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Show Letters from Our Readers Dear Editor. It is unfortunate that Utah, in its quest for more progress, is in such a hurry to acquire the benefits of modern living that California enjoys - pollution, pollu-tion, overpopulation, soaring crime rate, and a rapid decrease in the quality of life. But the environmental soothsayers sooth-sayers be damned apparently. The rape of the state continues; contin-ues; and worse yet, not to benefit Utah but to provide more conveniences for the people in Anaheim, Pasadena and Phoenix. These cities have already abused their rights to more growth and more energy. Why should we attempt to bail them out at our expense? Do we see in them the qualities which we seek, i.e. sprawling suburbs, ugly shopping centers cen-ters and overcrowding? The people of this state should awaken to the fact that their politicians who are pushing for more power plants are no more concerned with the public's interest and well being than the man in the moon's. On these calm winter days, it is already obvious how much brown, dirty air is filling the local valleys. And don't call it haze, folks-your're just kidding yourselves. Encouraging tourism is fine, but is a person from smog-ridden smog-ridden Los Angeles going to want to spend his vacation in smog-ridden Moab? I rather doubt it. The real wealth of Utah is not hidden underground, under-ground, but is in the superlative superla-tive beauty of its landscape; the visual uniqueness that is found nowhere else on earth. This will be a thing to treasure in future generations far more than the, fossil fuels that will one day expire, leaving a desolate, uninhabitable landscape land-scape behind. Sincerely, Gregory M. Gnesios Dear Editor: We are writing to you concerning the High School. We feel that the school has a lot of spirit in all the activities. However, we feel that the coaches aren't giving enough support to the other sports' which are contained in the same season. In this case, basketball and wrestling. We are starting to feel as two schools in one. Another problem is that the two coaches co-aches are trying to imply that the two teams are in competition compe-tition with each other for the support of the cheerleaders. As athletes from both sports we know this is not true. We feel that if both coaches work as a team then the two teams can work together as a unit again. Concerned, Athletes Dear Sam, "Lake Powell Closed To Fishing," "Moab Chokes Under Un-der First Air Stagnation Warning In Its History," "Tourism Declines Drastically In Moab." I wonder how many people in Moab are aware of the likelihood of such gruesome headlines appearing in your paper in a few years? They certainly are possible, you know. The impact of such news items would drain many Moab bank accounts in short order, as the tourist dollars slowed down to a trickle. Why are these headlines possible at all? Because ten power plants are planned for southeastern Utah in the next few years. The largest one of all is to be the first one....' Kaiparowits, world's largest coal-fired electrical generating plant ever built. This plant alone would significantly reduce re-duce visibility in the Moab area, from a common 50-100 mile range to less than twenty. It also would possibly pollute Lake Powell with deadly mercury, according to the draft environmental impact statement. If so, the Lake fish would be unfit for human consumption for the remaining 80 years of its life, as the mercury would settle in the sediment and become a permanent part of the food chain for the game fish. Mercury poisoning produces pro-duces severe pain, nausea, vomiting, shock, kidney failure, fail-ure, and death. In low doses it produces a long-lasting neurological neuro-logical disease with shakes, weakness, depression and irritability as its principal signs. ' Air pollution is dangerous to health too. Durango, Colorado, Color-ado, 100 miles northeast of the smaller Four Corners power plant at Shiprock, N.M., saw the respiratory disease rate of its children double after the plant fired up. A pediatrician there clearly blamed the air pollution from that plant for causing the children (nonsmoking (non-smoking age) to suffer from twice as much bronchitis and pneumonia as in earlier years, Even with the anti-pollution devices working at maximum hoped-for efficiency of 99.5 per cent, Kaiparowits will emit more particulate matter than all of Los Angeles basin does. And when the plant is finished with its dirty work, thirty-five years after firing up, thousands of people will be stranded in southern Utah without work or places to go. A new . Appalachia will burden the taxpayer, with poverty and mined-out coal fields being the only visible results of an extremely short-sighted energy ener-gy development policy. We need energy development, develop-ment, but it should be a crash program to develop the renewable re-newable resources such as solar, wind, and thermal resources. We must limit growth of our populations and of our appetites if we are to maintain a decent stgandard of living for the majority. We must do these things if we are to survive. Kaiparowits represents rep-resents another step down the path of cancerous overgrow!!, of our populations and destruction dest-ruction of our resources. Richard Shanteau, M. D. Moab Dear Sam, I want to thank you for printing my last letter in the paper and hope you can do the same with this one. lt one or two answers v mid be forth coming, either tne intellectual type where I would have to look up every other word in the dictionary and find out to my disappointment disappoint-ment that nothing constructive was said or the one that was written which is a slap on the hands for daring to criticize our town. For anyone who got that opinion, let me say that probably I think more of this town than you do and, hopefully, all that I might write about will be or can be seen and understood constructively. construc-tively. Let me give you just one example of why I wrote that letter. This happened to me personally. I was dealing with a government entity in our local community. A person I was dealing with, outright lied about the circumstances surrounding sur-rounding a particular incident. 1 accused this person of the lie and their immediate supervisor supervis-or upheld their position. Now, I didn't expect them to be terminated from their jobs, but I did expect some type of compromise or fair play about it. I was plainly told that if 1 didn't like it , I could peddle my wares elsewhere. The only recourse 1 have to this would . be to sue them and they know that I'm not in a position to do this. Let's consider for a minute what comes next after this. Does this revolve around dictatorial administration? You might say, "Oh, come on now. Let's not make a mountain out of a mole hill." ..Maybe so, but; you tell me, what comes next? If the leaders in the community, and this person is just that, can excuse a wrong completely, then you tell me, where are we ' going? The person that did the lying is not far from retirement so we couldn't consider anything but a reprimand could we? The solving of our nation's problems will only be started in one place and that is right here in Moab, Utah, in our town, right now. If this is said often enough, just maybe something might be done. One very substantial individual in the community called me and said, "I believe you're right on, Dave, but where can we start?" I told him I was going to keep on writing, although I'm not too good at it and maybe I don't use all the correct words and my punctuation punctua-tion might not be too good, but I believe 1 can be fairly well Understood. Another subject is the combined city and county government, which I'm in favor of for the purpose of SAVING MONEY only. I believe there ought to be at least eight people on the council, serving just two years" per election and the council voting one of the members to be their director and spokesman. spokes-man. There should be a limit to just how many of the different branches of government govern-ment that are' thrown into the center ring, and especially our law enforcement agency. Our Founding Fathers knew what they were doing when they developed the Legislative, Judicial ind Executive branches branch-es of the government and I haven't seen an example here in Moab that would improve upon the original idea. Some careful thinking to put the combined government agencies together is needed, but fellow citizens, look at it very carefully. Don't loose any more control of our rights to pick those people to serve us than is safe. It's very easy to let one more freedom of choice go by the way-side under the umbrella of "better government", govern-ment", but we better be careful or you'll find yourself under more of a dictatorship than wc already have. And don't kid yourself that it couldn't happen in Moab, Ulah--for il already has. Sincerely. Dave Mundcn |