http://www.thesudburystar.com/2018/07/18/letter-do-gooders-ruining-future-for-youth

The smelting process at the Outokumpu ferrochrome plant in Tornio, Finland. (Postmedia)

One of the criteria Noront Resources stated in their report was an assessment of community acceptance of hosting the facility. Even though the majority of Sudburians supported the smelter for the Coniston site, the do-gooder NIMBYS succeeded in their negativity and opposition to this major development for the Sudbury area.

They have cost the Greater Sudbury region thousands of jobs. The economic development for the future of our community is in doubt.

NIMBYS, you are living in an Alice in Wonderland world if you believe that employment occurs without any industrial involvement. This isn’t the Garden of Eden. If we want to succeed in life, we must get our hands dirty, we must tolerate some pollution.

Today we have new and modern technology that controls and filters any pollution compared to the past. Look at Vale -- it no longer requires the Superstack with today’s advancements in technology. The sulphur is filtered, contained and sold as a separate byproduct.

If Mond Nickel was prohibited from mining and building smelters in the Sudbury region at the turn of the 20th century, the city of Sudbury would be non-existent today. It would be a railway town no bigger than Capreol.

Where would the province of British Columbia be without their mines and smelters? How about Alberta? Let’s leave the oil and gas in the ground and suffer the consequences — no gas to run our automobiles or heat our homes.

It is the mines and smelters that create employment and a healthy economy. You do-gooders are out there, preventing progress and interfering with advancement in our society.

We are now in the 21st century with the latest scientific development in industrial technology. Our opus operandi in the computer age has been eliminating pollution in many industrial environments.

NIMBYs, you will suffer the backlash of your protests in the future, when your children and grandchildren will have to leave the area after they graduate from college or university to seek employment elsewhere.

Sudbury has become a community of seniors where there is little growth in the future for our youth. Your children will end up living thousands of miles from home, and you will be asking, what happened to our Greater Sudbury area? Where did we go wrong?

Tony Sottile

Sudbury