Toxic Palouse? It's your choice!

["Timothy Lohrmann" <lohr0426@novell.uidaho.edu>]

I checked my  mail today and saw many interesting posts about 
important meetings organizations, etc.
But there's a meeting on Wednesday that is much more fundamentally 
important than any retreat idea or City council proposal that I can 
imagine. On  THIS Wed. June 24th, at 6pm, public comment will be 
allowed on a proposal to allow Washington State University to 
incinerate infectious medical waste, low-level radioactive waste and 
pathological waste. In other words, permission may or may not be 
given to contaminate the air that we on the Palouse breathe. 
I find it interesting that this hearing was scheduled soon after the 
regular school year's end. What a great time for the proponents of 
this incinerator to be assured that many at Uof I and WSU will be on  
vacation, at their "real" homes for the summer, or just plain 
involved with summer and not paying attention.
So it's up to those of us here on the Palouse for the summer to pay 
some attention!
 Let's turn out at this hearing---again it's at 6p.m., in Bustad 
Hall, Room 145 on the WSU campus, on THIS coming Wednesday, June 
24th. The hearing is being conducted by the Washington State 
Department of Ecology. Let's tell them in no uncertain terms that:  
#1. We don't want a toxic waste incinerator in Pullman operated by 
WSU or anyone else. and  #2  That we resent the scheduling of this 
hearing at a time when major segments of the population of Pullman 
and Moscow are not even present to give input into this process. And 
that in light of this there should at the very least be another 
hearing scheduled in Sept. of Oct. so that a true sampling of public 
feeling can be heard. This proposal is an outrage, but what's even 
more outrageous is that in this supposedly environmentally aware, 
activist pair of communities a dangerous, incinerator can be put in 
place with barely a whimper of opposition. And let's face it, unless 
there's a good turnout of spirited opposition on Wednesday night 
that's just what will happen. I'll see you there, Tim Lohrmann