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Tuesday, July 30, 2013 X Volume 26 No. 60
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Councillors chirpy on Twitter City’s Ajax Sometimes it works for them, sometimes it doesn’t — and not all on city council spend much time in Twitterverse report lands with a boom By Andrea Klassen STAFF REPORTER
andrea@kamloopsthisweek.com
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S NEWS BROKE ANOTHER WELL-KNOWN KAMLOOPSIAN WAS HEADED TO A JOB WITH THE PEOPLE BEHIND THE PROPOSED AJAX MINE, COUN. DONOVAN CAVERS TOOK TO TWITTER. “Koopmans, Lacasse, Ofee [sic] #sellfrom the city, so I try to balance things outs,” he wrote from his account out, a bit of personal stuff a bit of city @DonovanCavers on July 24. stuff.” “I stand by my tweets,” Cavers told Cavers is among the most active — KTW when contacted about the tweet the and the most opinionated — councillors next day. on social media. But, he admits, some previous run-ins It’s not an approach everyone at city he’s had on the micro-blogging platform hall is eager to adopt, and not did inform the timing of his one that has always worked jab. The tweet went out after smoothly for Kamloops’ 10 p.m, what Cavers refers youngest councillor. to as the “wee hours” for For example, a recent tweet Kamloops tweeters. about councillor pay increases “It’s not one that I would led to an angry exchange I’ll post the odd put out in the middle of the between Cavers and others on city thing on day,” he said. Twitter. While the majority of the there, but I try Cavers is also the only city’s elected officials have councillor so far to spawn not to inundate an online presence, not all an online impersonator, people. of them are social-media Donovan_Cavers, who tweets hounds. impassioned condemnations of — Peter Milobar Ken Christian appears to meat and motor vehicles. mainly tweet pictures of local “So much water wasted events. to make ice, together we Marg Spina last used the can ban #icehockey from platform to talk about a North Kamloops. Can’t you play it Shore Business Improvement with a ball?” reads one typical Association open house — and before tweet, addressed in part to the Kamloops that, hadn’t tweeted in about a month. Blazers’ official Twitter account. And Mayor Peter Milobar’s feed is The fake account only sends tweets filled with sports talk and retweets from directly to other users and left Cavers teams and charities. trailing his impostor through the Twittersphere, checking the imperson“I’ll post the odd city thing on there, ator’s account up to four times a day to but I try not to inundate people,” Milobar keep on top of its activity. said. While he fields the rare question or He’s even adopted his own catchphrase concern about city business, the account is “#underscorethedifference” to draw attenalso a personal one. tion to the only discrepancy between the “A lot of my friends on there aren’t
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Air blasts could shake houses, break windows, consultant says names of the two accounts. While he doesn’t know who’s behind the account, Cavers figures he’s attracted the online negativity because he’s one of the most Internet-active councillors. “I’m just on it more often, so something like this is more likely to occur,” he said. Arjun Singh, another high-volume Twitter user, suggests it’s also a difference of approach. “I think Donovan sometimes in his own way can be — I don’t know what the word is, but he seems to work in that more confrontational mode sometimes,” he said. “If someone is like that, I try to start a conversation in a more co-operative ARJUN manner and steer it in that SINGH direction.” Oftentimes, that means taking it off Twitter altogether, Singh said, either to email or his blog or to a phone call or face-to-face meeting. With only 140 characters per tweet “you can be very easily misunderstood, and that’s not of good value to anybody,” said Singh. But, unlike Milobar, Singh said it’s not uncommon for him to pick up concerns to raise at council using Twitter, either by looking at tweets that contain the word Kamloops or by having conversations with other users. X See CAVERS A4
By Andrea Klassen STAFF REPORTER andrea@kamloopsthisweek.com
Sonic booms from blasting at the Ajax copper and gold mine could shake houses and frighten pets more than 10 kilometres from the proposed mine site south of Aberdeen. According to a technical memo from consulting service Golder Associates Ltd. posted on the B.C. Environmental Assessment Office’s project information page for Ajax, blasting at the mine will create loud noises or “air blasts.” “The air blast can cause a house to vibrate and could potentially break windows,” wrote Bruce Bosdet, a senior geotechnical engineer for Golder. A 10-kilometre range would encompass downtown Kamloops, a large part of the South Shore and radiate into parts of the North Shore. The memo was originally sent to Jen Fretz, the City of Kamloops’ top staffer on the Ajax file, in May of this year. The city is consulting with Golder for geotechnical work to help analyze the impact the mine could have. While the memo suggests Ajax proponents KGHM do not plan to study the effects of air blasts as part of their environmental assessment, KGHM spokeswoman Robin Bartlett said they were included in the information requirements for the mine’s assessment, which were finalized at the beginning of June. Bartlett said she couldn’t comment on whether Golder Associates’ conclusions about the blast were accurate. “I don’t have the answer to that,” she said. “Those are the tests we’re doing to include in our submission.”
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