Mr.Clyde Jackman
Minister of Environment
Confederation Building
P.O. Box 8700
St.John's NL.
A1B 4J6
Mr. Jackman;
This is Ken Thibeau the First Vice President of CEP Local 1093 in Stephenville.
Our executive and our general membership of displaced mill workers would like you to advise and update us on the status of the Stephenville Mill environmental cleanup and decommissioning.
Abitibi Consolidated registered their undertaking plan with your department on August 7th 2006 and you announced the release of the project on October 6th 2006. According to their 23 page submission, the decommissioning was scheduled to commence in 2006 with the Phase II ESA to be done from July to October of 2006.
Presently there is no indication at the site that the environmental remediation has begun. Surely if this was the private property of an average citizen pressure would have been applied by your department long ago to have this work completed. In particular, considering the vast amount of contamination of various types at the former mill site, we assumed you would give this issue more priority. We had provided former Minister Byrne with a 2 page listing of known site pollution in April of 2006.
I should not have to remind you, but I will, that our Union Membership is under a contractual right to 2 year re-call until October 28th 2007 and that 1 shift of work would enable some of our members to achieve a semblance of a retirement pension. In this regard we have an arbitration case pending against Abitibi at great expense to this Local union. However, if your department and your government continues this apparent collusion and cooperation with Abitibi by allowing this delay to continue beyond the expiration of our contractual rights, our efforts and incurred expense will be in vain.
Therefore I shall expect your prompt response on this urgent issue for our Members!
Yours truly,
Ken Thibeau
First Vice President
CEP Local 1093
Stephenville NL.
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