Recently in Environment Category

How have the increased traffic and development in York County in the last 20 years affected you? Has it improved your quality of life or impaired it? If you want to help preserve the natural beauty and quality of life here, join with the Women's Club of Spring Grove to support the work of the Farm & Natural Lands Trust of York County.

The Trust is a nonprofit organization dedicated to preserving the farm and natural lands of York County for future generations. All donations to the Trust are tax-deductible. No local tax money supports the Trust.

"Why is it OK for smokers to take breaks all the time? If I want to go outside and hang out once an hour, then I'll just take up smoking."
--Kelly Kapour on NBC-TV's "The Office"

As the owner of an office-products company, I have a special appreciation for the dysfunctional characters and situations found on "The Office." For the most part, the show is funny without, thankfully, having too much in common with ours or most other work places. But Kelly's comment about smoking breaks, in the second episode of this season, hit pretty close to home.

At The Phillips Group, we went cold turkey as of Jan. 1, 2008. We stamped out the use of tobacco products anywhere on our property, from our headquarters in Middletown to our offices throughout central Pennsylvania to our company vehicles.

What prompted the move was our continued efforts to control healthcare costs and, by extension, to encourage the wellness of our employees. To that end, our tobacco-use policy had become increasingly difficult to defend.

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A recent report found that investing money in clean energy solutions to global warming could net more than 86,300 jobs in Pennsylvania alone and would put Pennsylvania on track to reducing our contributions to global warming.

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Greg Colburn of Hanover says Todd Platts was "lying" when he said that "no oil was spilled" by oil rigs during Hurricane Katrina since "some "17,653 barrels of oil from platforms, rigs and pipelines" were spilled from hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Platts was wrong, but I'm sorry to say that Mr. Colburn's overall conclusion is faulty. Did Platts know he was wrong? He was quite possibly repeating similar statements by others such as Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal who said there were "no major spills."

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Maybe Jim Ogden should take his own advice and "know the whole energy story."

In Mr. Ogden's article he points out that both wind and solar power are not available at a steady 24/7 schedule. This is true.

He omits to point out that specific kinds of Hydro power plants, so called pumped storage facilities have been, and are being built around the nation to act as storage facilities.

An example here in in PA is the installation at Muddy Run, just google "Muddy Run Pumped Storage PA" (click here).

Although no "golden bullet" and total solution for all energy issues, Pumped storage- and Hydro Power facilities in general should not be left out of the energy equasion.

For full disclosure I would like to inform you I am a full time employee of Voith-Siemens, a York PA based manufacturer of Hydro Power Plants.

Martijn Giesselbach
York

If this unknown mixture of pollutants was within a mile of Joyce Eastons preciuos "Forest Lakes" with any chance of contaminating her water and air she would be singing a different tune!!!WE know that sludge has made many of us sick, ruined our quality of life and property. Why is it that the 1 farmer spreading sludge doesn't spread it around where he lives(which is next to Forest Lakes)? Maybe he should take it from our neighboorhood to his residence so he and more of this township could experience what we have, including Joyce Easton???

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We are on the path to environmental disaster and becoming energy hostages to power hungry radicals, and the only truly effective tool against these twin dangers is nuclear power. The technology for generating nuclear power has progressed a long way since Eric Epstein has last studied the matter, if he ever studied it at all.

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As the deadline aproaches for the no smoking in public places, I would like to thank everyone that is for this. Because you are saving me money, because I won't be going out anymore. The only persons you are hurting is the business owners!

This country is becoming more and more communist each and everyday. It realy torks my jaws to see that most people are not happy unless they are complaining about something! Who is doing this not the goverment but you are "the people."

Craig T. Miller
Manchester

This is my response to Representative Todd Platts' article in the Sunday viewpoint section. First let me say that I personally like Representative Platts, I think he is a person of integrity and principal, however, this being the silly season and with Senator McCain in town we have to expect a little artistic licenses.

While I agree that Speaker Pelosi should have kept the house in session in order that the moderates on both sides could have worked out an agreement let us not forget that the energy crisis is more than thirty years old and neither party has done a thing to solve this problem.

I just read Congressman Platts' Energy article from August 10th. While I'm not opposed to drilling for oil on the OCS I take issue with the Congressman's article.

First, it is extremely disingenuous and partisan politics as usual to ignore 30 years of poor congressional leadership on both sides of the aisle with regard to the energy issue to specifically pick on Speaker Pelosi for adjourning congress at this moment in time. Congress has been blowing since the first time we got a peak of the oil problems to come back in the 70s.