Our readers write...
Community outreach a success
To the editor:
On July 12 the Columbiana County Save Our Homes Task Force sponsored a community outreach day. I was overwhelmed by the outpouring of support and enthusiasm for the event. Talking with the attendees, I am convinced that it was a worthwhile endeavor.
I want to thank the following groups and individuals for making the program successful: Task Force members Cindy Slavens; Mary Ann Pollock; Lisa Brophey; Jeff Lilly; Dora Pound; Jim Armeni; Vicki Curran; Amanda Jackson; Donna Beiling; Janet Birch; Nancy Milliken; Terry Sprague; Dena Rozeski; and Jean Holt.
We were also blessed with a number of organizations whose participation was greatly appreciated: State Treasurer Richard Cordray's Office and Regional Liaison Jim Johnston; Community Legal Aid; Huntington Bank; C.F. Bank; Home Savings; First National Community Bank; Consumer Credit Counseling; Columbiana County Community Action Agency; Consumer Credit Counseling Services of Columbiana County; ESOP and Sasha Parker; and the staff of the Columbiana County Treasurer's Office.
Special thanks are in order for First National Community Bank for volunteering to pay for box lunches provided during the program. I would also like to recognize and thank the Columbiana County Career and Technical Center, and particularly, Cindy Hawk for their generosity in providing a venue for the event.
Without the hard work and dedication of these community leaders, the event would not have been possible. Thank you! It is our hope to continue shedding light on various aspects of the foreclosure crisis. Look for more community events in the near future.
NICK BARBORAK,
Columbiana County
Treasurer,
Chairman, Save Our
Homes Task Force
Salem Lions Club says thanks
The Salem Lions Club would like to thank all who took part in running in the 5-K run and also the one-mile walk on July 12.
Thanks to the merchants, sponsors, fire department, ambulance, shops, Salem Community Center and the ham radio people for helping out.
It is a fund-raiser event, to pay for eye exams, eye surgeries, Seeing Eye Dog program, AMBA-blood screening event, the Doll House and other programs sponsored by the Lions club.
One line that stands out in the Lions pledge is: "I am proud to be a Lion dedicated to the service of others."
All new members are welcome, we meet the first and third Tuesday of every month at the Memorial Building at 6 p.m., second floor, or call Shirley Carreon at 330-332-5936.
SHIRLEY CARREON,
Salem
Congress holding oil hostage
When the Democrats took over congress in January of 2007, oil was $50 a barrel. Today it is over $120. On Friday Congress left town for its annual five-week vacation. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi refused to allow a vote on expansion of drilling in the U.S. Her reason? "I'm trying to save the planet." No seriously, she actually said that. So quit your whining about $4 gas, the lady has a planet to save. (here I thought Obama was the messiah).
Since the spike in oil prices, Democrats have alternately pointed the finger at Pres. Bush, the Saudis, "Big Oil", and speculators. Worldwide production of oil is 85 million barrels a day. Demand is currently 86 million. Common sense would seem to tell us we need more production, but with the Democrats more interested in working for the environmental extremists, than for their constituents, that won't happen any time soon. There is more than enough oil in our own country and off our shores to meet our needs. This would also create thousands of good paying blue collar jobs, the kind Democrats claim to support.
The most prosperous nation in history is closing truck and SUV plants, and ramping up production of four cylinder matchbox cars, because Congress has decided to hold several hundred billion barrels of oil hostage.
PAUL SIDWELL,
Opposes new plant in Wellsville
On both sides of the our river are rich hills. The riches in these hills are more than their parts: soil, sandstone, shale, natural gas, coal. The true riches of the hills and mountains of Ohio, West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, and, yes, mountains that are far away from our river, Colorado and Wyoming, are their wholes: rocks and streams, waterfalls, the forests: mountains that breathe in morning mists and evening salutes. Imagine that one day you awoke to find those mountains gone: the strength to which you have "lifted up your eyes" destroyed, leveled. Streams gone. Remaining water polluted. Rock falls strong enough to break through house walls a part of their destruction. Only subsoil remaining: subsoil that will not sustain growth for, perhaps, centuries, if ever. And never again the magnificent rise up from the river. No mountainsides of spectacular crimson and gold in autumn. No hillsides of trillium in the spring. No changing pattern of sun and shade as summer breezes rustle the forest leaves.
Although this might be longer coming here in our valley of the upper Ohio than it is to West Virginia, Colorado, and Kentucky, the coal that is still in the ground is being mined again in fields that never have really recovered from the strip mining of the 1950s and 1960s when the subsoil replaced the topsoil. Scrub trees and some grasses and weeds are all that still will grow on what was once rich farmland.
The proposed coal liquification plant for Wellsville will not only increase the pollution in our area: the uncertainty about the feasibility of proposed means of carbon sequestration, coal dust and other particulates in the air, the rising temperature of the river and any pollution which the plant causes which may again create dead zones in a river that is still recovering from past problems, and the massive co2 emissions that such manufacturing produces, it will also necessarily contribute to increases in mountaintop mining, a process that destroys mountains and the environment, strip mining, and further degradation of our area. Mountains cannot be replaced.
The real question is why such a plant or process is being proposed when there are better alternatives than the massive problems of coal liquification and the subsequent environmental degradation that is necessary to it. Why cause such local and widespread environmental degradation for a short-term solution? Why, instead, are we not developing other kinds of renewable energy, solar and wind, for instance? Is there not enough profit in sources that will not further contaminate the environment? The world we live in is at risk. We are at risk. There is no profit in further destroying our area.
PATTI SWARTZ,
Associate Professor of
English
Kent State University East Liverpool
