Letters To The Editor
SPOKANE MATTERS
Red lights: Timing is crucial
It’s getting tiresome, reading endless letters about Spokane drivers running red lights.
Consider this scenario on North Division. At 30 mph, you are traveling 44 feet per second and approaching an intersection. (at 35, it’s 51 feet.) The light turns yellow.
Foot off accelerator. How far are you from the intersection? Can you stop without standing your car on its nose?
Check the rear-view mirror. Is someone riding your bumper or can you stop without getting rear-ended?
Decision made? Foot to brake?
How many seconds have gone by? Two? Three? Because your car doesn’t slow enough the instant you decelerate, you have probably already traveled too far to stop.
Through the intersection you go, and the light turns red before you get across. Oh well.
Have you ever timed the yellow lights on Division? Try to find one that stays on for as long as three seconds.
Now that you understand, let’s see you make a legal left turn (before the light turns red) onto Division! Jean Reiter Loon Lake
Leave traffic patterns alone
There is a saying, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” The city’s planners must have more to do than spend time trying to screw up the city’s traffic patterns (“Planners seek lower speed limits,” June 25).
As I read the list, Wall Street above the hill would be downgraded. Do any of these people know how many grocery stores there were on Wall Street in the ‘30s and 40’s? It has never been a purely “residential street.”
Are they trying to force everyone onto Division Street? With the help of Olympia, that may be completed by the year 2100. Broadway between Elm and Summit? You can’t get through there without a bulldozer.
First, the Environmental Protection Agency says idling cars cause pollution, moving cars don’t. So if you back traffic up, you create pollution. Maybe these people’s time would be better spent figuring out why we have all the taxi zones in front of the Davenport Hotel.
Why try to force drivers to seek other routes? I live on a feeder arterial. You can count the accidents over the past 20 years on one hand and have one finger left over. Charles E. McCollim Spokane
OTHER TOPICS
Coincidence funny, meaningful
While I find it quite alarming that the drinking water at Kaiser’s Mead plant is contaminated, I also find it humorous that a letter from Bernard P. Leber Jr., Northwest environmental manager for Kaiser Aluminum in Spokane, defending the Republicans’ plan to gut the Clean Water Act would appear on the same day this story was made public.
(Staff cartoonist) Milt Priggee will be hard-pressed to top the humor I found in this turn of events, but I hope he will try. Mr. Leber and the rest of Priggee’s critics should realize that without their cartoonish ideas, cartoonist would be relegated to the funny pages.
As long as people have cartoonish ideas, I hope Priggee and others continue to show them for what they are. Michael E. Tobin Spokane
We’ll long pay for forest mistakes
The Spokesman-Review’s editorial board may wish to consider points of view besides those of Ken Koli of the Intermountain Forest Industries Association.
Fire sales may be appropriate in some settings but not in others. Like human burn patients, burned forests require a higher level of care.
The Spokesman-Review and Intermountain Forest Industries Association advocate suspending environmental laws designed to allow some logging but balance other forest values, such as clean water, fisheries and wildlife.
An important point consistently missed by the editorial board, although perhaps not by the association, is that the logging-without-laws amendment sponsored by Sen. Slade Gorton applies to most forests, not just to dead trees in burned forests. Included are “dying trees” (whatever those are) and “associated” green trees.
Paper prices (including newsprint) are high and wood chips are scarce. Having overcut the forests they control directly, the companies are reaching for trees in the national forests. They intend to get trees at fire sale prices, bilking citizen taxpayers.
The Review and the association are willing to risk our already-damaged national forests on a promise: Trust us. We’re the timber companies and we’ll take care of your national forests. Avert your eyes the next time you drive through Snoqualmie Pass and the cut-over Coeur d’Alene watershed.
Future generations that will live with cut-over forests and watersheds should hold many people and institutions accountable for having sacrificed public interests for corporate profits. John Osborn, M.D. Inland Empire Public Lands Council
Help protect Bonnie Lake
The June 18 article, “Bonnie Lake Paddle Tour,” by Rich Landers created quite a stir in our area. Landowners met that night to formalize what they’ve been doing for more than 100 years: preserve and protect the pristine area surrounding Bonnie Lake.
The United Bonnie Lake Land Owners are concerned about the article’s inaccuracies. The term “rest area” implies facilities are available, but none are. One of the rest areas mentioned on the map is on private property. The 3/4-mile hike up to Buckeye Falls is all on private property not open to the public.
There are no public access roads to the lake and only privately owned pasture land where the rodeo grounds once stood.
Fire pits mentioned were built by trespassers and are not safe. A timber fire would be extremely difficult to fight there, and firefighting equipment coming in would also do damage. There is no easy way to get help if someone is injured or gets bitten by a rattlesnake.
Travel guide authors tend to encourage too much traffic into remote areas, and so these areas soon lose their beauty.
To help protect our land and the public, we are posting our land so the public can help support us in our efforts to preserve and protect the brittle environment surrounding the lake.
Please do support us in our efforts to protect the environment and keep this area unique and peaceful by respecting our private property while enjoying the waters of Bonnie Lake. Louise Belsby United Bonnie Lake Land Owners, Cheney
See bureau before entering mine
I was distressed to read of the tragic deaths of two young men who were exploring an old abandoned mine in Idaho.
For 26 years, I worked for the Bureau of Mines in Spokane. During that time, I had countless occasions, by correspondence, telephone or personal contact, to warn against the dangers of entering old and/or abandoned mines.
Before I retired, I had begun revising the 1948 Bureau of Mines Information Circular 7479, titled, Hazards of Entering Old Mine Workings. I did this hoping the circular might be reissued. Unfortunately, I retired before that could be accomplished.
I urge anyone who even thinks of entering one of these old mines to first contact the Bureau of Mines here in Spokane, or any of the other bureau offices. Gerald W. Klett Spokane