Protect old-growth in Monongahela Forest
An executive order from 2022 directed the U.S. Forest Service to develop climate-smart plans to conserve old growth and mature forests, and that plan, called the National Old Growth Amendment (NOGA) is now out for public comment.
However, this includes numerous logging exceptions under the guise of “proactive stewardship,” which allows the agency to log an old-growth stand out of existence. Hence, the NOGA plan leaves forests here in West Virginia without adequate protection.
While much of West Virginia’s old growth was clear cut in the last century, large parts of the Monongahela National Forest have regrown and are now important mature forests. These forests store carbon, help prevent flooding and are critical habitat for endangered species. Now is the time to ask the Forest Service to strengthen the NOGA plan and provide real protection for mature forests in the Monongahela National Forest.
This is not some distant threat — a key issue is the proposed logging of mature trees in the Upper Cheat River project.
To learn more about this issue, please join us for a free showing of the documentary film “Crown Jewels” at 7 p.m., Sept. 4, at the Monongalia Arts Center, Morgantown.
This film highlights the need to protect forests from timbering projects such as the proposed Upper Cheat River project. We hope to see you there.
Michael Attfield
Mon Group of the Sierra Club
Morgantown
Thank you, paving crews, for W.Va. 7 road work
Wow, something to celebrate — W.Va. 7/East Brockway Avenue coming into the downtown Morgantown area is actually a decent road. All the way to Spruce Street, no humps, bumps or grinds.
Thank you to the paving crews who had to work in this miserable heat and to taxpayer dollars that finally got it done.
I am grateful and know that others are as well. When you have a main thoroughfare that is in despicable condition, it reflects badly on the city.
Now it’s smooth as silk!
Deb Miller
Reedsville
Grieving what we have lost with Campus Carry
My heart sank and my head pounded when I finished reading two recent articles in the Daily Athenaeum, with the editors doing their best to educate new students and others to the introduction of Campus Carry — hidden guns — at West Virginia University.
President Gee and others had tried hard to block the legislation that required the implementation of this outrageous policy on our beloved campus, and I am appreciative of these efforts. But in neither article was there any regret, let alone analysis, of the results of their failure or where we have failed as a society and how we might otherwise wish to counter the deeply distressing reliance on violence — and the threat of violence — even within our most precious — and, I would hope, civilized — institutions.
I felt particularly distressed by the university administrators who struggled to explain as calmly as they could — as if it were the most normal thing in the world — how parents, faculty and others should deal with seeing someone with a gun while at their WVU home.
How about expressing some pain, if not outrage, at the current situation not only at WVU, but in our country? How about urging incoming and current students to think about the violent world they are being asked to live in and how they might want to demand their peers and parents and educators and legislators work with them to examine and change it?
How about taking a moment to grieve?
Judith Gold Stitzel
Morgantown
City does more than enough for homeless
The “do gooders” believe they are smarter than everyone else. And if we only listened to them, the U.S. would be better off. During the 1980s, the “do gooders” advocated for the closure of the big state mental hospitals, to be replaced by community-based mental health centers.
Seriously! Did they really believe that the mentally ill would make and keep their appointments at these centers?
In an April 17 JAMA Psychiatry article written by a Canadian research team, which reviewed 85 rigorous studies on homelessness, it was suggested that 67% of the homeless had some form of mental illness.
In an Aug. 18 letter to the editor in The Dominion Post, Ana Saab suggested the Morgantown community was just not doing enough.
Maybe she forgot the millions of dollars that have poured into Hazel’s House of Hope, the million or so which will help Health Right to move to the same campus and the millions of dollars which go to support the 20 or so agencies that provide addiction and mental health services in our community.
Ms. Saab also suggests that Morgantown doesn’t have adequate public transportation. Due to the generosity of the City of Morgantown and the county commission, Mountain Line provides free bus service on its Don Knotts route from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m., seven days a week, visiting Hazel’s House of Hope 28 times a day.
Dennis Poluga
Morgantown
In support of Reger-Nash to represent District 82
Mon County District 82 needs the leadership of Dr. Bill Reger-Nash in our House of Delegates. Bill is a West Virginia native with common sense, experience in the Legislature and a long history of helping West Virginia improve the lives of our people. Bill listens and cares about people of all political parties and all walks of life. He is honest, hardworking and of high moral character.
Bill will focus on well-paying jobs with benefits and better health care for all. He will do this in part by working to capitalize on West Virginia’s assets, our people and our state’s natural beauty. He knows economic tourism can help put more of our people to work and build an economy that protects our assets, our mountain views, our trails, our waterways, our forests and our meadows, all rich in value for our health and our economic base. He believes if we enhance our tourism infrastructure in ways that protect our treasures, we can make it easy and desirable for us to have more active and healthier lives while we grow our bank accounts. As we grow healthier, we will attract more tourists who will come here to live and bring businesses into West Virginia when they fall in love with its wonders and its people.
Because of Bill’s fierce loyalty to the people of West Virginia and his focus on economic development and health care for all, I will feel more hopeful for the future of West Virginia if he is elected. We need more leaders who are creative, open and willing to work across the aisle, like Bill, in our Legislature. I am going to vote for him, and I hope you will, too.
Ann Chester
Morgantown
Honoring our promise to our service members
As a veteran, I worry about our troops as conflicts heat up around the world. I know they are ready, but I am concerned about what happens to them when they come back.
As a country, we promise our service members that we will take care of them. But we do not always live up to that promise. Case in point: More than 53,000 wounded veterans who were forced to medically retire are not receiving their full retirement pay — just because they did not serve 20 years.
These are veterans who lost arms or legs, or suffer from PTSD, traumatic brain injuries or hundreds of other injuries. This unjust offset impacts approximately 300 veterans here in the Mountain State.
Penalizing service members who were forced to retire because they were injured while serving their country is just wrong. But it gets worse.
More than 300 members of Congress sponsored a bill to let these veterans receive their full retirement pay: the Major Richard Star Act. Yet, at crunch time, the House decided not to vote on it.
The Senate has a chance to pass the Major Richard Star Act in September as part of the annual, must-pass National Defense Authorization Act, and I am calling on Sens. Manchin and Capito to support the veteran community.
If Congress sends the NDAA to the president without the Major Richard Star Act, our country’s promise to combat-injured military retirees will remain broken. We need to support our veterans, especially those who sacrificed so much for us during their service.
Please join me and urge our senators to support the Major Richard Star Act.
Brandon Gregory
Morgantown
