Burn garbage, coal and save environment

I’m tired of all the whining and ringing of hands about the environment. The sky is falling, the sky is falling … NO IT IS NOT! The extreme environmentalists are not a bit different than big business. They only tell different lies and exaggerate about different things.

I’ve had experience with the environmentalist. The spotted owl fiasco shut down the timber industries on the West Coast. The story about the spotted owl was a lie from the beginning to the end. The environmentalist got the Forest Service not only to require that logging be done with horses, but the lumber jacks had to put diapers on the horses. The deer, the elk and bear could go in the woods but the horse apples would contaminate the Portland, Ore., watershed. So as you can tell, I have no love for “the-sky-is-falling” groupies.

All of the howling about burning coal is bologna. There have been tremendous changes in coal-fired generating plants and there could be more if they could set aside money for research and development. Stopping everything by protest and lies is ridiculous and SAD! The MEA board and the Borough board collapses without any real research about what is happening or what could be done to the positive about using coal to generate

electricity.

And if these environmentalists really cared about the environment they would back 90 to 100 percent recycling, with next to nothing going into landfills. Because some day that landfill will leak toxic waste into the water system. It will have a lot worse effect than greenhouse gases or smoke in the air.

We should be promoting the use of coal. The plant should not only burn coal but also garbage. Alaska has HUGE deposits of coal and an unending supply of garbage. Gas reserves are low or they are going to be high priced because the gas price is tied to the gas prices in the Lower 48. I don’t need high electric bills when they could be cheaper.

It’s time for everyone to take the supposed lemon and figure out how to make lemonade. A recycling, coal-fired generator complex could produce many benefits, like heat from steam for factories, warehouses, greenhouses, etc. The greenhouse could be used to replace some of the fruits and vegetables now imported from Canada, Mexico and South America. They would be fresher and not cost more than they do now.

I’m sure other ideas would come up with many more uses for the byproducts if a electrical generating plant and recycling complex were to be looked into and considered.

It is a waste of our resource to burn natural gas when we could do the job with cheaper coal and garbage.

Leo M. Wakefield

Wasilla