The county commissioners have decided, against the voting will of residents and despite the fact that only one-third of the property owners are known to have septic failures, to force about 88 to pay for a very expensive sewer project and probably to connect to it as well.

The county has known about the Windmaster area problem for over 20 years and has chosen to exacerbate it by continually approving additional septic systems. There are too many injustices to summarize in 350 words, so I will focus on the county’s consistent lack of transparency regarding the initial lump sum costs of the sewer project.

Windmaster residents are probably aware of the $80 a month ($960 a year) expense. Unfortunately, the county has been less candid about all of the costs for connecting to the sewer. Sure, it’s possible that those of us with working septic systems will only be required to pay say, $24,000 over the next 25 years — that’s all. But there is a good chance that the loans or grants the county procures will require all of us to connect. What will the connection costs consist of? The following are the minimum initial expenses:

Decommissioning septic system: $600

Four-inch gravity lateral: $1,000 (plus hundreds or thousands of dollars in pipe)

City of Hood River connection fee: $1,700

If you are one of the 37 residents without gravity working in your favor, and require an on-site grinder pump, these are minimum initial expenses:

On-site grinder pump: $4,500 (this does not included costs for electricity, potential electrical up-grades, pipe or periodic maintenance)

It is difficult to know the costs for permits, contractors, et cetera. We are looking at start-up costs of over $3,300 (no grinder pump) to over $6,800 (with grinder pump) and up — perhaps way up! And there has not been a good faith effort to inform the residents of these costs.

It is time for the county commissioners to take responsibility for the egregious lack of disclosure. Citizens deserve better.

‘For the rich’

Abraham Lincoln was wrong when in his 1863 Gettysburg Address he said “that the government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

That government is gone. Today we have a government of the rich, by the corruptible, for the corporation.

Farewell, Keith

When I worked at the Hood River News as a news staff writer, Keith Fredrickson was my editor for much of the time I was there. He taught me a great deal about journalism, and how to present a good story. One day, when I was struggling to report on yet another boring meeting, he put it this way:

“Imagine coming home from a meeting on a freezing night with snow falling and encountering your shivering neighbor out shoveling snow. He asks you what happened at the meeting. What you might answer under these circumstances is how you should lead your story.”

I have never forgotten that good advice. Keith was a kind and caring man who was generous with his time and expertise. He was a fine editor and a very skilled writer. I wonder if he died of a broken heart because of the state our nation and the world have gotten into over the past few years. It’s the kind of thing he would have agonized over.

Farewell, Keith! May you find peace wherever you are.

‘New CL’ leaders

Cascade Locks is, and has been for some time, a bedroom community for the Portland metropolitan area and to a lesser degree the Hood River Valley.

The problem that the community has had over the past 20 years is a series of elected and appointed officials that are unable to leverage the community’s assets and location into a viable and workable solution for the community. Instead what we have had are misguided efforts to continue in a variation of the “big box” mentality.

What I mean by this is the thought process that says we had a “big mill.” It is now gone. We have to replace the “big mill” with something just as big or bigger. This paradigm fails to take into account the change in situation and circumstance for the city. It seeks to make everything as it was before in the “good ol’ days.” This is fine if it were workable, but is just simply not possible today.

We need leaders who are able to break out of the “big box.” We need new leaders who are able to work for a New Cascade Locks without a casino.

What could be

Does anyone else think young people in Hood River County, can do the same thing that was written Jan. 6-12 American Profile?

Nick Graham buying and running a grocery store. Maybe they could in Parkdale, where the stores are closing and the owners retiring. There are more challenges; prices (taxes, real estate, etc.) are higher and the population would not support one store. What about running several stores in the valley? A co-op or chain?

This should be what county commissioners think and work on. Not highest personal land development prices for the land they own, for their own retirement. Dreaming of what could be . . .

Scrutinize schedule

I would like to thank Camille Freeman (Our Readers Write, Jan. 5) for her rebuttal. It has allowed me to see the error in my ways. Namely, that I have been lazy in not attending board meetings or reading the minutes on the Web site. Despite all the information presented by Ms. Freeman, however, I stand by my opinion.

I did NOT say I was concerned for myself regarding the policy. My letter states I was concerned about the hundreds of families not afforded flexible working schedules and/or multiple day care options. I am upset, Ms. Freeman, because there seemed to be a perfectly good week before the week of Christmas that our children were off from school. Those five days could easily have contributed to the snow day pool.

Having been raised in the Northeast by a father who worked in public education for over 20 years, I don’t remember hearing any discussion about how the school calendar should be manipulated to ensure vacationers would never be inconvenienced by a few days’ change in school schedule. It lends to reason that if you understand our climate during the winter months, one could create a cushion to anticipate a variable last day of school?

Furthermore, if you asked your younger children what occurred on those last few days in June, or many days the week before a major vacation, you will learn it is a lot of fluff and realize the days are just there to meet a state/federal requirement versus provide a true day of education.

As a local taxpayer with children, I will remain concerned about the level of education they receive, significant number of days off, half days, etc., that hinder my children’s ability to learn in what seems to be an ever-increasingly more watered-down education system.

I look forward to meeting the board at the next meeting this Wednesday.

Radical thinking

Political scientists are wondering if the average American voters, deprived of the opinionated “guidance”‘ of various late night TV commentators, are being forced to think for themselves regarding the merits and demerits of the various presidential aspirants.

Pretty radical idea, isn’t it?

Different CL news

Your recent article titled “Casino Quote” (Jan. 2) warrants a few comments. These are:

1. Mr. (Bernard) Seeger’s (Cascade Locks city manager) attempt to draw an analogy between the benefits of Skamania Lodge just outside of Stevenson and the proposed casino at Cascade Locks does not quite work. The potential upside economic pluses may be similar, but many of the downside impacts or changes on the local communities and the local environment (i.e. the ambiance of the Gorge) are significantly different and thus tremendously weaken the comparison.

2. I am very weary of the stories and commentary about this casino that appear too often in the Hood River News and other local newspapers, Too much of this casino-related “stuff” is opinions or repetitive positional propaganda or attempts to correct misconstrued and misspoken statements. Surely the space can be more effectively utilized to inform or educate your readers about other projects and programs.

I would like to see more stories about other economic diversification opportunities that the City and Port of Cascade Locks are pursuing. Also, I would be happy to review a detailed economic analysis and environmental impact report of a new casino on the Warm Springs Reservation and compare this to a similar report on the casino proposal for Cascade Locks. Why not print these and provide your readers opportunities to make informed and balanced decisions on their own?

3. It is time for the proponents and opponents of the noted casino to knock off the public storytelling (aka whining) and let the “powers to be” make a decision based on the results of the legally required analyses and on the merit of the positions that have been presented and on the sentiment of a majority of the public. (A regional advisory questionnaire or vote could be produced or presented.) A story about the decision would be new news, interesting and informative.

Volcanoes’ effect

Let’s talk about “greenhouse gases.” Orbital eccentricity and sunspot activity are only two of the natural events that directly shape our climate. Volcanoes dramatically affect the earth. When Mount Pinatubo erupted in the Philippines in 1901 that event, according to some geophysical scientist, spewed as much greenhouse gases into the atmosphere in one week as mankind has emitted his entire time on earth. Being a skeptic I think maybe the real amount is much less. For argument’s sake, let’s say Pinatubo ejected about one percent as much as mankind has contributed. If even this small percentage is true, that fact illustrates the insignificance of man’s activities.

Understand, there are about 60 volcanoes erupting every year around the world and in recorded history there are around 550 known major eruptions and maybe 50 truly huge climate-altering eruptions. These major eruptions would include mounts Thera, Taupo, Tambora, Krakatau, Yellowstone, Pelee, Ruiz, Novarupta; even Mount Mazama and other stratovolcanoes here in the Northwest.

If scientists are right, these volcanoes have contributed vastly larger quantities of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere of Earth than mankind ever has. Pinatubo alone expelled something on the order of 20 million tons of sulphur dioxide. Pinatubo was a relatively small eruption. One Indonesian supervolcano, Toba, erupted cataclysmically about 75,000 years ago and current accepted theory is that this event was the trigger for the last ice age.

What does all of this tell us? Weather has only been tracked for about 800 years and plotted for about 2,000 additional years. In that short snapshot of the current geological era, the Holocene Epoch, it is very hard to deny the earth’s temperature waxes and wanes with events far beyond man’s influence. I seriously doubt that any of man’s activity is making substantive changes in our climate.

The real culprits: variations in the earth’s orbital eccentricity, variations in the sun’s output, volcanic activity.

Further reading: The Physical Evidence of Earth’s Unstoppable 1,500-Year Climate Cycle, National Center for Policy Analysis, www.ncpa.org/pub/st/st279.

American Geophysical Union, Alan Robock, Department of Environmental Sciences, Rutgers University, http://climate.envsci.rutgers.edu/robock/
robock_volpapers.html.