I was once told that Cranbrook's waste disposal plant was once "State of the Art" way back when. I'm sorry, but I can't agree. It was a dumb idea then, and it's a dumber idea now. And what is City Hall planning to do - make it even bigger.

We need a Methane Waste Disposal Plant. If some backward rural impoverished community in India can do it, why can't we?

A methane sewage disposal plant has many advantages over our present system of spraying stuff onto a farmer's field. A methane waste disposal plant can not only pay for itself, it can actually make our city a lot of money.

1) Methane is a gas that burns easily. We can use it to power a generator to create electricity that we can pipe back into the grid and sell. This money can be used to completely pay for our new methane waste disposal plant.

2) Methane in our present sewage disposal plant simply enters the air and is considered to be a terrible unwanted pollutant. By burning methane (to turn our electrical generator) we produce another greenhouse gas, called carbon dioxide. But carbon dioxide is about one fifth as polluting. So by burning methane we are actually saving the environment.

By turning methane into carbon dioxide, we get what are called carbon credits. This means people who pollute a lot shall pay us money because our methane plant is so green.

3) We also save money because we no longer need to buy any chemicals to treat our sewage. Plain old air does the purification for us. And as you all know, air costs very little.

4) After all methane gas is removed, what remains can make us even more money. The resulting residue is almost perfect manure. It's odorless, completely sterile and super rich in nutrients - which can be sold to every farmer and gardener in B.C. and Alberta.

Not only does a methane waste disposal plant remove one cost, it gives us three separate sources of income. If we wanted, we could turn this into a booming industry by encouraging farms and other communities to send us their waste as well.

If third world rural villagers, who haven't two pennies to rub between them, can see the economics of creating a methane plant, then why can't we use this old/modern technology?

At the very least it would pay for itself; at the most it could make Cranbrook very rich.

John York

Cranbrook