Coal, comprehensive plan linked

To the editor:

Amazingly, some Soapstone-area residents contend that there’s no connection between their pro-coal and anti-comprehensive plan sentiments. Their single-minded thinking is that Usibelli’s plan, to put a strip mine on the Wishbone Hill site, will create innumerable job opportunities; hence, their ongoing insistence that the comp plan be “quashed.” Nothing could be further from the truth. The deleterious effects of mining on our community will outweigh any and all financial gain.

The majority of those who are anti-comprehensive plan have chosen to ignore what the plan posits, that is that the detrimental effect that mining efforts will have on the health and economic well-being of its citizenry. Also, the effects on area wildlife will be devastating. Further, it’s foolhardy to assume that reclamation efforts will restore a damaged salmon spawning ground.

As importantly, disavowing the comprehensive plan will give the current borough assembly free rein to run roughshod over what they currently believe is a semi-developed area that contains a smattering of rednecks and environmentalists. This, as opposed to what it actually is, is a residential area in which 128 families live within a stone’s throw of an emergent strip mine.

Yes, the coal mine issue and the comprehensive plan are linked, and with good reason. The subtext of the plan is that the future of our community is at stake.

Alys Culhane

Buffalo Mine