Anchorage Daily News

Hydro projects endanger river

The Friends of Cooper Landing are very disappointed that Kenai Hydro LLC, Homer Electric Association and CIRI have announced the intention to proceed with plans to dam, divert and otherwise develop Grant Lake and Creek, and Falls Creek. These are two of five minuscule, seasonal hydropower projects proposed on tributaries of the Kenai River.

Industrializing the natural state of the Kenai River and its surroundings is contrary to two decades of protective public policy we have helped to establish and enforce. The irreversible impacts of new dams are tipping points that will degrade this river like so many rivers Outside. Is it even realistic to believe the public will tolerate the huge costs of these proposals? The integrity of our world-class Kenai River is much too important to be compromised.

-- Bob Baldwin

Cooper Landing

EDITOR'S NOTE: Baldwin is president of the Friends of Cooper Landing Inc.

DeNardo was helpful friend

I read with sadness that Dan DeNardo passed away recently. I knew him well from our many encounters in the law library. No matter how busy he was with his own cases and deadlines, he always took the time to answer my various questions. He was very engaging and entertaining to talk to.

Dan had a profound grasp of political systems, constitutional principles and the problems with fiat currency. He also had absolute faith that our court system was the best way to hold government agents responsible and accountable. Dan also knew court procedure better than most attorneys. Judges accorded him grudging respect and he sometimes won landmark decisions from them.

I am sure that many state and local government officials, and at least one senator, will breathe easier now, knowing that a fiercely determined gadfly is no longer here to keep them honest and restrained.

Ms. O'Malley was incorrect in her assessment of Dan ("A fringe figure's lonely sunset," July 16). I considered him to be my friend, and I will certainly miss him. -- Joan Priestley

Anchorage

Stored gas needed in winter

I've begun my campaign for governor, but here's an issue that needs to be resolved long before the election. We need an emergency storehouse of natural gas for Southcentral Alaska.

On a warm summer day the natural gas system -- gas used for home and business heating -- will deliver and burn about 20 million cubic feet. Come winter the same system will need 300 million cubic feet. The system has trouble dealing with that big of a swing.

It's time to start work on a Strategic Gas Initiative to promote natural gas storage. Whether it would be stored underground in old wells, or above ground in tanks, or delivered via the LNG plant in Kenai (which would need some work) can be determined through careful economic analysis.

It's like chopping wood in summer to burn in winter.

The state can help through favorable lease rates for old fields used only for storage, perhaps state-backed financing, a reasonable rate structure to cover costs, and regulations to ensure open access to all users.

Let's be smart and get started!

-- Hollis French

Anchorage

Parnell should act on e-mail

Sean Parnell is quick to preserve a secretive ethics complaints process rather than prohibit the use of private e-mail accounts by public officials for conducting official business. He should get his priorities straight and immediately issue an administrative order that prohibits the use of private e-mail accounts for official state business.

Legislators who are champing at the bit to pass laws that muzzle people who file ethics complaints rather than pass a law that prohibits the use of private e-mail accounts for conducting official business should get their heads examined. While they're at it, they should revisit their oaths of office and remember who they serve.

-- Andree McLeod

Anchorage

Don't name-call; give reasons

Is Dan Fagan smarter than a preschooler?

Dan, I take it you do not like the government program called ACES. So instead of writing a sound article on the reasons you do not think ACES should be a state program, you spend a third of your time calling the governor schoolyard names. When you can write an article of substance without the name-calling, you might even be welcome in the adult community.

Alaska's Clear and Equitable Share (ACES) is the product of a multi-agency team including DOR's economists and accountants, DNR's Division of Oil and Gas commercial analysts, geologists and engineers, and attorneys from the private sector and the Department of Law.

Sorry, Dan, it looks like a group effort to me.

-- Lawrence H. Adams

Wasilla

We suckle; we just don't look

What's wrong with public breast-feeding? We ALL do it! We just don't want to admit that we do it. And we certainly don't want to "look" at it in public.

Whether it's highway maintenance, public servants' salaries or welfare ... isn't it all public breast-feeding? Isn't it all something provided to us that we would rather not "see"?

I thought it similar that we don't want to "look" at how babies receive breast milk, and that we don't want to "look" at how we all receive our good ole government breast milk.

The city is reaching dire financial times by providing all this breast milk to all our hungry little mouths, but nobody wants to have to "look" at it. We don't want to think much about from where the milk flows, just that it keeps on flowing.

In order to provide public breast milk, it costs money. Tax money. Our money. Perhaps having to deal with the source of any breast milk makes us all uncomfortable.

-- Christopher Michl

Eagle River

Mom has right to breast-feed

In regard to the article about the incident at H2Oasis involving the mother who was breast-feeding her son ("Public breast-feeding is about utility, not sexuality," July 24), I say shame on the manager for making the mother feel uncomfortable. Both of my children were breast-fed and my grandchildren were breast-fed and I feel that it is every mother's right to do so.

I would not be surprised if some of the so-called militant breast-feeding mothers called for a boycott of H2Oasis.

-- Kevin Antrim

Anchorage

Delay tactics on health care are failing; we need reform

Ultimately, the debate about health care reform is not just about numbers, it's about our own lives and the lives of our loved ones. There is a kind of culture of fear that if you tell the truth very clearly, there's going to be repercussions, that you'll just be feeding the angry people who think that all government does is screw up. I believe that if a government reveals its flaws and says what it will do to fix those problems, then follows up on a timeline and actually fixes them, the public is not going to beat you up. The public is going to like it.

I would like to remind Congressman Don Young, Sen. Lisa Murkowski and Sen. Mark Begich why the country overwhelmingly voted for our president, Barack Obama: "Health care reform cannot wait, it must not wait, and it will not wait another year."

Delay tactics in Congress are old school, and the public is not buying it.

-- Saundra Fletcher

Anchorage

ADVERTISEMENT