Given what I know regarding the integrity of the individuals on the project team I have to take exception to your allegation that they simply found a way to exclude your proposal in order to go with the ‘favoured’ proponent.

Do we know how to say ‘sour grapes’?

Of course our real issue was the decision to reject our bid – more so than the decision to select Corix.

If indeed a detailed technical analysis was completed before the decision to reject our bid was made, it is certainly not clear to us. The only feedback we received was very general in nature, contained many factual errors and only served to indicate our proposal was not reviewed thoroughly or not understood in the haste to select another bid. We were never asked about anything in our proposal and never given the opportunity to address any assumptions made or concerns raised, so have been forced to go public with our concerns.

Given there were only two bids, I am sure the residents of Dawson, not to mention the governments funding this, would have hoped the committee would do everything possible to make it a competitive process, rather than simply finding a way to eliminate one bid so there is only one option.

We will of course continue with our appeal and hope that since we can prove there were many inaccuracies in the statements made about our proposal, someone besides the Yukon News will be concerned about the process.

In the spirit of honest debate all sides deserve the opportunity to bring forward their view. Of course this is an editorial decision made by the Yukon News and is therefore anyone’s guess as to what motivates their journalistic ambitions.

Thank you for your observations regarding Virden and Homer. Town Council will be meeting with Corix soon to hear what they have to say. I will certainly bring forward your concerns.

In the section in this article on effluent, Ms. Harwood makes an attempt to correct the errors in the original story, but only further confuses the issue.

All your readers need to know is that for the Dawson City project, the fecal coliform level must be less than 200 /100 mililtres per the specifications (far below the current 20,000 regulatory limit expressed in this story which is not relevant). For this measure Virden MB is at 9,300. That is correct 9,300 versus a requirement to get to 200. For total coliforms the Canadian guidelines are 1,000 and Virden is at 110,000.

TSS must be less than 25 mg/L. Homer Alaska while “easily meeting standards”, actually works hard to get it to 30. Virden is another story as it has not had a monthly average below 74 in the last year and a half and is often well over 100. That is among the reasons this system is in the process of being replaced.

I have no doubt technology has improved over the years, but would still be interested in where this technology is actually in use in situations similar to Dawson City. There are apparently “many” but they are not being promoted by Noram for some reason, nor mentioned by the committee. I also believe there is an inconsistent message being communicated. Ms. Harwood says one of the reasons this system was selected was because it has been tested in other sites. Meanwhile, her boss Ms. Leslie Anderson says “references don’t count for points”. Which is it??