Letters To The Editor

FORESTS AND THE ENVIRONMENT

Gold mine a win-win proposition

As a mineral resource professional, I enjoyed the Crown Jewel gold mine draft environmental impact statement hearing in Oroville, Washington, on Aug. 17. The spirit of camaraderie and unity between the townsfolk, businessmen, miners, ranchers and loggers was exciting.

Battle Mountain Gold and Crown Resources have been repeatedly criticized for the Crown Jewel project. In reality, they shouldn’t be held culpable for the coming mine. They only supply the demand from people, industry, and technology.

Neither should the Forest Service or the Washington State Department of Ecology be verbally abused for their participation in the permitting process.

The aforementioned entities are doing what is required of them by law and then some.

If you disagree with these laws, petition for legislative changes, This is the way a representative democracy works. Leave the working persons alone so they can raise their families and create the taxable wealth that makes our country prosper.

The demand for gold and other metals will not go away until we return to the Stone Age. That is not a preferred alternative. If this 1.5 million ounces of gold isn’t produced in Washington state under rigid environmental guidelines, it will likely come from a Third World country with fewer environmental rules. Thus, a globally responsible environmentalist should welcome gold production from the Crown Jewel project, rather than from a country where additional environmental degradation takes place. Jim Ebisch Spokane

Sherman was easier on Georgia

I read with great interest the Aug. 20 article, “Private logging, public eyesore.” I’ve had loggers on my property four times and I’ve heard the standard pitch. In short, they’ll tell you anything they think you might like to hear.

The fact is, once you give permission to log your property, you are at their mercy. If they have logged for any length of time, they know there is little you can do. Public eyesore, theft, property damage - you are on your own.

In my case, the state attorney general’s office in Boise ignored my request to view the problems created by loggers, as did the FBI. Two letters, one to thencongressman Tom Foley and one to Sen. Larry Craig, were ignored.

Log your property. Think about it. Odds are, you’ll lose one way or another. Good luck. W.L. Reynolds Spokane

Referendum 48 is a corporate grab

Ellis Baumgarner’s letter of Aug. 31 indicates that we taxpayers should pay the big money interests to be nice and not pollute our air, water and soil. He says we should support the Constitution.

Well, how about the preamble to that document, which says that one of its aims is “to promote the general welfare,” not promote the profits of special interests.

Top financial contributors to the passage of Initiative 164 (now labeled Referendum 48) included Boise Cascade, the Building Industry Association of Washington, Longview Fibre Co., Issues PAC of Washington (builders and real estate), Murray Pacific (timber), Plum Creek (timber), Rayonier Timberlands, Simpson Timber, Washington Association of Realtors, Washington Cattlemen’s Association, Washington State Farm Bureau and Washington State Dairy Federation.

If we ordinary citizens (taxpayers) let ourselves be duped into picking up the tab for the big money boys (giving them welfare), we will have only ourselves to blame. Big money (ours) is at stake.

Protect our rights by voting no on Referendum 48. Tom Rogers, Jr. Spokane

BURNING ISSUE

Answer is to curtail burning

Grass growers are on record as saying it doesn’t matter how many acres they burn - they just need a good smoke- management program.

The concept of smoke management is, if you can get the smoke to go high enough, it’ll magically disappear.

The reality of smoke management is, smoke doesn’t go away - it just goes somewhere else.

The definition of a good smoke-management program is that the smoke is where you aren’t.

They went to Olympia and brought back a law allowing them to burn whenever they want, because they couldn’t do good smoke management during a four-week season. Never mind that they weren’t restricted to a burn season prior to 1990 and somehow were never able to make smoke management work back then, either.

Never mind that Idaho has had a longer burn season forever and its excellent smoke management program is not considered a flaming success if you happen to live in Sandpoint, Newman Lake or the Spokane Valley.

Smoke just doesn’t “manage” all that easily. The particulates and harmful gases in smoke stay suspended in air for long periods. Even if you get the smoke to blow on someone else today, there’s no guarantee it won’t be back tomorrow. Even if we get prevailing winds to behave, it doesn’t follow that people in Garfield, Chattaroy and Pullman have less of a right to breath smoke-free air than we do.

The only way to solve Spokane’s smoke problem is through smoke reduction, not smoke manipulation. We need acreage caps and a phase-down of burning. Tricia Hoffman Spokane

EDUCATION

Basics better than these goals

In reference to Staci Vesneske’s Sept. 1 letter, I differ with her definition of “high goals” that the Commission on Student Learning has drafted.

Under “social studies essential learning,” the CSL has required that students meet benchmarks to “describe the necessary knowledge and essential skills students would be expected to achieve.” For example, under “personal skills,” the grade 10 student would need to demonstrate at benchmark 3 that he “respects that solutions and decisions may require honoring diverse ideas and points of view.”

I agree that students should respect all people and should allow others to express their differing viewpoints. However, how will the schools assess the individual student to make sure that he honors (regards highly) diverse ideas or points of view? What if a student disagrees with the state’s political correctness mandates?

We need to get back to the academically sound disciplines of history, geography, economics and civics, and get rid of the low social engineering-political correctness goals contained in the May ‘95 CSL draft. Gloria Clark Spokane

School program defender wrong

Staci Vesneske’s Sept. 1 letter (“Critic lacks or disregards facts”) is testimony to: 1, lack of local control; 2, lack of core knowledge; and 3, lack of response to what parents want in the education of their children.

If our nation is to remain free and sovereign, our education system must remain free of state control. Lynn M. Stuter Nine Mile Falls

OTHER TOPICS

Internationalist approach has merit

Earth needs to strengthen its United Nations, so wars like that in Bosnia could be prevented.

If the member nations would maintain a strong world peacekeeping force, individual countries wouldn’t need to spend a lot of their gross national product on the military. That could substantially improve the world’s lot. We could also make a more concerted effort to reduce poverty, disease, injustice and could institute universal language, money, weights and measurements, etc. Dan C. Ebbighausen Spokane

Ultimately, God will judge all

When I read Thomas Parslow’s diatribe against the Bible (“Bible has terrible dark side,” Letters, Aug. 26), I laughed. He sounds like I feel sometimes.

Why does God allow so much evil to thrive in the world? Read Habakkuk, Mr. Parslow. He wondered too.

God lets us kill unborn children by the millions. If they are born, we murder, batter, molest and abandon them. As Oregon shows us, we are getting ready to kill the weak, the ill and the old, by calling it “compassion.”

How long are we going to get by with this? Don’t worry, Mr. Parslow, God will judge us. Sometimes He uses a much worse nation to exact judgment.

About the Bible, Mr. Parslow, some is history as seen through Jewish eyes. Remember, they were brought out of an evil and adulterous world to bless and save the world. They are as sinful as the rest of us. Compared to the people they were living among, the Jews were saints. Winifred Edwards Greenacres