The articles on Evanite’s offer of land in exchange for Greenway boundary removal caught my attention.

Why would Evanite want to remove a boundary that has been in place since 1975, when the state established the Greenway? The first fiberglass plant received all its permits in 1979, even from the Greenway Commission. What will each party gain and lose if the boundary is removed? Please find the Greenway section of the Land Development Code on the city’s Web site, and decide for yourselves.

How well has Evanite controlled its hazardous chemicals?

In 1985, Trichloroethylene (TCE), was discovered when the millrace was being rebuilt. TCE is a long-lasting water soluble EPA-listed carcinogen formerly used in the closed Evanite Battery Separator Plant. DEQ testing revealed TCE had contaminated Evanite soil, the mill race, an approximate 10-acre area of groundwater and the wells of neighbors. Other significant chemicals also were found in the groundwater.

DEQ issued two successive 10-year enforceable order post-closure permits to Evanite for TCE cleanup. Evanite has recovered over 116,000 pounds of TCE. Recovery continues.

What chemicals will be found under the hardboard plant? If the city acquires the land, will the city perform the necessary due diligence phase I testing for chemical contamination?

Who will pay for any remediation? (Seewww.deq.state.or.us/wmc/ecsi/ecsidetail.

asp?seqnbr=40.)

How about this proposal: As a gesture of goodwill to the community, Evanite should donate the land they’ve offered — purged of its chemicals — with no strings attached?

Marilyn Koenitzer

Corvallis

Tougher drug laws don’t solve anything

I can appreciate the frustration and anger that The Rev. William Smith feels about the family tragedy in his church (July 12, “As I see it,” “Toughen drug laws to stamp out usage”). I would suggest that he is confusing symptoms for causes in his attack on drugs, and that the strategy he recommends is a failed one. Unfortunately, his reaction is typical of our national policies in the neo-prohibitionist and counter-productive “war on drugs.”

Mr. Barrie has often contributed accurate information about marijuana in this space, and wasting any taxpayer money busting pot farms is stupid.

There are good reasons to be concerned about refined powders and illegality introduces many other dangers where sensation rather than sensuality is sought.

I can assure Pastor Smith that drugs were not “the cause” of this family tragedy. They may well have been part of the problem, but the pain and strain on families suffering economic squeezes and the loss of genuine community comes down from the top.

The solutions to the drug problem are to treat addictions as medical issues and to take the profit out of production. Cops and prisons have made everything worse. I cannot see Jesus endorsing “getting tougher” at the expense of the victims. I can see Jesus condemning the Empire and its culture of death.

Rev. Donald R. Caughey

Corvallis

Modern humans are wanton polluters

Alexander Goldner was right in his July 12 letter, which noted that fireworks were dirty bombs. He could have said, “All of human activity is dirty!”

We expose toxins when we disturb the soil to grow our food and mine minerals to build our machines or decorate our bodies; toxic materials that have lain safely dormant for eons.

We create new toxins to control plants, other animals and microbes to build 4,000-square foot homes and 1,000- foot-high office buildings; to expedite travel and transport, while we chant “New! Better! Bigger! Faster! Easier! Cheaper!”

And then we spread the toxins around. We use and discard, when we spit the toothpaste down the drain, when we bus kids to school creating rubber and concrete dusts, when corrosion and erosion rusts railroad tracks and washes the paint from our homes.

Can “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle” help? You bet it can. If practiced, the “3 Rs” would lessen an individuals’ impact on the Earth’s air, water and soils. But the ultimate fact is there are too many of us individuals to maintain a livable existence for our species. And ultimately we must limit our numbers, or else nature will painfully do it for us.

Negative Population Growth may yet be able to heal our planet. See NPG.com.

Arne Landsberg

Corvallis

OSU Beavers were simply the best

Amazing Beaver baseball champions! This human sport achievement will likely be the ultimate for the state of Oregon.

I’ve been a baseball fan for more than 60 years, beginning in the Midwest in the 1950s’ heydey of baseball: The years of the mighty St. Louis Cardinals, Brooklyn Dodgers, New York Yankees and New York Giants.

I played Little League on those hot summer nights on a country field in northern Missouri. Across the plains and into the South, from the air you could have seen the connecting lights from those fields ... endless.

The 2006 championship was such an accomplishment because of the loss of the first game in the College World Series and the need to win every game after that to win the championship.

This year’s championship started with a great comeback part-way through the season. Baseball fans delighted at outstanding fielding plays, such as a miraculous stop by the shortstop, an acrobatic throw to the second baseman, and on to first for the improbable double play. And the great throw by the left-fielder to the third-baseman — who fired the ball to the catcher, who picked up on the hop and tagged the runner going by. Big-time stuff!

We’re happy for the players and coaches to have the trophies, the memories, the camaraderie, the DVDs and the rings. No one can take that from them.

As for the idea of a “three-peat”: That’s just contemporary sports hype. It suggests that the present is never enough; that there always has to be more and better. This has been the most, and the best.

Thanks, Beavers.

Lee Findley

Corvallis

A modest question regarding ‘the surge’

President Bush says, “This surge is working.” If that is so, why didn’t he use “this surge” four years ago?

Jane Sivetz

Corvallis