Dr. Paul Connett respected world-wide
I, too, would like to commend Mayor Kerby on his receipt of the Harold Hurst Award because of the great job he did in the beautification and upgrade of downtown Bonners Ferry. As a volunteer at the Visitor's Center, I am proud to say that yes, I live here and I love this place and the beauty welcomes me every morning. I do not mind the tourism, it helps local businesses during the summer months, and it contributes to our place on the Selkirk Loop, a road trip that exemplifies some of the very special and spectacular beauty that America has to offer.
Tourism is a valuable, economic contribution to our community and to the small family businesses which help retain our local character and hospitality. Growth always has its positive and negative aspects, and I know that our local Planning and Zoning Board work very hard to do their best for this community.
With growth and housing prices rising so quickly, it's difficult, at best, to come up with solutions that please everyone. Furthermore, since so much of this planning consists of volunteer work rather than paid jobs, I think that all our county's volunteers deserve a very special commendation and thanks.
With regards to industrial growth like pulp mills and Waste-to-Energy plants, as co-chair of Boundary County Concerned Citizens, I believe that large scale industrial effects on our community deserve community input. I did not live here when the pulp mill was an issue, and neither did most of the people who fought the WTE plant.
Sometimes what initially seems like a good idea turns out to have too many negatives. This is what happened with the WTE plant.
Republicans, Independents, Democrats, wealthier landowners and minimum wage workers, health care industry, education, agriculture, timber and many others all came together to say this is not what we want for our community.A guest speaker, a chemist from St. Lawrence University, visited our town and spoke to many of us individually and as a group, about waste, WTE, and zero-waste.
This man, Dr. Paul Connett, is highly respected around the world for his knowledge about waste, the waste industry, and its effects on small towns as well as big cities. Paul Connett is not a "quack."
He presented research from the Center for Disease Control, the World Health Organization, individual countries, universities, peer-reviewed journals, and so forth, which have all demonstrated that the burning of waste produces many toxins, the deadliest of which is dioxin.
People involved in waste and biomass industries come to us with a bias towards their product. For those of us who appreciate the beauty, clean air, and clean water that Boundary County offers, it becomes our responsibility that all industries must be weighed against those qualities.
Personally, I think it would be in the spirit of the community's history to have some kind of wood product industry; but it needs to be one that contributes to our local beauty, to our healthy hunting, hiking, camping, and agricultural traditions, and especially to the local workers who sacrifice salary for the chance to live in this little piece of paradise on earth.
Linda Langness
Bonners Ferry