of Waterloo
will receive $2,998,331 per
year, while the City of Kitchener is
slated to get $6,295,587.68.
Linwood gets
two recruits
Council approved the appointment
of two new volunteers to
the Wellesley Fire Department’s
Linwood Station at the request of
district chief Frank Karley.
Catherine Steckly is enrolled part
time in the pre-service fire fighter
program at Conestoga College.
The other new appointment is matt
Karley, a resident of Linwood.
The two new recruits will bring
Linwood fire station up to a full
staffing complement; Linwood
currently has 18 fire fighters, while
the township’s level of service normally
supports 20 fire fighters.
Sudden retains
vice-chair role
Former Woolwich councillor
grace Sudden was re-elected this
week to the position of vice-chair
of the Waterloo regional Police
Services board. Tom galloway, a
regional councillor, was re-elected
chair.
Sudden has been a member of
board for the past nine years;
2009 will mark her seventh term
as vice-chair.
The other members of the board
include regional Chair Ken Seiling,
Wilmot Township mayor Wayne
roth, brian Heggie, Patti Haskell
and myrta rivera.
The Police Services board is a
civilian oversight body that governs
how police services are provided.
The board is made up of
three elected members from regional
council, three provincially
appointed members and one
community-at-large member appointed
by council.
Wloo workers
talking strike
City of Waterloo outside workers
voted unanimously Wednesday
night in favour of strike action if
they can’t reach a deal with the
municipality. The members of the
Canadian union of Public employees
local 1542 could be in a strike
position as early as jan. 15.
A strike could affect snowplowing,
arena operations and other
services, including water distribution
and park operations, carried
out by unionized workers.
Council’s latest financial mess –
$1.8-million in retroactive wage
top-ups for managers and nonunionized
staff – has come back
to bite it again, as the union calls
offers to its members unfair by
comparison.
mediation talks are scheduled
for Tuesday. The 110 workers’ last
contract expired on Dec. 31.
»SOmeTHing eXTrA in THe STOCKing
Fundraising push nets an extra $10K
Challenged to raise $100,000 by year’s end, Gale congregation meets that goal
JONI MILTENBURG
After being challenged to
raise $100,000 in a little
over a month, the congregation
of Gale Presbyterian
church stepped
up and met the goal.
In late November, an
anonymous donor approached
the church offering
$10,000 toward the
construction of a new
building – provided the
congregation could raise
10 times that before the
end of the year.
By Dec. 31, the final total
was $100,215.76.
“It was a stretch, that’s
for sure,” said fundrais-
JONI MILTENBURG
Wellesley is looking
for ways to recover its
expenses following a
drug-related fire at a
duplex in the village
last month.
Township firefighters
spent a total of 273 man
hours battling a blaze
at 1020 Molesworth Rd.
Dec. 9.
All three stations responded
to the fire,
which was reported
shortly after 8 p.m.
Wellesley station had 14
men at the blaze, some
until 1 a.m. St Clements
» From cover
tario, where they went
swimming. At that time,
the shoreline was slumping
into the lake, taking
with it a series of summer
cottages. And a few
years later, swimming
in Lake Ontario was
banned because of polio.
“People were getting
it – some people I knew
had polio – from pollution
in Lake Ontario. So
I became aware of the
health risks of the Great
Lakes,” he explained.
Regier finished his B.A.
at Queen’s University in
1954. One of the professors
there, Wes Curran,
was interested in conservation
and encouraged
him to take a job with
the Ontario government
studying streams in the
Toronto area.
“I caught the bug to be an
aquatic ecosystem freak
from those surveys.”
ing chair Vicky Hammell.
“I think everybody
dug deep to make
us get there. In fact, I
heard that somebody
had called who wasn’t
in town to make sure we
had made it because if
we hadn’t they were going
to donate some extra
that they planned on doing
in January.”
The church has now
raised more than $500,000
toward construction of a
new church, which will
cost an estimated $2.3
million. The land, located
at Church Street and
Barnswallow Drive, has
already been paid for.
The congregation has
After a short stint
teaching high school,
Regier completed his
PhD at Cornell University
in 1961 and took another
job with the Ontario
government, this time
researching fisheries in
Lake Erie.
Many of the problems
facing the Great Lakes
today, he first encountered
in the 1950s and
‘60s.
While studying streams
flowing into Lake Erie
in 1955, he learned about
the problems caused by
exotic species. Smelt,
a non-native species of
fish, was moving into
Lake Erie and causing
problems for commercial
fishers by tangling
in their nets.
At the same time, dead
zones started to appear
in the shallow waters of
Lake Erie. The colder,
bottom waters were being
starved of oxygen by
been looking at building
a new church since
2003. The present location
is landlocked, with
no parking, and not very
visible.
Kim Denstedt, co-chair
of the church’s steering
committee, said the anonymous
donor isn’t a member
of Gale, but was impressed
with the congregation’s
energy and support of the
new church.
“It was extremely generous
of this person to
do that,” she said.
Gale rallied behind the
fundraising drive; there
were a large number of
donations, ranging in
size up to $15,000.
decaying organic matter
falling from the warmer
surface water. Lack of
oxygen forced out coldwater
species such as
trout. The surface water
was overly fertile, fed
by phosphates coming
from sewage, industrial
chemicals and agricultural
runoff.
In the early 1970s, there
were major programs to
reduce the amount of
phosphates ending up
in the lake. Those efforts
were partly successful;
the dead zones were reduced
in size, and coldwater
fish started to
come back.
In the late 1980s, a new
non-native threat moved
in: zebra mussels and
their relatives, quagga
mussels. Carried in the
ballast water of ships,
the mussels are prodigious
eaters and rob a
lake of nutrients, while
depositing waste on the
“We were very happy
and pleased that we were
able to end the year on
such a high note,” Denstedt
said. “Our next major
step will be at our annual
meeting when we
present an idea of what
it could look like and
costs and so forth.”
Currently, the building
committee is looking at
draft plans and offering
feedback to the design
process.
Fundraising is ongoing,
as the church still
has a long way to go toward
the final total.
“We’d like to keep it to
two or three major fundraisers
and then there’s
lake floor. A new type of
dead zone started to appear.
“Just about the time the
lakes were coming back
from the phosphate overburdening,
this thing
happened,” Regier said.
“The Lake Erie story is
far from over. Billions
have been spent on trying
to rehabilitate it and
many things have been
done. It’s not over.”
After he retired in
1995, Regier and his wife
Lynn, a psychotherapist,
moved to Elmira. Regier
had long associations
with people at Wilfrid
Laurier, Waterloo and
Guelph universities,
but they were looking to
get away from the city.
One of their daughters
lived in Elmira and the
other wasn’t far away
in Georgetown, so they
settled here.
After moving to Elmira,
Regier got involved with
a bunch of smaller
things that we’re doing
as well, so we’re not taxing
people too much. We
do a lot of “fun-raising”
as well as fundraising.”
Planning for the new
church has brought people
out to meetings and
committees, which has
helped bring people together,
she said.
“I’m meeting people
that I’ve sat across from
in church for years, but
I didn’t really know. I
think that’s happened for
a few people. When you
do things together, you
get to know each other
and that builds community,
builds caring.”
Wellesley seeking to recover fire costs
Council hoping to recoup expenses related to suspicious Molesworth St. fire
backed up the Wellesley
station with 18 men
and Linwood responded
with 16.
Wellesley station
also had four people
assisting Waterloo
Regional Police in investigating
the suspicious
blaze. That
investigation is still ongoing.
Until charges are laid
or insurance coverage
determined, the township
is left footing the
bill for fighting the
blaze. Volunteer fire
fighters are paid for
the time they spend at
a fire or accident, and
any supplies used in
fighting the fire, such
as oxygen cylinders,
will have to be refilled
or replaced.
“We don’t at this point
know whether there’ll
be any compensation
coming back to the municipality,”
said township
chief administrative
officer Susan Duke.
“It has to be a specific
set of circumstances
for the insurance companies
to come forward
with compensation.”
Duke said she can’t estimate
the cost of battling
the fire because
she doesn’t yet have all
the figures related to
the man hours and the
equipment used.
“We haven’t done the
breakdown on who’s being
paid what amount,”
she said. “The district
chiefs and captains are
paid different rates.
There’s a whole calculation
that has to go
into that, as well as the
equipment.”
A 28-year old woman
escaped the blaze and
was taken to hospital
to be treated for smoke
inhalation. Two males
were seen emerging the
house with flames coming
from their clothes.
They rolled in the snow
to extinguish the flames
then fled, one on foot
and the other in a darkcoloured
pickup truck.
The investigation
turned up five containers
of marijuana and
equipment used to extract
hashish, hash
resin or hash oil.
Police spokesperson
Olaf Heinzel said at
this point no arrests
have been made and no
charges laid.
“We’re still looking
for any tips and any
information that could
help us. That’s still an
ongoing investigation.”
Regier: Early exposure to issues led to career path
a citizen’s group pressing
for cleanup of the
former Uniroyal Chemical
site. He also works
to restore First Nations
fishing rights, which he
says have been “grossly
abused,” and continues
to write papers and editorials.
Regier has also done
work on climate change,
writing his first paper
on the subject in 1984
and authoring a chapter
of Climate Change
1995 for the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate
Change. Trying to get
action on environmental
issues can be a frustrating
prospect, he said, but
there is greater awareness
these days of the
health cost of pollution.
“It may be that the climate
change issue will
be the first major environmental
issue that
can’t be set aside by anyone.”