ROTHENBURGER — Asking for letters, vs. actually writing them

COLUMN — Reading up on Ajax is no walk in the park. How anyone is going to decipher thousands of pages of stuff once KGHM submits its environmental assessment application is beyond me.

The City is going to decide next week whether to spend $300,000 to hire an expert to study the application, and may ask KGHM to help with the bill.

It’s hard enough trying to figure out media releases, let alone reports. Let’s deal with the KAPA release of awhile back about businesses that oppose Ajax, for example. I was taken to task by Anne Neave this week for misreporting what she had to say about that.

Call me thick, but I confess I had to read through her statement several times in recent days before I figured out where the problem was.

This is what she wrote June 8:  “During a month-long campaign in May, 150 Kamloops business owners who are known opponents of the proposed Ajax mine, were asked to sign a letter of opposition to Minister of Energy and Mines, Bill Bennett. Signees personalized their letters with additional comments and sent them individually by Canada Post to the Minister. Many chose to write their own letters of opposition under company letterhead. Organizers felt that individual letters would have more impact than a single letter with 150 signatures. The campaign was conducted by members of Kamloops Area Preservation Association and Kamloops E-mail Network of Concerned Citizens. Names of the signees are being kept confidential.”

The subject line was “Business owners send letters of opposition to Minister Bennett.”

This is the headline I wrote that same day: ‘150 business leaders write in opposition to Ajax; names to be kept confidential.’

In the story I quoted Neave as saying 150 letters had been written to Bennett. This week, it came out via an FOI request that only 15 people sent letters to Bennett opposing Ajax. A KAPA spokesman said others may have been sent somewhere else.

The application under Freedom of Information legislation was for “Correspondence, emails, letters, faxes from individuals, businesses or groups sent to the office of Minister Bill Bennett that express support or opposition to the proposed Ajax Project, near Kamloops B.C. owned and operated by KGHM International. (Date range for Record Search: from 05/01/2015 to 06/09/2015).”

The government doesn’t release the names of people who submit FOI applications, but I’m guessing it wasn’t an opponent.

Except for a couple of them (not “many”), the 15 letters sent to Bennett were form letters, some with handwritten notes at the bottom that said things like “I have already moved further from the proposed mine. I will be encouraging my children and grand children to leave if the mine is approved,” “You cannot tell me that a Polish mining company cares anything for the citizens of this community…. It will be a toxic blight on our community forever,” and “I have attended many meetings and lectures both for and against Ajax and I find it frightening that your government would actually approve this mine.”

Also included in the disclosure was the “Kamloops Business Leaders for Ajax” letter created by KGHM and signed by 42 businesses this past spring. Most of the names were redacted from that letter, too, even though they’ve already been published.

Anyway, the light eventually went on — the letters were asked for, not necessarily written or signed. I’ve always felt errors should be freely acknowledged by media when they make them, but I would recommend that when issuing media releases, organizations be clear up front what is and isn’t happening.

Asking people to sign letters isn’t very newsworthy compared to people actually signing those letters, so how about saying this in the media release: “KAPA doesn’t know how many people actually signed letters.” That would have guaranteed people like me wouldn’t get it wrong.

All this might sound like an excuse but I dislike that word. I hate being wrong, for one thing. “Reason” or “explanation” has a nicer ring to it. (The media sometimes like the word “clarification” rather than “mistake” or “screwed up” when correcting themselves.)

Whichever, I did get it wrong and it’s only proper to be corrected when that happens. But Jeez, can the players help out a little here? It ain’t easy.

I spent three hours the other night trying to get enough for a story out of a 249-page update from the Environmental Assessment Office on what KGHM Ajax has to cover off in its permit application. The title should be a clue as to how riveting this stuff is: “Proposed Ajax Mine Project, Application Information Requirements/ Environmental Impact Statement Guidelines, As Issued by Environmental Assessment Office and Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency On July 23, 2015 for KGHM Ajax Mining Inc., Application for Environmental Assessment Certificate and Environmental Impact Statement for a Comprehensive Study.”

Well, that had me right there — I couldn’t put it down. Seriously, imagine going through 10,000 pages (or is it 50,000?) of this kind of material, complete with graphs and charts.

I wish the best of luck to anybody trying to make sense of it all. And I do hope KAPA keeps sending media releases — I promise to read them more carefully and to ask questions.

Mel Rothenburger can be contacted at armchairmayor@gmail.com, facebook.com/mrothenburger.7 or @MelRothenburger on Twitter.