A letter from a Mr. Heinz in your Nov. 24 issue regarding grant funding for recreation purposes deserves comment from at least one other perspective in light of economic conditions and recent election results.

A grant for recreational parking attached to the Land and Water Conservation Fund is referred to as an “earmark.” Eliminating earmarks to reduce federal spending was a major talking point of most Republicans in the recent congressional elections. Congressman Reichert still dares to call himself a Republican.

This earmark is in my humble opinion the type of expenditure which party members and constituents need to make certain that Mr. Reichert declines to sponsor or co-sponsor with our Democratic senators.

The LWCF dollars referred to would be more wisely and properly spent delineating erosion control buffer stands of timber on newly-built logging roads to clear-cut areas, culverts for such roads, and on settling ponds similar in construction to dairy manure lagoons to handle runoff from arsenic and cyanide heap leach pits associated with mining operations and fencing such pits for wildlife protection. Enough road turnout areas and camping spots would result that could accommodate recreationists like Mr. Heinz, the horsemen and the bicyclists. Such an approach would generate private sector jobs as well as provide a return to the Federal Treasury and the LWCF on any initial expenditure.

I know that this approach may seem horrid to urban environmentalists; however, if the Americans don’t quit spending borrowed money, squandering much of it on earmarks, and continue to legislatively render themselves incapable of exploiting, developing, marketing and selling the resources of their own empire, then in the foreseeable future the foreign lenders will forcibly demand land cessions, with the vacant land, its untapped resources, and adjacent occupied areas (your condominium, your house, your city, your farm, your business) as a sort of collateral forfeiture to recover a part of the monetary debt owed to them. Your children and grandchildren will either be refugees or grow up under a different flag flying over most of western North America if we don’t make a sharp right turn soon.

For these and numerous other reasons, I hope that Mr. Heinz and like-minded individuals will thoughtfully reconsider their earmark request for a horse and bicycle trailer parking lot near Maple Valley and that Mr. Reichert will not even consider such an expenditure, and furthermore that he opposes any more Wilderness Area designation, National Park expansion, or any similar legislation.

Edward D. Neil

Enumclaw