Letters to the editor -- July 4

• Published July 04, 2008

Where is the common sense in leaders?

We have had several decades of promises of energy independence, yet we are still beholden to a lot of dictators who happen to sit on top of a lot of oil who really hate this country. The United States has approximately 100 billion barrels of proven reserves of oil and yet the U.S. policy is to not drill where we know there is oil! Why have we not built a nuclear power plant in the last 30 years? Why do we restrict research into converting coal to fuel? Why do we persist in enriching a relatively few farmers for converting our food into fuel? The U.S. needs a new energy policy. I propose the following:

• Drill in Alaska and off both coasts.

• Encourage the development of electric cars.

• Spend some of the billions of dollars we send to Hugo Chavez to complete the mothballed nuclear power plants in this state.

• Eliminate the tariffs on importation of Brazilian ethanol.

• Stop any consideration of a windfall profits tax. The surest way to get less of something is to tax it.

Just think of the benefit our nation would see if the money currently going overseas for oil imports went to the U.S. Treasury in the form of lease and royalty payments.

The next objection will be “What do we do with the nuclear waste?” I suggest that we could isolate the worst of the nuclear waste, put it into a box and shoot it into the sun, the ultimate furnace!

George Pickett, Olympia

Converting to PUD power would be a costly mistake

Without any study to back him up, Steve Johnson of the Washington PUD Association says Thurston County PUD is a viable alternative to electricity service from Puget Sound Energy.

That kind of thinking led our state’s PUDs to create the Washington Public Power Supply System. WPPSS was appropriately pronounced “Whoops” because it was responsible for the largest public bond default in history.

Johnson’s pitch failed to answer some key questions.

For example, how much would it cost Thurston County taxpayers/ratepayers to condemn and acquire at fair market value all PSE’s infrastructure in the county? How much would the protracted litigation cost? How much would it cost to acquire the equipment, personnel and expertise to manage an electrical system? Other than from ratepayers, where would the money to pay for all this come from?