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Letters: EIS is a well-researched plan I have followed the planning process for improvements to the Mt. Ashland Ski Area for many years and it is clear to me that the Forest Service has both listened to reason and done a thorough analysis of potential impacts, both positive and negative. The preferred alternative presented in the Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) does an exceptional job of balancing the social and economic benefits of an improved winter recreation facility with care for the environment. Everyone wants to see a healthy ski area with facilities that better serve the public and continue to provide benefits to families and young people, such as school programs and race teams, programs for disabled folks, environmental education programs, physical fitness and the provision of a place for people to interact socially in a beautiful mountain environment. Throughout the DEIS, the Forest Service has clearly shown, after years of careful and thorough analysis, the environmental impacts to be minimal; actually with improvements in some areas! Scare tactics about water degradation are just that, with no basis in scientific analysis. For example, the DEIS points out that with Alternative 6 - the preferred alternative - there would be .54 acres affected out of a total of 384 watershed wetland acres and there would be no ground disturbance even in that half an acre! As for the financial red flags waved by critics of the expansion plan, taxpayers have never covered ski area operation costs and the present ski area lease protects them from being asked to do so in the future. Improvement of the winter recreational facilities on Mt. Ashland really is a reasonable project that can meet both our social and environmental goals. It deserves our support. Tom Pyle Medford *** The Spruce is an issue for ski area The Englemann Spruce Grove in the Mt. Ashland Ski Area proposed expansion area is, very special. In discussing impacts to the Englemann Spruce Grove at the bottom of alternatives 2, 3, and 6, the latest Mt. Ashland Ski Area Expansion DEIS does not say the grove is a population left over from thousands of years ago (relic population). Nor does the DEIS say that the population is separated by many miles from the nearest Englemann Spruce trees growing in the Cascades. Despite the implications in the DEIS, Englemann Spruce are not found in any other parts of Ashland Creek drainage according to the survey commissioned by the Ashland Ranger District. According to the above survey the portion of the Englemann Spruce Grove that would be impacted by alternatives 2, 3, or 6 has the highest concentration of trees in the grove and also the greatest number of large trees in the grove. Impacts of cutting trees for ski runs would expose these tree to sunlight and wind. The additional exposure could cause extensive damage to Spruce trees beyond the edges of the runs as documented by edge effect studies conducted in the Klamath National Forest. J ohn M. Sully Ashland *** Guest forum: Wal-Mart and the Big Box Decaying of America By Gerald Cavanaugh Ashland Wal-Mart, that corporate empire of cheap and cheaper goods, does indeed capture much of the "American way of life," especially the crudely materialistic and cruelly exploitative aspects. The company may be seen as the end result, the Nirvana, of what Alexis de Tocqueville noted about Americans 170 years ago: "I see an innumerable multitude of men, all equal and alike, incessantly endeavoring to procure the petty and paltry pleasures with which they glut their lives � and to satisfy their smallest wants without effort and almost without cost." Or as a modern observer, Marshall Blonsky, puts it, Wal-Mart is where "America's least common denominators gather together." It is true that in many schools of business administration, Wal-Mart has become a "paragon of business prowess" (N. Y. Times, July 27), to be studied so that other enterprises may copy its rules of success. It is the vaunted "efficiency" of the Wal-Mart operation that so fascinates the business schools: When it comes to moving goods off the shelves and into consumer's hands, aka, "turnover," - Wal-Mart is the paragon. For that, and as well for its cost-control mechanisms: They have an almost single-minded focus on reducing costs. It's imbued throughout the organization. "Cost control" is a term of art that often covers things best left unseen and unstated. For example, labor costs. A single-parent of two children and employed full-time at a typical Wal-Mart does not earn enough to supply the family's basic needs by shopping at that work place. Of course, it need hardly be mentioned that, "There is a fundamental and inevitable conflict between the interests of corporations, to whom wages are a cost, and most human beings, to whom wages are a means of survival." (Stan Cox.) "Cost control" at Wal-Mart means two things primarily: no unions at home and cheap labor overseas. The company is openly hostile to any attempts to unionize its workers and has repeatedly run afoul of the National Labor Relations Board for various infractions. (Business Week, Oct. 28, 2002) This itself is damning because America has the weakest labor rights protections of any advanced industrial democracy, to the extent that "Human Rights Watch" has found America's labor laws and practices to be in violation of fundamental human rights. Wal-Mart fits nicely into these practices, paying low wages, offering affordable health care insurance only to a minority of its workers and a retirement plan heavily invested in Wal Mart stock. (Remember Enron?) And like most other American businesses, Wal-Mart fights against any increase in the minimum wage, mandatory health care insurance, job safety measures, and the strengthening of American labor laws. (See Bill Quinn, How Wal-Mart is Destroying America [2000]) Overseas, Wal-Mart is heavily involved in the subcontracting of work in places like China. It is, of course, a corporate secret where its goods come from but investigators believe that Wal-Mart uses goods produced in 1000 factories in China, at wages as low as 13 cents an hour. China is Asia's leading exporter of manufactured goods to the United States, but last year 386,645 Chinese workers died from industrial illnesses. It is not unique to Wal-Mart, but its products made in China are soaked in the blood, sweat, and tears of Chinese workers. In the Third Millennium, it would be salutary were American consumers more aware of this gruesome fact. In any case, yet another Wal-Mart Big Box is something definitely unneeded by this Country and its workers-citizens - as opposed to its mindless consumers. LINKS: DAILY TIDINGS: Main | News | Sports | Obituaries | Opinion | Columnists | AP News | Subscribe | Archives | Weather | Classifieds | Contact Us | Privacy REVELS: Main | Calendar | Dining | Movies | T.V. OTHER: Road Cams Copyright 2003 Ashland Daily Tidings 541.482.3456. 1661 Siskiyou Blvd., Ashland, OR 97520. Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. - Advertisers -