Dear editor, Dear editor,
Would someone please explain to me why we need guns in our voting places. Isn’t it bad enough we are slaughtering children in their school seats and men, women and children in theaters and airports.
I am so tired of hearing about gun owners’ rights and nothing about the rights of the rest of us who are brave enough to live without guns.
The Republican Party has tried everything else to keep us from voting. Now they want us to kill off each other at the polls.
The terrorists overseas have nothing on some people in America.
Jim Smith,
Iola, Kan.
A Kansas Water Office (KWO) plan to dredge federal reservoirs was modified by a hand-picked Reservoir Advisory Committee last Friday at the governor’s water conference in Manhattan.
The original plan was the first step in a much greater plan to dredge decades of accumulated silt from federal reservoirs in eastern Kansas. While at first glance that proposal seemed laudable, it failed the common-sense test. The plan initially called for the issuance of $25 million in state-issued bonds for dredging and associated projects from John Redmond Reservoir in Coffey County. Once that funding mechanism was in place, the program could be expanded to include Milford, Tuttle Creek, Perry and Clinton reservoirs on the Kansas River and Council Grove in the Neosho Basin.
Cost of that proposal would be borne by residents of Junction City, Manhattan, Topeka, Lawrence and Johnson County on the Kansas River; in the Neosho Basin it would be passed on to Council Grove, Emporia, Burlington, Iola, Chanute, Parsons and others; all through charges to water marketing fees and water assurance district operations. Those costs would be passed on to residents through water and electricity rates.
The KWO says dredging is required to keep the lakes from filling with sediment. But their plan does not solve the problem. It creates a perpetual expenditure. Pumping silt out at less than the rate it flows into the lake is a never-ending process. The $25 million at John Redmond will be followed by additional expenditures of like amount far into the future. When all six lakes are considered, the initial cost is $150 million, possibly much more. But that isn’t all.
Not all of the $25 million proposed for John Redmond will be for dredging. A third of it will be spent to stop the inflow of silt in the future. If that is such good idea, then why dredge at all. Spend the money on land treatment and stop the agriculture runoff. Find methods to engage the agriculture community in the solution.
In the case of John Redmond, the problem was solved for several decades when the KWO and the Tulsa Corps of Engineers reallocated the water supply pool. Not even the mighty Corps wanted to dredge. Reallocating the water supply pool restored it to near 1960s levels.
The Reservoir Advisory Committee was right to reject and modify the KWO plan. It needs to be rethought. The problem is the KWO reluctantly retreats from a position it has taken. It already has drafted proposed legislation to accomplish the goal expressed in this letter.
Galen E. Biery, general manager, Cottonwood & Neosho River Basin Water Assurance District.
(Biery, a lawyer and engineer, is intimately involved in water supply issues in eastern Kansas. Water assurance districts provide municipal and industrial water during times of drought in the Cottonwood, Neosho, Kansas, and Marais des Cygne river basins.)
Letters to the editor 11-6-13
