No, Thank You

I am not sold on windfarms in the least. Quite the contrary. I remain unimpressed with benefits touted, and I’m not aware of a compelling need locally that would press for this level of infrastructure application. If people are honestly dedicated to a clean, renewable energy, then we’d be talking about nuclear power.

Before I retired from work at the university in Pullman, each weekday morning, at a certain point on my trip, I’d find the butte filling my front windshield expanse, with the beautiful fields skirting her base. I had the same experience years ago when driving home from Ft. Lewis (JBLM) where I’d watch Mt. Rainier ‘move’. Sometimes floating, in a different spot, or hiding. Kamiak is much like that, different each day, subtly some days, more flirty other days. Unless our butte was hiding behind a mask of fog or a strong blizzard, I was always offered a ‘good morning’ from this beautiful friend. Not once have I ever imagined her bedecked in gaudy and garish towers, sporting blades with their dull and plodding turns.

I thought a lot about the letters from the farmers in last week’s LTE and felt badly for them. And then I thought about all the rest of us. Those of us who do not farm, never have, and never will, but are living here alongside them all. People, this butte belongs to all of us. Wouldn’t it be a cold realization to find that we would be the last living group to see Kamiak Butte as she was meant to be? She is our butte, but not ours to plunder and destroy for decades and more to come.

My response to Harvest Hills or anyone else interested in separating us from our hard-earned dollars and vandalizing Kamiak Butte is, ‘No, Thank You’.

Colleen Swanson

Colfax, WA