Prince George's "Anti-Idling Fairy" & Ant-Sized Maps

Although this post from Opinion 250 here in Prince George (www.opinion250.com) is kind of old (dating back to Nov 6/09) it is also kind of quirky & funny so I am posting it here. . .

First It Was The Air Fairy-Now It's The Idling Fairy
By Ben Meisner
Friday, November 06, 2009 03:46 AM
First we have the Air Care Fairy, now we have the, Idle Free Fairy (Ambassador as City Hall calls it), we are definitely moving up.
Let’s start with the new, ”Idle Free Fairy” whose motto should be, "You fink and we create a stink”. They have started off with a bang.
From the public comes reports that there have been people idling their vehicles at Tim’s (my God what a surprise), Canadian Tire Car wash, (double my God what a surprise), UNBC, Spruceland, The Super Store and Oh God, North Nechako Rd. (Oh God that could be me, I feel like a criminal already). Mess up by idling your rig and we will give you a sticky, and if you don’t shape up we will give you a sign, not the one I had in mind either.
Whoa we do have a lot of time on our hands in the City to come up with these hair brain ideas, trying to make a comparison where it is not uncommon to reach -30 below and marrying that to the 604 where minus -5 they lose control of their senses. I wonder aloud at what temperature the City Council loses control of its senses?
Now can the new Idle Free Fairy have the power to climb aboard one of those CN locomotives sitting in their yards idling for several hours? Of course not, unless she is able to change it into a Volkswagen, sorree she has no authority. It’s you bums that she wants , those people that do the serious polluting have their own Fairy, it’s called "Clout".
Well just to make your blood boil a bit more so that you won’t have to idle your vehicle to keep warm, you will soon be hit by the Air Care Fairy, who has the power to drop a brochure off at your house and suggest you should quit burning wood. The reply to that knock on the door is not fit to print.
Here we go again, after discovering that golly Gee Whiz it wasn’t grandma who was responsible for the smoke in the air, and more over through some very serious investigations we were able to ascertain that one in four homes in PG did not burn wood, we have found a new way to get you. Send in the Fairies, they wave a wand and you won't believe it, the air is clean and fit again.
Did one of those arresting officers who found all that BC bud this week leave it in front of City Hall for a few days because the question "what have they been smoking?" does enter one’s mind.
I’m Meisner and that’s one man’s opinion.

Thanks Ben.

So more on the Prince George air quality issues from my perspective. . .

PG AIR (Prince George Air Improvement Roundtable) the multi-stakeholder group (industry, government, concerned citizens, health organizations) vested with the responsibility of cleaning up this air shed has come up with this idea for an "idling hot spot map" on their website to pinpoint sources of idling in the city -just tried to input my concerns about the 7 Tim Hortons drive-thrus in town but realized, you basically need to be the size of an ant or a pinhead yourself to be able to utilize this map. Go ahead try it: www.pgairquality.com, and if you can figure it out, please let me know.

. . . . did it work !? What happened when I tried is that I clicked on the map to try to get it to zoom into the close proximity at least of where I know the annoying air polluting things to be (not just Timmy's to be fair - could throw in a refinery, about three pulpmills, some chemical plants and at least one pellet plant and some other stuff like Burger King's grease-emitting fry-maker, parking lots with idlers trying to keep their vehicles warm while they shop for an hour,

but when I went to click on the map a balloon came up right away asking me for my concern -- it did not afford me the opportunity to get too precise with my info! So this more-than-pin-sized fairy went away, not having made my air quality submission.