Mainstream Media May Often Be Wrong But They're Tenacious!

I submitted the following 'Letter to the Editor' to the Harbour City Star because, when we are making decisions involving hundreds of thousands, if not millions of taxpayer dollars on infrastructure projects, it is important that we have access to factual information and not just so much talk to advance someone else's agenda. Notice that the Canwest/Global (now Postmedia) newspaper didn't like the very valid criticism of their past poor performance in this regard in the last paragraph and so deleted it from the letter that was actually published.

Dear Editor,
The unattributed piece, Sewers improved in Lantzville, The Star, Wed., April 30th, leaves a lot to be desired in terms of reporting. If it was provided by government, surely you have realized by now that even they (you know - "for the people, by the people") have their own agendas and their communications are specifically designed to further them.
For example, the "laying of a sewer pipe along the community's foreshore from its border with Nanaimo north to Oar Road" was only a part of the $3.6 million public expenditure, (one that was completed BEFORE the affected properties had even been asked to approve their 1/3 share) with the distribution of smaller collector pipes throughout an area of 208 (not 225 as reported) homes and businesses and a sewage lift station comprising the bulk of it.
Since it is the fields which normally fail in septic systems and the tanks remove about 40% of the Total Suspended Solids (TSS), 60% of the Biological Oxygen Demand (BOD) and 5-10% of the pathogens, it is irresponsible and just downright wrong to write that "(t)he problem of raw sewage leaking into open ditches from septic fields in Lantzville, where most residences are not hooked into the Regional District of Nanaimo sewer system [in fact, none were at the time] has alarmed residents for years". Not one piece of factual evidence has ever been provided to support that claim or level of concern.
It is uninformed and incorrect articles like yours which are the cause for alarm. Remember when your sister paper, the Nanaimo Daily News, ominously reported some 10 years ago that Lantzville was "literally a cesspool" and sewers were "criminally overdue"? One would have thought we'd all be dead by now!