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Show m COUNT! ' These to wns needaSB the impact they can get! After driving through, photographing, and talking to people who live in the area of southwestern Utah and eastern Nevada which would furnish the local environment for the installation if the MX is deployed, it is easy to believe many media reports of local opposition to the project are incorrect and misleading. Most who live nearby appear to be in favor of the installation and are quite vocal regarding how media coverage has treated the proposal. "They say it's progress or starve," noted one Nevada resident. "MX can't do any harm here," he noted, as he looked down a street with a large number of deserted and decaying buildings, including homes. History, especially recent history, indicates that much of the area which will feel strong impact from the MX project has had serious economic drawbacks in recent years and that the total history of most of the communities has been toil, sweat, and very often tears in have exported fine beef cattle, hay, and kids. We would like to keep some of those young people, our finest export, home for a change. The only way that can be done is to change the economy and the job market." Those big city reporters who haven't been able to see the efforts which have previously been made by local residents and local government planning effort to protect and save the local environment should be made to come back and look again, according to another local farmer. "When they do their new fangled studies" commented, "they 1: seem to miss the posit,! of what has alreadv'k pened." ' K "Sometime," he conck "it would be nice to & which shows what hast! and should be done insfc just what hasn't shouldn't be done" others in the area agree him. A logical Concw might be that if We can much to plan forandnro! the MX project as has done to stop it, it mights out to be good for the I area. ' order to accomplish community com-munity projects that most city dwellers consider to be their rights from the establishment where they live. A southwestern Utah resident put it this way, "We've worked hard for everything we have in this town and have learned how to deal with impact of one sort or another. In the past it was floods or drought, and both were devastating.' ' More recently we have learned to deal with people impact, but with good planning and a little help from state and federal people who also have concern, economic development and growth are not going to destroy these communities. It will make them stronger." During a street group discussion in another Utah town a young railroad worker had this to say, "If these guys in the press who come by chopper and car load would shut their mouths and questions and listen just a little they could learn something themselves. They seem to think they know it all already, but if they would listen for a change it would sound different. This country has lived in depression so long, an opportunity to change would be the best thing which could happen, but they never hear anyone say that. They are too busy telling why the country shouldn't change." A Lyndell, Utah resident had this to say, "We have had plenty of "bust" in this country in the past, now maybe a little of the "boom" couldn't hurt as much as they think." It is certain that southwestern south-western Utah and eastern Nevada residents are used to economic hard times and to change. The pioneering effort which has gone on, in one way or another for over a hundred years, has been filled with impact. A Beryl Junction fields resident added this, "We |