Posted on 08/18/2012 4:44:06 PM PDT by SteelToe
Years worth of work could be washed away upon approval of a proposal to flood the wetland
WINTER LAKE — Every resident learns to live with the flood.
Each year, with cruel seasonality, this peat-land is transformed into a 1,700-acre soup.
But this year, emotions have piqued over a different deluge.
Next year, earthworks are slated to begin on a $3.5 million project to restore 400 acres of pasture to wetland.
Sarah Crawford, an organic farmer on Garden Valley Road, worries that new body of water will radically alter the valley's water table.
'That would ruin us," Crawford said.
'That would ruin this community garden property which has been this way since the '70s."
Crawford is not alone. According to Coos County commissioner Bob Main, 37 residents have emailed him with concerns about the proposal.
'They are upset," Main said. 'They are very upset, and I don't blame them."
Spearheaders of the wetland project are battling to quell those fears. The group promises that channels and tide gates will protect surrounding landowners.
'We have said from the beginning, they will be no worse than they are in the present," said Fred Messerle, Coos County commissioner who is heading the project in his personal capacity as a rancher.
But, for some landowners, that's become a tough sell.
'We don't have a voice at the table," says Lisa Foster, who owns a 6.25-acre section of Garden Valley Road.
(Excerpt) Read more at theworldlink.com ...
Wait a minute, Mr. Farmer! YOU didn’t build that farm/farm crop! (It must have been the Village, or the Government!)
By “rations” I meant the daily meal of gruel we would be alloted while we are worked to death.
Welcome to every businessman's and middle class family's life under flipping obama.
County commissioners are not your friends - unless you’re a lib pushing some Agenda 21 plan, or someone with a lot of bucks.
Seems to be a universal pattern these days, but I’m not sure how it got like that. Does anyone know?
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