Letters to the Editor 01/09/2008

To the Editor:

Why isn't this news?

HB2210, passed by the legislature in the summer of 2007, guarantees ethanol producers market access to every gas tank in Oregon, every vehicle, every boat, every tool. There are no exceptions. No other state has passed and implemented a similar law, except Hawaii, and this was the result in Hawaii: http://starbulletin.com/2007/03/18/editorial/commentary3.html. (They have since changed their law.)

No transportation department in Oregon testified at the public hearings. The Oregon Marine Board was not asked to testify about how the law would affect boats. The Oregon Department of Aviation was not asked to testify about how the law would affect pilots.

No public safety department in Oregon was asked to testify about how the law would affect emergency equipment and tools used by fire fighters. No other state that has enacted a mandatory E10 law has included premium unleaded gasoline, because it is used in two-cycle tools that are needed by Public Safety organizations.

Fire season is coming, and Oregon will be the first state in the union to try to get through a fire season with only E10 available to fire crews. We are the guinea pigs, and that's NOT news?

Dean Billing

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To the Editor:

Hats off to all the hard working, dedicated young people whose names are in the Sisters Middle School Honor Roll, published in the January 2 Nugget.

Years ago, working for OMSI, taking young people on a wide variety of outdoor science field trips, helping to run Camp Hancock, the marine science camp on the Coast and at Mt. Hood, driving the "Science Cruiser" taking students to science facilities all over the Northwest and other science activities, a man exclaimed: "Boy you sure are lucky."

A friend standing nearby, retired Army Corps of Engineers geologist Paul Hammond turned to the man and said: "Yeah, the harder you work, the luckier you get."

So it is with those hundreds of young people on the middle school honor roll. They too will discover that, "The harder they work, the luckier they'll get."

Good going parents and children. Keep it up!

Jim Anderson - Naturalist