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Show Clarifying What We Do In your 112201 issue, Rick Crawford stated, in part, "Patrick's group is not really an environmental group. Rather, they are attempting to create a complex or commune for so-called so-called Multiple Chemical Sensitive People." Since these inaccurate statements state-ments may have misinformed your readers, we respectfully request an opportunity to respond. Patrick Diehl, Juniper Allison, and I are board members mem-bers of two organizations. One, the Escalante Wilderness Project, is an environmental organization that focuses on protecting and restoring public land. The other, ' Escalante House, is a charitable organization organiza-tion that focuses on creating housing for people with Multiple Chemical Sensitivity. Your readers are more familiar famil-iar with Escalante Wilderness Project, so I will only briefly discuss our purpose. We are concerned that water diversions and livestock grazing have severely harmed the watersheds and native species in southern Utah. The welfare of humans depends on the welfare of the land. A degraded watershed cannot support as much life as it would if it were functioning properly. For example, the Escalante River west of Escalante and its tributaries Upper Valley Creek and Birch Creek flow through vast sandy wastelands. We believe a combination of water diversions and overgrazing are causing these conditions. If the waterways were healthy, willows, wil-lows, cottonwoods, and grass would be growing next to the creeks and river, providing habitat habi-tat for wildlife. Until the Industrial Revolution, many people recognized recog-nized that humans are part of the web of life, and that we depend on nature to survive. For example, exam-ple, the story of Noah's Ark teaches us that every single species is important. Escalante Wilderness Project seeks to help stop the mass extinction of species that is happening around the world today. Livestock grazing is the single sin-gle largest activity that is pushing push-ing native species toward extinction in the American West. I will now turn to our other nonprofit group, Escalante House. Both Juniper and I have Multiple Chemical Sensitivity (MCS), and our health has improved from living in the clean air of southern Utah. We would like to give others with ' the same health condition a chance to recover also. Multiple Chemical Sensitivity is recognized as a disability by federal agencies such as the Social Security Administration and the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). It can strike anyone. Some people have a greater risk of getting MCS than others; these include chemists, chemical factory workers, farm workers (because of exposure to pesticides and herbicides), and military personnel person-nel (because of exposure to (See LETTERS on page 3-A) LETTERS TO THE EDITOR From Page 2-A chemical weapons). Mr. Crawford said he served in the Gulf War. He may be interested to know that thousands thou-sands of Gulf War veterans now have Multiple Chemical Sensitivity. In the housing community that we hope to build for people with this condition, each resident resi-dent would live alone or with their family. The homes would be constructed of natural materials, materi-als, since many man-made materials cause health problems for people with MCS. Building the homes would provide local construction jobs for many years. When finished, ' the community would also provide pro-vide many other jobs, such as a director, doctor, nurses, massage therapist, dietitian, cooks, organic gardeners, bookkeeper, fund-raiser, groundskeeper, maintenance person, housekeepers, shop pers, and drivers. (Some people with Multiple Chemical Sensitivity are too ill to shop for themselves.) Last year we were working with the State Institutional Trust Lands Administration (SITLA) to locate the MCS housing community com-munity on state land south of Escalante. We are no longer pursuing that option, because there is not enough groundwater under the land and because SITLA wants to charge each homeowner too much money for a lot. We are currently looking for a private parcel that borders public land on at least two sides. This would protect the residents from chemical exposure from neighbors on those sides. Thank you for the opportunity opportuni-ty to clarify what our two organizations organ-izations do. Sincerely, Victoria Woodard Escalante |