Archive: Opinions

I hunt and fish and consider myself an environmentalist and conservationist. If I wasn't, the sports I cherish would be impossible. That's why I found a letter to the editor in last week's Lansing Star so disheartening. A self-proclaimed environmentalist decided to abandon her stances for partisanship.

The writer says she cannot support Mike Sigler because he supports increasing natural gas supply in Lansing, to end the moratorium, and a pipeline to repower the Cayuga power plant. According to a letter mailed two weeks ago by the democrat running for the County Legislature in Lansing, so does Sigler's democratic opponent.

In the op-ed, she writes that Mr. Sigler's opponent is now against the mine expansion after being for it earlier. This is also news since that same letter says the democrat still supports the new shaft. Mr. Sigler argues that Cargill has done a thorough job of assessing the risks and that what the writer says is safer, mining under dry land is not just unfeasible, but more dangerous. Again she bring up the Retsof collapse, which was under dry land. She is sold on the idea that the lake will flood the mine, despite the more than 1000 feet of bedrock separating the two, and therefore no mining under the lake is safe, a point Mr. Walter Hang made at the CLEAN meeting earlier this year.

So which is the truth? Mr. Sigler has laid out his positions very clearly. He's been in the mine, talks with Cargill often and is a vocal advocate for the miners. On natural gas, he's fought to reposer the plant for years. His opponent on the other hand is either taking one set of positions with the writer, that he's against ending the natural gas moratorium, is against repowering, and wants the mine closed and then writing to voters telling them the exact opposite, or the writer doesn't believe those public statements are his true opinions, or she doesn't really care about these issues and is just using her environmentalist mantle to castigate Sigler to prop up her preferred candidate.

All three scenarios are pretty bad. I don't always agree with Mr. Sigler, but I've always known where he stands. He makes no secret about it. That's why I'll be supporting him November 7th.

Dick Costello
Lansing, New York
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