Expansion of North Cascades National Park

You say, "The Superintendent was not the NC super but was close." What the heck does that mean? It seems to me that you're smearing the superintendent of North Cascades National Park. I don't see how that sort of tactic has any place here. Clean up your act, Chris.

You read it the way you want to Lowell.
You're biased and clearly an apologist for this group, a member of the group although you insist upon presenting yourself as a  "doubting Thomas" but remain a  staunch defender, cloaked in the shroud of "fairness."

It's not the NC super as I clearly said and its not a smear , unfortunately it's a fact that a Park superintendent was reprimanded for ethical reasons involving real estate deals with park concessionairs and transferred as a result.
Is it germain to the argument.... ...yes I think so as one of the arguments being put forward is that the Park Service should manage this area and not the current government agencies because they will afford more protection to the area.
The  NPS whom your group argue are paragons of conservationism and much better at determining what's best for this area are also one of the worst managed, corrupt, inadequate and wasteful agencies in the government.

As a result you should contact Senator Patty Murray and cut the legs from under this proposal  by telling her that you will take away your vote if she supports any funding for this group and Park expansion into the highway 20 area. or vote for somebody that will.
Thanks

I think he's insinuating it was the Super of MRNP, "close" meaning proximity, but he should clean up his act anyway.

You remain an idiot I see. Do the reasearch Aaron -sweetie pie, your guess can easily be dispelled or proven by searching some public real estate records or looking at park trasnfer announcements as not many Superintendents get transferred. It's easy.............even a caveman can do it.

If this is an important topic to discuss and folks want to discuss it here, please avoid the personal attacks. I've already pulled several and would rather not spend my time babysitting this thread. If we can't keep from slinging crap I'll lock the topic and it'll drift down the page.

Will do....it is an impact to sledders as well.

Between the AALP and the WMC proposals, I think the closure of public land to the public is extremely negative on the expansion of the population knowing how we interact with areas out side the cities and our urban neighborhoods. Recreational opportunities are limited as it is for much of the population, but to limit them even more in the name of stopping development is overstepping the ideas I think some of these concepts were thought of initially. Effectively using a sledge hammer to kill a fly.

Having a 2 minute hike on the side of the road as you drive by is not of any benfit to the greater population, only to those few that want their own adgenda realized. I don't see how public money can be spent on this type of restriction or enforcement, given the tight budgets the entire scheme of gov't is under and the concept that we live in a democracy.

The days of having pristine untouched lands went away with our(making some assumptions here) occupation of America and pushing the Indians to the side. Although we do need some protections and some restrictions, the pace and volume the land is being "reclaimed" is out of step with the demands of the pupulation.

As was stated earlier, many of the proponents of these proposals become somewhat like zealots in trying to make their point and it gives way to productive communication to have very workable solutions in the name of kids or wildlife or what ever other trigger they try to use and it does nothing but create conflict.

The only way to keep people from Florida making determinations on our local areas is to gather the groups that actually live in and use the areas to hammer out agreeable terms. Zealots like WMC and such need to be dragged to a table for talks or ignored by the decision makers. And it should be a crime with punishment if our gov't agents in charge of these descisions are not including all groups.

Until that utopia comes about, it will be a letter writing and voting campaign. And Scotsman, I'm sure we'll be hearing of your support in opposing the WMC proposal as it is in it's current description?

Thanks yammadog and yes I will support your opposition to the WMC land grab. I think we can form a coalition of like minded souls to combat the over-reaching by these two groups. Please lobby your supporters to contact Senator Murray or Dino Rossi and tell them to make sure each candidate knows that supporting these groups will not be acceptable. Spread the word and then we need to get down to business and talk about how sledders and skiers and hybrid skier/sledders can all exist together by mutual land use agreementsthat protects the environments but still allows sensible use by both.

A few people found the concept of forests-for-biomass as ridiculous. In is not. In fact, Two companies in Shelton are in stages of wood burning powerplants that will burn sawdust, bark, woodchips and straff.  This was on a NPR story this morning while I was waking up.
A quick internet search yielded
www.tri-cityherald.com/2009/03/19/514732...ants-considered.html
www.king5.com/news/business/250M-biomass...helton-83821887.html
for non/less biased news sources. While they are using more of the trees felled, it makes the green gold much more valuable and desirable.  Please realize forests are now wanted biomass-energy projects, putting more pressure on us (citizens) to get them protected.

Having a biomass plant to burn saw kerf and waste wood in conjunction with a modern high tech wood mill that uses train loads of wood each day and is located near a major population center is economically practical--it simply uses underutilized material.  Having a mill that uses "slash" next to vast private tree farms managed on short rotations (I think Green Diamonds is around 200,000 acres) may be economically practical, but the costs of handling, chipping, and transporting would be high.  However, it seems a number of residents of Shelton are put off by the amount of smoke that might be produced, and as you heard, are demonstrating against it.

Gathering wood from vast public lands not intensively managed to fuel a plant in an area with few people has been shown to be economically infeasible because of the costs of harvesting and moving the wood; there was once hope that could be an answer to some of the forest health/areas needing thinning, but the cost-benefit ratio is poor and the environmental impacts of the wood burning would probably be unacceptable.

...

I will admit, the post that you just found is interesting, but guess what, there is that in all levels of government, quite unfortunately. The FS is not excluded, neither is the NPS. ...

The case cited is one of the most egregious I have seen. Since a couple of scandals involving political appointees, federal employees have to go through extensive, repeated ethics training, lots of paperwork for any business outside the gov't, and for those in higher positions have to annually report everything about their and their spouses finances.

The executive in question, according to the report, not only created the "appearance of impropriety" (a major no-no), but also engaged in conflict of interest, falsified reports, and lied to investigators (according to the post above). This is pretty extreme behavior for a civil servant, IMHO>