Letters To The Editor

Wed., Dec. 1, 1999

Spokane matters

Visiting nurses are cost-effective

I encourage the support of visiting home/public health nurses in Spokane County. It’s my understanding that consideration is being given to move away from individual home-based services and toward population-based services (i.e., clinic and group orientation).

This decision would greatly impact the neediest of the needy - families and children at the greatest risk and who have the least resources to help themselves.

During my professional career over the past 30 years, I have been involved in the criminal justice system, mental health, chemical dependency and, most recently, in early childhood development. I’ve seen firsthand the impact on people who have not been provided essential care during their early years of development. Visiting home nurses have clearly demonstrated their capacity to positively impact the lives of these at-risk children and families.

I realize that visiting home nurses are initially a more expensive modality. But not providing essential care during a child’s early years exacts too high a price to individuals, families and our community, time and time again. By now we could all agree that it’s better to help families in the early years, rather than invest in more juvenile and adult correctional institutions. Placing children first and out of harm’s way is a goal I’m sure we all share. Jim R. Loudermilk Spokane

Health district approach seems odd

I may have discovered one of those oxymorons in staff writer Ken Olsen’s article, “Health district seeks fiscal advice” (Nov. 10).

The article states that the district will lose an estimated $2.5 million in motor vehicle tax money and will lay off public health nurses, stop testing for sexually transmitted diseases, stop providing immunizations and shrink the women, infant and children’s nutrition program. Simultaneously, some of the money saved will go to hiring new administrators and expanding the district’s Spokane Valley clinic.

How is it possible to lose $2.5 million and at the same time save money to hire new administrators, etc.? Edgar B. Booher Airway Heights

City spending facts available

It is amazing that so many people complain about how our tax dollars are spent, and so few take the trouble to be informed on this matter. The city of Spokane has prepared a pamphlet that explains where your money goes and the law pertaining to its allocation. It is available to anyone who asks for it. Before you complain, be informed! Dorothy Carter Spokane

Mix, match - do what must be done

Re: `City says land sale not the answer” by staff writer Kathy Mulady. I didn’t vote for Initiative 695 but it seems to me Spokane city officials are ducking the issues. Councilwoman Phyllis Holmes says she looked into the city’s rental properties and is comfortable that they are being managed well. I disagree. It doesn’t take a brainiac to see that a $400,000 ranch should rent out for far more than $292 a month. Then she goes on to say that money from different funds can’t be mixed. Why not? Hey, we’re facing a crisis here and if some reapportionment of city funds needs to be done, let’s get to it. The emphasis here is on city funds.

Everyone has to tighten their belts and work at a solution. Take the money from where you have it and put it where you don’t. See, it’s not so hard. Just do it! Larry Null Medical Lake

In the region

Give me the simple life

It was fun to see familiar faces and places in the Nov. 21 article, “Rough and ready.” I tell people that north Ferry County is God’s country, Washington’s best-kept secret.

However, as one who moved from the city to Danville in 1989, I take exception to the attitude portrayed in the article that somehow people moving from the city to the country don’t belong.

When I visited Curlew in March 1989, I knew I wanted to live in the area and knew it would be a good place to raise my girls. So, I left Anchorage, Alaska, my home of 15 years, and we moved to Danville.

I adjusted just fine to country life in spite of unpaved roads, long distances to drive for services, lack of employment, the nearest mall 130 miles away, limited TV and radio reception. The peace and beauty is well worth any hardships. Socializing for me comes in the form of basketball games at Curlew School.

I have seen some people from the city move over here and not last long. But I have also seen many who do make it. After 10 years, I feel very invested in this community and don’t want to live anywhere else. Right now, I’m driving 104 miles round-trip to work. My goal is to be able to eventually find work closer to home, and the thought of moving nearer to my job is a last resort. Each day, when I drive over Boulder-Deer Creek Road and come over the top, looking toward Vulcan Mountain, I am always so thankful to know I’m almost home. Jaigne Beck Danville, Wash.

Over the line

Dead tree issue lame

At a recent hearing on the Burlington Northern Santa Fe fueling depot, there was a mention of the voluntary efforts by the railroad to place berms separating their property and the public’s. On those berms and the area paralleling the highway, more than 1,400 trees of varying size and shrubbery were planted at the request of neighbors of the property.

These improvements were paid for by the railroad. A few have died and, to my knowledge, plans are to replace them in the spring.

I have heard Friends of the Aquifer people complaining about the dead trees. I think they should talk to the Forest Service about the dead or dying pine tree stands in our forests - not being logged - before they jump on the railroad’s effort to improve scenery and public relations. Rusty Price Rathdrum

Hearing procedure flawed

Regarding what some say were unfair hearing procedures and poor representation. First, understand that I am pleased with how Jean DeBarbieris ran the hearings on the proposed Burlington Northern Santa Fe refueling depot. She was professional, fair and thorough.

However, I question the procedure that she had to follow as directed by the county commissioners. Specifically, the fact that the Friends of the Aquifer were not allowed a rebuttal. It seems to me that, in the interest of fairness, all sides should have been playing on a level field.

I also would like to know why the Panhandle Health District, Idaho Department of Environmental Quality, Washington Department of Environmental Quality and Spokane County Health District board were not at the hearing as a public safety organizations or as individuals who could have offered crucial evidence to this important public hearing. I challenge any of you to respond to this question honestly.

What Spokane and North Idaho residents seem not to get is that this proposal is the most important issue ever decided by just three commissioners in our region. There is not an area of our lives that will not be impacted greatly when “an accident” occurs. What is really sad is it all could be avoided by using common sense. Chic Burge Coeur d’Alene

Depot would be a prime target

Although I live about 90 miles from Spokane, I have followed the argument concerning fuel storage near Rathdrum with much interest. While I have not read all the letters against it, I have not encountered one that addresses the military problem involved.

A fuel storage dump of that magnitude would be a No. 1 target for enemy bombing - and contamination of the water supply to a large city like Spokane would be frosting on the cake.

It makes no difference how much of a liner they put under those tanks, a bomb would penetrate. It is amazing to me that our military leaders have allowed this to even be under consideration. Clark J. Hoglund Kettle Falls, Wash.

`It only takes once’

Re: Burlington Northern Santa Fe proposed refueling depot.

It only takes once. Whether a fuel spill occurs one year after construction or 50 years, the contamination of the aquifer would be disastrous. BNSF has the state-of-the-art technology now but it won’t be state of the art in 20 years or 50 years. What kind of society would allow a potentially threatening situation to be foisted upon future generations? We’re leaving it to our grandchildren or great-grandchildren to solve this problem. Why would anyone in his or her right mind deliberately create such a risk?

Neither BNSF nor any scientist can unequivocally state that an accident will never occur or that protection systems won’t fail. It only takes once to destroy a pristine aquifer. Wendy Wright Spokane

The environment

Nonsense piled on warming nonsense

Certain willful misstatements of fact continue to raise their ugly heads, especially when driven by political ideology. Thus, K. Julian Powers (Letters) recently repeated the canard that some 2,000 scientists endorsed a 1995 report by an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change dealing with speculations regarding global warming and further speculations as to the possibilities that human activities might affect atmospheric temperature.

Powers went even further, bestowing on these so-called scientists a gratuitous promotion to the rank of climatologist. The truth is, a great many of those “scientists” were not in any sense experts in climatology or the dynamics of the physical properties of air masses.

To the contrary, a great many of them represented various fields of study in the social sciences.

It seems that some people (principally Al Gore and his groupies) are eager to clamp a global government regulatory headlock on the economy of the United States while leaving communist China (which likely would refuse to comply) and most other industrial nations out of the loop of responsibility for reducing emissions of greenhouse gases. This is all of a piece with the liberal policy of blaming and punishing the United States for all the world’s ills, both real and imagined.

Fortunately, wiser heads have prevailed thus far, guided by reason and a healthy respect for the inadequate predictive accuracy of current climate change models. Leonard C. Johnson Troy, Idaho

As they are now, dams hurt salmon

Re: “Dam busting would do little good” (Nov. 9).

OK, so maybe the oceanic cycle has something to do with the decline in salmon population. But by no means does this excuse dams from having any involvement with this issue.

According to “Can the Northwest save its salmon?” (1994) the system of dams simply “wreaks havoc on the salmon. Adult fish are blocked on their way upstream by the walls of concrete; young salmon on their way downstream are whooshed through turbines that kill, maim or disorient them.”

Furthermore, the Pacific Northwest (December 1994 issue) talks about barges being among the few things that transport salmon safely between levels of water, if the fish aren’t first shredded in the turbines.

Evidence proves that dams further add to the problem by increasing salmon travel times by sometimes more than 26 days. Not only does this increase their risk of disease, it also adds to their vulnerability to predators.

So, while the oceanic cycle may have some connection to the salmon decline starting near 1980, just remember that the No. 1 reason for the death of salmon along the Snake and Columbia rivers is hydroelectric development (according to the Sierra Club). Dams are the real issue behind this environmental concern.

With time, commitment and businesslike investments, we can change the currently destructive operation of the Columbia and Snake dams and make them work for the wild salmon and for us all. Veronica Graper, age 14 Spokane

The media

We have news for KXLY

Shame on KXLY. Since Marianne Mishima is no longer on KXLY, that channel will no longer be on our news viewing. She was, in our opinion, the best Spokane had to offer. Now, with only two stations for our evening news, Nadine and Charles, here we come. Dorothy J. Brennan and Margaret Selden Spokane

`Mishima, you will be missed’

Regarding the article about Marianne Mishima leaving KXLY TV, I would just like to thank her for her years of credible reporting of happenings in Spokane. She is a news anchor who knew and cared about Spokane.

I hope that her well-deserved R and R will also give fruit to her next adventure - to which she will also bring that credibility.

The newscasting business is not a stable means of employment, judging from how many anchors come and go with little tenure. I would think that her 16 years would mean something.

Mishima, you will be missed, and I know you will do well in whatever you choose next. KXLY, you will not be missed. Pam Meyer Spokane

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