Letters To The Editor

BUSINESS AND LABOR

Union leaders forge bad alliance

As a former state senator and representative, former Kaiser employee, the widow of a union member and a longtime blue-collar Democrat, I take strong exception to the alliance Kaiser’s union leadership has formed with Earth First! Their recent joint press conference isn’t just a case of politics making for strange bedfellows, it’s like inviting the fox into the hen house.

Wake up, Steelworkers! If Earth First! had its way, you wouldn’t have a job at all. Their extremist environmental views are well known. They’ve been linked to tree spiking, destruction of private property and bombings in California. In their mind, no company - including Kaiser - should be allowed to operate if it has any impact on the environment. I don’t know why union leadership thought it was a good idea to align with this group. I can’t imagine rank-and-file Kaiser workers agreeing.

It’s not hard to figure out why Earth First! people would want to take part in a media stunt during the strike. They have a separate beef with Charles Hurwitz and they wanted to use the Steelworkers to get back at him. I can’t understand why the union leaders would let themselves be used that way. This alliance raises serious questions about the judgment of union leadership.

I trust that the good common sense rank-and-file Kaiser Steelworkers will let them see this media stunt for what it is. I hope they send their leadership a message that they don’t want their cause linked to a group of radical, destructive extremists. Lois J. Stratton Spokane

Steelworkers, opt for abstinence

The strikers at Kaiser are accepting help in their cause from the terrorist group Earth First! It is hard to understand what the Steelworkers think they have in common with Earth First!

I know they are both angry with Charles Hurwitz, Kaiser’s majority shareholder, but don’t the strikers know that Earth First! is against mining? Earth First! does not approve of the business the Steelworkers depend on for their livelihood and will do anything it can to put Kaiser out of business.

Steelworkers, be careful who you get in bed with. The Earth First! terrorist group will not respect you in the morning. Travis Utter Kettle Falls, Wash.

Steelworkers need neighbors’ support

Don’t forget your fellow Steelworkers, Spokane. They are people who have paid taxes, and continue to pay taxes, for better schools, for improved roads, for fire districts and for your police departments, sheriff, etc. They are your neighbors who’ve been there when you needed help and will continue to be there.

They don’t live on hilltops in executive mansions; they are next door to you. They shop at your stores and other businesses and eat at your restaurants. They do not take their money and send it back East to who knows what city where their families are, like the replacement workers at Kaiser do. Those people do not help your economy, but rather hinder it by leeching away hundreds of thousands of dollars monthly.

Please call or write Kaiser upper management and tell them what they are doing to your neighbors, what they are doing to the economy of Spokane and North Idaho. Now is the time to really support the Steelworkers. Dig down, stop at the local union halls and give what you can, for this is the time of year for giving. Show them your thanks for what they have given to your community for decades. Donald DeLong Kaiser retiree (39 years), Veradale

THE ENVIRONMENT

Wrecking dams won’t save salmon

Only a bunch of idiots or crooks could spend $20 million to come up with the stupid idea of destroying the dams on the Snake River to save the salmon. Dams built the Northwest. A lot of small businesses, including farming and recreation, depend on them for a living. People depend on them for electricity. If the dams are destroyed, it will be necessary to build fuel-operated electric plants that pollute the air and kill fish by polluting the water. Someone plans on making big money building these plants and furnishing fuel to run them.

Destroying the dams will help the fish very little. The real problem is in the ocean and at the river mouths. Huge fish factories sit out in the ocean, spreading nets for miles across the salmon runs. If any get past the fish factories, they’re eaten by seals and birds,or caught by Indians, who stretch their nets across the rivers. These are the problems that must be solved if we want to save the salmon.

Trade the Indians slot machines on their reservations for letting the salmon go up the rivers. The treaties were meant to give them fish to feed their families, not for commercial purposes. As for the fish factories, we can send our planes and ships around the world to prevent Iraq from exporting oil. Why can’t we prevent the fish factories from destroying the salmon?

The $20 million would’ve gone a long way in building some streams or tunnels around the dams. Leo K. Lindenbauer Spokane

Jumbo-sized unintended consequence

One hundred to 150 million cubic yards. That’s the sediment estimated to be deposited behind the four Lower Snake River dams. It’s hard to get your mind around those numbers.

Try to take it in this way. Visualize a football field, including the end zones and goalposts, piled with dark ooze to a height of 8.9-13.4 miles. Yes, miles. That’s 100 to 150 million cubic yards.

If the dams are destroyed, this material will wash down the narrowed river channel for who knows how many years. What would be able to live in that thick sediment soup?

Is it possible the dam destruction proponents, in their zeal to save the fish runs, have chosen the instrument of their destruction?

Will they one day utter that infamous phrase from Vietnam, “We had to kill them to save them”? Clyde Nicely Clarkston, Wash.

Slackwater mentality supports dams

I attended the presentation by the U.S. Army Corp. of Engineers of a feasibility study on how to improve juvenile salmon migration down the lower Snake River.

Handout materials indicate that the overwhelming majority of tonnage of goods shipped by barge is grain (67-73 percent). The rest of the various commodities are extremely minor compared to this one product. Why in heaven’s name are we tolerating the extinction of the wild Snake River salmon so we can barge an agricultural product that can be - just as it once was - shipped just as well by rail?

It is amazing just how far the supporters of this horrible slackwater mentality will go to stretch the truth, trying to rationalize why they should be allowed to continue to annihilate the salmon.

Whitman County Commissioner Les Wigen, as an example, predicts Chicken Little “economic ruin” for his area if the dams are breached. Interestingly enough, he uttered not one concern for the thousands of jobs and millions of dollars already lost due to the collapse of the salmon fishery.

However, he quickly blurts out the soothing promise, “We can save the dams, we can save the salmon, we can save the water, we can save recreation, we can save transportation” if we leave the dams in. Sort of like having your cake and eating it.

This sounds disturbingly similar to the promises made 30 some odd years ago, doesn’t it?

Time’s up. Get the damn dams out! John E. Bentley Post Falls

Pro-breaching assumptions faulty

Re: In response to Susan J. Cummings’ letter of Nov. 21, “Questions raised for fish.”

1. It makes a lot of sense to have a seaport 300 miles inland when 80 percent of the wheat grown in the most productive wheat region of the world is exported. Large amounts of commodities produced here are shipped to port cities foreign and domestic.

2. Barge shipping is not the only way to get wheat or paper to market. It is the least polluting, most fuel-efficient way, however.

(Hint: rail transportation uses more fuel and many country elevators are no longer served by rail. Rail cars are often unavailable when selling is occurring - an old problem.)

Hauling to Portland by truck is less fuel-efficient than rail and there aren’t highways for the extra traffic.

3. Are humans part of the environment? Do rural waterways merit higher standards, while urban waterways are ignored?

Talk of removing Snake River dams without researching the decline in fish numbers in non-dammed rivers is irresponsible. Every factor should be examined if saving salmon is truly the issue. Other factors include the study of changed patterns of salmon in the ocean, the three-mile limit and foreign fishing, Indian treaties, predators such as terns and sea lions, and urban waterway improvement.

Needed: real, honest problem solving! Linda T. Marler Pullman