Letters and Comments for March 12, 2010

Mercer, Wilkinson

Great memories

To the Editor:

I thoroughly enjoyed the article by Robert Robeson about the 1960 Oregon State High School Basketball Tournament in Eugene.

I was a student at LHS and was fortunate to be able to go to Eugene for the basketball tournament. Although we didn’t come home with the state championship, I would like the community to know we won a sportsmanship trophy at that competition. It was such great fun, and wonderful to see the picture of my classmates on the basketball team.

Thank you for the memories!

Susan Wolfe Mercer

LHS Class of 1961

La Grande

Not private property issue

To the Editor

I am writing in response to the Feb. 23 letter from the Hutchinson Ranch, Seven Diamond Ranch and Which-A-Way Ltd. Partnership regarding the proposed windmills for Craig Mountain and Union. While I respect their views, I believe they are missing a vital point to the story.

We, as taxpayers, are paying for those windmills. In fact, the wind industry would not exist without the large government subsidies and tax credits it receives. That means that my tax dollars and your tax dollars are paying for those windmills and paying off these landowners. How simple it would be if it were merely a landowner issue.

If the wind companies were independent, self-funded private ventures, then the private landowners would have “the right” to do as they please with their land, assuming land use laws allowed. But this is far from the case.

According to Horizon, the Elkhorn Wind Farm and the proposed Antelope Ridge Wind Farm will only provide revenue to 30 ranches or farms while thousands locally will be stuck with the consequences, not to mention the hundreds of thousands who have paid their taxes to subsidize these inefficient monsters. We all pay our taxes, and many of us hire people and contribute to the economy.

The truth is these landowners have stumbled into a windfall that has warped their minds and pitted them against neighbors and friends. If they were true stewards of the land, they

wouldn’t lace it with roads (and the accompanying invasive weeds and grasses) and 500-foot wind turbines that kill birds and bats and displace other wildlife species. If keeping the ranch in the family depends on chance income from windmills, then maybe a career change is in order. Sorry, folks, this goes way beyond “protecting private property rights.” What about protecting Oregonian tax dollars?

Dennis Wilkinson

Cove