LETTERS: What’s more important, Sand or Water?

[Oscar]

What’s more important?

[ https://www.winnipegfreepress.com/opini ... s-nov-23-5 ]

November 23, 2023

The big question: is sand more important than water? Water is the lifeblood of all living things.

The province has agreed to work with a German company that wants to build a $3-billion solar panel manufacturing operation in Manitoba, but the access to the key ingredient for the project — pure quartz — is still in question.

When in government, Manitoba’s environment and climate minister came under fire for the way the Progressive Conservative government has shepherded a proposal to drill thousands of wells for ultra-pure silica sand. Sio Silica, drilling in the very heart of Manitoba’s water sources, affecting an area larger than the City of Winnipeg.

If there ever was a time when plain, common sense was needed, it is now.

Water is not a game to be utilized, like Russian Roulette. Water is for life, and our future generations.

This is the result of governments’ wishy-washy policies and the illogical practice that agricultural and commerce operators have a right to run the show. Whatever happened to the public good as the guiding principle?

Approximately 750,000 residents of Winnipeg rely on drinking water from Shoal Lake, Ont. The two aquifers in the proposed area of Sio drilling feeds Winnipeg’s water source. Yet, barely a murmur do I hear or see from Winnipeggers. I often wonder, why?

Let us work and look to the future, for the sake of our children and future generations, a future that isn’t filled with disaster and water hardships. We must confront corporate greed. We must stop the pollution and plunder. Governments must be brought to task, for they squander what we all need to survive on this Earth. They glorify and elevate economics above the very things that keep us alive.

They blindly march in lock-step to the demands of industry under the guise of sustainable development. It is the corporations that call the shots in today’s world, not government.

Something to think about.

Is sand more important than water?

John Fefchak,
Virden