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LETTER TO THE EDITOR

Trinidad is too small for aluminum smelting

Friday, December 8, 2006

Dear Sir:

Some special interest groups are determined that Trinidad should serve as a site for ALCOA aluminium-smelting. This is extremely unwise and short-sighted in a small country with a quickly-growing population (compressed in its western half) that is, furthermore, already quite badly polluted by exploitation of oil and gas resources and their related industries, such as fertilizer-production.

The by-products of aluminium-smelting hurt plants as well as animals, human and other, due

  1. To the highly polluting fumes that result from the intense heat and chemical process needed to liquefy the bauxite.
  2. The 'red mud' waste contaminates the soil and, before long, fresh and salt water.

Canada has long had, because of its cheap electricity, many aluminium refineries. We pay a high environmental cost that is bearable only because we have so much land relative to population.

Listen to the people 'from South' who don't want another menace to their health and that of their children and grandchildren!

S. Campbell

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