ACC plan goes off the rails

I was surprised, but not all that surprised, when Kim Sigurdson called last night to announce his Aboriginal Cogeneration Corp. is giving up on plans for its gasification plant that would process waste railway ties on Mission Flats.

Sigurdson has been under tremendous pressure, culminating in last week’s Rail Ties, Real Issues forum hosted by the chamber of commerce. “It had a profound effect on me,” he told me last night in describing the impact of that forum .”On a personal level, I was a little taken aback, but on a business level, I expected it.”

He pretty much signaled his intentions in a scrum following the forum, in which he indicated he would “reconsider” his plans. I had coffee with him the following morning, and he seemed tired and beat up. My view is that there’s been a whole lot of talk going on behind the scenes for the past few weeks. This has been a political nightmare for the Liberals, and it’s no secret they badly wanted him out of Kamloops.

The decision to leave raises a number of questions:

What will happen to his ICE funding now that he’s doing what Terry Lake and Kevin Krueger want?

Will the protests follow him wherever he goes, or will the NIMBYists who kept asking “Why Kamloops?” let the next community decide on its own?

And, how hard will it be to find another community, after all the controversy here?

This issue may be over for Kamloops, but it’s not over for ACC.