Some of you may have heard on CBC radio that my partner, Gail Bauman, has launched a constitutional challenge against use of chlorine in BC, where an alternative source of potable water is not provided to people who have chemical sensitivities especially to chlorine.

This culminates a seven year struggle in Kaslo where Gail consistently asked that her right to potable water be protected in accordance with equality rights provisions of the Charter, which specifically denies government the right to discriminate against physically disabled persons.

She is also citing section 6, the right of residents and Canadians to live anywhere in Canada and the security provisions of section 7.

She will be interviewed on CBC Daybreak in the southern interior at around

6. 42 AM Pacific Time or 7.42 Mountain Time Thursday January 18, and was the lead front page story in the Nelson Daily News on Tuesday January 16.

The matter is first scheduled to be heard in the Nelson Supreme Court on Thursday and Friday March 1 and 2nd.

I will be representing Gail in court, as we cannot afford legal counsel.

Over the last seven years Gail has been reaching out and connecting with a small network of women who have extreme chemical sensitivities.

These women receive a pittance with which to sustain themselves, be it a CPP disability pension and/or social assistance.

This morning we received a phone call that asked why we spent so much on a filter.

Gail set three criteria in her decision to purchase a filter.

1. It had to be able to remove chlorine for the whole household supply, including watering the garden in summer as she cannot tolerate the chemical in any quantity.

2. The filter system had to not use chemicals in its filtering process, as she and many others cannot tolerate most of the chemicals used in this society.

3. The filter had to have a proven track record of use by people with her condition.

After four months of searching she found a company in Colorado run by a women with Multiple Chemical Sensitivities.

Over a period of two months after installation of this filter Gail was finally able to fully reuse the water in Kaslo, including drinking it...something she had not been able to do since the early 1990's.

In May of 2000, thanks to the addition of chlorine, I was forced to watch her health slowly deteriorate as she struggled with trying to use the water as minimally as possible...obtaining unchlorinated rainwater, etc when possible.

For others who live on the margins of society, as Gail said in her newspaper interview, "they are forced to live with a lower level of health", which is sometimes already extremely debilitated to begin with.

That is why Gail decided to fight back via the Supreme Court after being ignored, ostracized, etc for seven years.

When I phoned the Deputy Provincial Medical Health Officer in late May, 2000, he asked me over the phone to tell Gail to try and learn how to tolerate residual chlorine in the water supply.

One Health official wrote a letter to the Medical Health Officer in the East Kootenay in which he suggested that the 8 affidavits filed in the Erickson lawsuit were over chlorine were examples of what people thought was happening to them.

I will end my rant here.

Andy