ben gene rpm eras ase Toss _ PARKER COMES OUT SLUGGING IN PORT STORM — - AS pet “ , amen’ JEDNESDAY, JULY 3, 1991 ‘ol. 7, Issue No. 27 re Ser a8 a 7 etopia ke. Phone 635-7840 Fax 635-7269 Serving the communities of Terrace, Thornhill, Usk, Cedarvale, Kitwanga, Meziadin, Stewart and the Nass Valley 75 cents plus GST Orenda to reveal . choice of pulp mill site today Orenda Forest Products will end several weeks of speculation today by announcing a new site for its proposed pulp and paper mill. The announcement is expected at 1:30 p.m., a time chosen by company management to coincide with the close of trading in eastern Canadian and U.S. stock markets. Orenda is a publicly- . traded company. a Company officials declined to give any hint of the location. ; Orenda originally chose the Swan Lake area near Meziadin Junction as the preferred site for the mill proposal. The company fled a prospectus based on that site selection in November of last year, but recently Orenda vice president, Frank Foster said they had been given "verbal indications" by government officials that o the site would not pass. the provincial M Review. A Process. He said the prospectus would have to be extensively . reworked because many of the premises were’ specific to the Swan Lake location. ae ae y Orenda president Hugh Cooper indicated two weeks ago that . the new site would be "closer to population areas and infrastruc- ture. Health Care Society optimistic despite hospital bed closure expect anything to happen immedi- by Tod Strachan 2 2 Ean TROUBLIN Skeena MP Jim Fulton wears a puzzled expression as he contemplates a bottie of the water supplied to Canadian National Railway workers throughout the national rail network. The water is purchased under contract by CN —- from a company in Louisville, Kentucky. "This is pathetic," he remarked. "We have some of the best water in the world." Fulton wants the individual responsible for awarding the contract fired. CN public affairs officer Marion Robson said the G WATERS contract was awarded in October 1989, The contract went to the American company, she said, only because the quality of the water was acceptable at a price substantially below that tendered by any Canadian company. The water is Louisville municipal tap water. Robson said the contract is for an indefinite term. It will be re-tendered when CN’s purchasing agents feel there has been enough of a change in the market price of bottled water to make It advantageous for CN to call for offers again. and Nancy Orr A delegation from the Terrace Regional Heaith Care Society met with Minister of Health Bruce Strachan and Skeena MLA Dave Parker in Victoria last Wednesday to discuss regional funding for Mills Memorial Hospital. Although Mills Memorial serves as a regional hospital, they are funded as a municipal hospital and this means they're short-funded by _ about a half million dollars a year. The Society delegation included chairman David Lane, finance committee chairman Dave Mc- Keown, MMH chief of staff Dr. Lani Almas, and CEO Michael Leisinger. Although the delegation returned empty-handed, they brought back with them plenty of optimism. According to Leisinger, “It went quite well.” He says they didn’t ately but it appears now the minis- try has a better understanding of the services offered by Mills Me- morial and may be closer to grant- ing regional funding for regional services. Still, any promise of regional funding sometime in the future doesn’t help MMH balance their budget now. As a result, the society’s board of directors passed a resolution Thursday night to close more than 35 percent of the hospital's beds in medical surgical, paediatrics and psychiatrics. This is something Lane told Strachan and Parker would be happening, and it did. The number of beds in medical surgery have been reduced from 30 to 20, In paediatrics the number of beds dropped from 22 to 12. And in the psychiatric wing four beds were closed reducing the number — Continued on page A3 The housing crunch — more on the Northwest forum, A9