Letters To The Editor

(From Letters, February 14, 1998): In G. Harvey Morrison’s Wednesday letter, a reference to the size of the Salmon recovery industry should’ve been nearly a half billion.

AIRWAY HEIGHTS

Walk a mile in their shoes, Clark

Re: “Firefighters faces burning bright red,” Feb. 3. Doug Clark, roll up your designer sleeves, put your putrid pen in your back pocket and then observe the real “dirty work” going on in the Airway Heights Volunteer Fire Department.

Watch as Fire Chief Toby Combs and his volunteer crew utilize their excellent medical assessment skills and lifesaving techniques. They are the first responders to the multiple-injury/fatal motor-vehicle accidents on Highway 2, to disfiguring industrial accidents, gunshot wounds, cardiac arrests, etc. Don’t forget the horrible airplane crashes and the bloody massacre at Fairchild Air Force Base.

Sweat with them in 100-degree temperatures as they battle devastating West Plains wildfires. Then, when and if you are lucky enough to go home, look at yourself in the mirror and try calling these valiant volunteer men and women “buffoons” and “sleazy.” Pretty hard when you are scrubbing blood out from under your fingernails and picking glass shards out of your scorched clothing.

Happy Valentine’s Day, Airway Heights Volunteer Fire Department. A little hanky-panky is a tiny reward for a thankless job well done. You have my respect! Susan C. (Sayers) Harper Airway Heights

Sources, motives are what’s suspect

Perhaps Doug Clark should seek employment with one of the many tabloids that find pleasure in writing stories similar to his column of Feb. 3, “Firefighters’ faces burning bright red.”

Clark and The Spokesman-Review consistently report on negatives when it comes to Airway Heights but fail to speak of the positive activities in our city.

We don’t see stories about these dedicated volunteers and the job they do responding to calls at all hours and in all types of weather. Nor do we hear about them playing Santa Claus at Christmas, sponsoring Easter egg hunts and helping collect food during the Q-6 food drives.

These individuals have responded to medical calls involving my family, and they have saved the lives of citizens of the community. I am proud of the job they have done. Remember the Fairchild shooting? Airway Heights Fire Department was there.

Take some time talking to organizations and elected officials who are working to improve the quality of life and image of Airway Heights, and write about that, instead of writing stories based on information received from disgruntled former employees, elected officials and citizens with an ax to grind. Dale R. Perry Airway Heights

Volunteer firefighters deserve respect

In response to recent articles published in The Spokesman-Review regarding the Airway Heights Fire Department, I ask, could you be more thankless?

This department is made up of 26 volunteer firefighters, 75 percent of whom don’t even live in the city of Airway Heights. But all of them sacrifice up to 100 hours a month protecting and serving the community. What do they ask for in return? Nothing. What do they deserve for their outstanding work? Respect.

How many people are aware if their local fire department is made up of volunteers? How many people are aware that these volunteers are the ones who show up at 2 o’clock in the morning to put out a house fire? How many people are aware that these volunteers are the ones who respond in a matter of minutes to help your sick or injured parent, spouse or child?

The volunteers of the Airway Heights Fire Department risk their lives, give up many hours of their personal life and, due to recent articles, put up with a lot of crap from their peers. They have had their department dragged through the mud, their reputations attacked and their personal lives dissected. Is this the way that we thank volunteers?

Whether you are a Catholic priest or a Hells Angel, you should be owed a debt of gratitude anytime you volunteer. Kyle C. Chase Airway Heights volunteer firefighter

SPOKANE MATTERS

What you see is what we’re stuck with

Let’s see if I understand this correctly.

The City Council is halfway through the Lincoln Street bridge project when it finally thinks it should ask the city manager where the money is going to come from to build it. The state denies the permit to build it because it violates the city’s own shorelines management plan.

The city budgets zero dollars for street repair for 1998 - an inexcusable act. The city traffic lights cannot be sequenced for a smooth flow of cars but can be sequenced as red lights to stop traffic, thus producing more pollution from idling cars and causing air emission problems.

City managers receive a retroactive pay increase for 1997 at the end of that year “for doing an excellent job,” although that action violates budgeting law.

I am certainly glad we have the more “efficient” city manager form of city government, with “experts,” and not “politicians” running it, because if we had politicians, we could have thrown them out long ago! Donald C. Brockett Spokane

DOE meddling in city affairs

The Department of Ecology denied the city of Spokane the right to build the Lincoln Street bridge because the bridge would occasionally cast shadows upon the river. The $9.2 million expended by the city for planning and preparation is thus wasted.

I have visited the river on cloudy days and this normal process of shading enhanced my experience. This DOE position reveals the radical environmentalism that now pervades this bloated state agency, and how DOE intends to inject itself into every facet of life across the state.

Elected city officials and taxpayers should make these decisions, not Olympia-based agencies bent upon expanding their bureaucracy. William T. Riley Soap Lake, Wash.

Greene should defer to Rodgers

In the short time she has served on the City Council, Cherie Rodgers has distinguished herself as exceptionally intelligent, hard-working and honest.

Rodgers was interested in clean water and air issues long before she joined the City Council. She hasn’t missed a Spokane County Air Pollution Control Authority meeting in three years and has brought considerable expertise to her position on its board of directors. Her stack of information on air issues has grown so large she can no longer carry it in her arms and now lugs around laundry baskets filled with complex research papers and legal documentation. Incredibly, all of the facts and figures in her paperwork are etched in her brain.

Now, a small group of field-burning farmers have banded together to engineer her removal from the SCAPCA board. They have found a willing replacement in Roberta Greene.

Greene has shown no interest in improving the quality of air in Spokane and publicly claims that she is simply a “bystander” in this drama. If this is true, she needs to publicly withdraw her name.

Council members Phyllis Holmes and Jeff Colliton refused to replace Rodgers. Greene also needs to acknowledge that Rodgers is by far the most qualified council member for the SCAPCA position.

I hope Greene will put aside her personal ambition and insist that Rodgers be allowed to continue her capable work as Spokane’s SCAPCA representative. Diane E. Radkey Spokane

HIGHER EDUCATION

EWU’s case lacks merit

Re: The proposed Washington State University-Eastern Washington University merger-compromise.

I am an alumnus of WSU and support the compromise being discussed in Olympia. I even support closure of the EWU campus.

The difference between WSU and EWU is that WSU did what taxpayers expect and took care of business. While EWU was squandering its funds on overpaid staff and oak tables, WSU has expanded its branch campuses and focused on the direction of higher education for the next century.

What has EWU done to deserve a second chance and what can it do for the area in the future that WSU, Gonzaga, Whitworth or our community colleges can’t? Instead of answering these questions, EWU has attempted to paint WSU as a shark in a pond of guppies, made the laughable threat of UW entering the picture, lied to the public about the origins of this debate and claims all it needs is just a few more students.

If EWU had done what the public expects from its institutions, it wouldn’t need a few more students to keep above board. How is a university with its grudgingly admitted problems supposed to lead Spokane into the next century? Are we to believe from its past and present performance that it will?

Spokane has everything to gain from WSU directing higher education in the area. We gain a respected research university with a vision for the area. A university that has proven its worth by its performance. A performance that backs its claim that it will add the programs the area needs. Loren Harris Spokane

THE ENVIRONMENT

Don’t let forests be locked up

The moratorium on road building is yet another attempt by the present administration, hand in hand with the Earth-Just Us groups, to bar access to our national forests.

When the purchaser road credits scam failed, the administration decided to come in the back door with this moratorium. This is not conducive to forest management and should be rejected by the public, which was excluded from the decision.

The no trespassing, no hunting and no fishing signs we see on private property will be seen on federal lands as well. If the environmental groups who want to take over our forests are allowed to set policy, we will see more and more of Just-Them running around in the forests.

It is sad that the Clinton administration has elected to elevate politics over scientific resource management to unilaterally pursue this new roadless area policy. This policy is certainly unwise and possibly unlawful.

The moratorium, and its after-the-fact, truncated public comment period, make a mockery of the environmental review and public participation procedures embodied in the 1969 National Environmental Policy Act and the 1976 National Forest Management Act. The administration insults the interested public by first announcing a decision and only then soliciting comments.

This is a wake-up call. We must rise up and be counted. There will be a 30-day comment period. Please contact your Forest Ranger districts and let them know we don’t want the moratorium.

Contact your representatives and tell them to stop this back-door attempt by the Clinton administration to lock up our forests. Gary M. Garrison Northwest Timber Workers Resource Council, Kettle Falls, Wash.

Clinton initiatives worthwhile

During his State of the Union address, President Clinton outlined some important environmental initiatives.

His new clean water action plan, if implemented, means we’ll finally address polluted runoff, the No. 1 threat to our region’s water quality from bad agriculture.

With all the congressional attacks on the wetlands and forests that filter our air and water, it’s nice to know somebody in Washington, D.C., cares about my child’s future.

Also, I’m pleased that the president announced a new set of tax incentives to reduce greenhouse gases. Now he needs to take action to force automobile manufacturers to improve mileage. The administration should mandate a rise in mile-per-gallon standards for cars and light trucks to 45 and 35 mpg, respectively. I drive a 12-year-old car that gets 40 miles per gallon. Why don’t newer cars perform as well?

Although he didn’t mention it specifically in his speech, the administration also just announced a new plan to put a temporary moratorium on building logging roads in the last unspoiled wild fragments of our national forests. Unfortunately, his plan leaves out a lot of important wild areas in Washington, Oregon and Alaska.

What’s really needed is a permanent end to logging, drilling and mining in our last vestiges of wild lands.

Join me in urging our elected representatives to fight for clean air and water, unroaded and unlogged wildernesses, and for cars that get more than 20 miles per gallon. Dr. Paul J. Lindholdt Spokane

Bungling of salmon issue must stop

For decades, the plight and hoped-for recovery of Columbia Basin salmon has been in the hands of the same federal bureaucrats who brought about their destruction.

Two of those agencies, Bonneville Power Administration and the Army Corps of Engineers, recently announced that they propose to save the fish by removing all the juveniles from the river and transporting them by truck or barge to below the last dam.

A blue ribbon group of scientists determined in 1996 that reliance on this practice will lead only to extinction of salmon.

A huge industry, by some estimates nearly $112 billion per year, has grown out of so-called salmon recovery. Sadly, most of this money has been wasted on failed technological schemes (such as barging) and on a few quack scientists willing to prostitute themselves for lucrative grants to seek proof of the unprovable.

After decades of applied technology, efforts to save and restore the salmon have failed.

Several years ago, a federal judge said it best: “The situation literally cries out for a major overhaul.”

Nonetheless, the status quo has continued behind a bureaucratic maze of stonewalling and study.

For far too long, the agencies charged with salmon recovery have acted more to appease those benefiting from the subsidized industrialization of the river than for preserving the resource. The law and our heritage demand that it be handled otherwise.

Salmon belong in our rivers. We can have abundant hydropower and a strong regional economy. We need new, strong leadership to reach a necessary balance or we risk losing both. G. Harvey Morrison Spokane

OTHER TOPICS

Students encouraged by favorable vote

Thank you, Spokane voters, for passing the bond and levy. You cannot believe how excited our students were on Feb. 4, coming to school knowing that in the next couple of years they will have new equipment, new materials, a new gymnasium and new classrooms to look forward to.

Way to go, Spokane, you are unbelievable! Thank you for the future of our city. John M. Reid, teacher and coach North Central High School, Spokane

‘Zipper’ reference out of line

In his Feb. 3 column, Doug Clark says, “I’m bored as everyone by the president’s chronic zipper mismanagement and assorted peccadillos.” This statement assumes that the various charges against President Clinton have already been proven and runs counter to the principle that a person should be considered innocent until proven guilty.

I’m not interested in trying the case here, only in indicating that there are enough reasons for doubting Monica Lewinsky to keep the case from being already decided. Some reports - the stained dress, an eyewitness to an encounter - have already proven to be false. Lewinsky admits she has lied all her life. If she has done nothing wrong, why is her attorney seeking immunity for her? She earlier had a lengthy affair with a married man. Clearly, she is not a pure little flower.

Although as a columnist Clark has more latitude than a hard-news reporter, he should keep in mind the difference between established fact and accusations in a highly politicized situation. How well Clinton managed his zipper has yet to be established. Robert E. Forman Colville, Wash.

Item good for shame, not laughs

Your newspaper has finally hit a low so obnoxious that your integrity is threatened. On Jan. 25, you printed an advertisement your paper had received by fax for a nurse for a local adolescent drug and alcohol treatment center that serves a needy population mostly made up of Native American adolescents. On Jan. 27, your paper publicly shamed that center by laughing at it in your Slice column for advertising for a “caring, neutering LPN.”

Only one problem - the fax had specified a “caring, nurturing LPN.” In other words, your own people first made the mistake (or was this somebody’s idea of a joke?), and then your own people made fun of it at someone else’s expense.

Of course, given the low level of media impact sensitivity I find evident in your paper, it’s possible this was a conspiracy. Is it possible that instead of real news, your paper is now making feeble attempts at manufacturing it?

What is really low class about the incident, of course, is that your Slice column felt it necessary to identify the center by name, rather than just laugh at the error. Shame on all of you! Richard D. Phillips Medical Lake