TREES: Root of dike stability

Recently there has been a growing issue over the ponderosa trees on the dike road by the waterfront. As I understand it, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers wish to have those trees removed, claiming "the vegetation destabilizes them." Interesting enough is an article by Dave Oliveria of the Spokesman-Review that completely refutes that claim.

In the city of Sacramento, Calif., the Corps made the same demand. As Mr. Oliveria pointed out, this requirement would cause many communities to spend millions of dollars to do this. Money they simply do not have. In addition, the Sacramento Bee has pointed to a "study that shows some levees are actually strengthened, not weakened, by the trees." The Bee concludes that Corps muckety-mucks should heed the findings of their own study and "develop a more flexible, case by case policy for levee maintenance nationwide."

Wow and bingo! Can you imagine that our super officials have finally come to their senses? Guess we will have to see how our "elected officials" handle this dispute. Only time will tell.

This is not the only case where the public is doing war with elected officials. I refer to the development of the waterfront in downtown Coeur d'Alene. Here again our officials are deciding what is right for the public. This is OK since they are elected by the public to do so. And no one would complain as long as their actions reflected the will of the people who elected them. However, in all too many cases this does not happen. Instead the elected officials give way to commercial interests and just operate on that basis. This is not correct and I sincerely hope our elected officialdom reacts very quickly to the problem so that it does not become incurable.

P.S. This was for you, Dick.

MICHAEL T. MILLER

Post Falls