I write to express renewed and growing concern over the environmental costs of any change to the unanimous Council decision regarding Picton Terminals in 2020.

This is not a political issue but an extremely serious environmental disaster in the making. Picton Terminals is not on a deep water bay. Anyone who knows where the water intake is located for thousands of County residents knows this is a very shallow Bay, treated as an “inland lake,” not a Great Lake, by Quinte Conservation Authority.

Our Bay has two centuries worth of toxic substances that have lain quietly at rest. John A. MacDonald never imagined 140m long, loaded container ships coming so close to the central water intake. It is a safe assumption that sediment will be disturbed – and we’re not even talking about the risk of a spill. A Boil Water advisory will be a joke when one is talking about heavy metals from arsenic to zinc being disturbed.

News of this disaster will gut local tourism, local businesses, even housing prices. When did you last vacation in Walkerton or Flint? Would you buy a place there? The possibility of a new Highway 49 does not begin to offset the probable costs to the County.

Not one person – no one- has made a convincing case for any benefit to the County of a port.

All the “negotiating” around Picton Terminals (which to all intents and purposes was a settled issue) has been done out of public view. When the inevitable happens, people will feel angry and betrayed.

Respectfully, from someone dependent on Picton & Bloomfield water,

D. R. Schuller, MD, FRCP(C), retired