Letters To The Editor

Missed you at last night’s GLEA, but certainly understand your paramount need to take care of your dad. What you missed was Pat Kenny’s reaction to the Boat House Pier Permit. He felt all Geneva Lake Municipalities should get together to fight against the DNR’s decisions to purposively ignore the one ordinance all municipalities agree upon–the 100′ pierhead line.  Also, Jake Schmidt mentioned that in his conversations with Heide Bunk of the DNR that she was in agreement with us on the pierhead point line being 100′.

I feel an important issue to consider is that the DNR is composed of unelected staff serving under an unelected secretary/leader who is appointed by the elected Governor of Wisconsin while municipal governments are the representatives of the people and directly elected by the people. The Public Trust Doctrine states that lakes are a natural resource that belongs to the Public and the public exercises that ownership through its representatives in local governments. Another consideration is that the DNR acknowledges its authority on lakes is determined by the High Water Mark.

The DNR is responsible for everything below the HWM and the public has ownership of everything above the HWM. A pier starts on land above the HWM and extends straight out always above the HWM, so why should the DNR be allowed to take ownership of piers when their use and function are all above the HWM?

Dick Malmin, resident of Town of Linn

Only 17 states require geography to be taught in any school classes up to entry into college.  Only ten states require a successful passing grade in geography necessary to graduate from high school.  Ukraine, Moldova, and Romanian, not to mention Russia.  These three countries, along with that fourth, may have everything to do with the continuance of life on earth as we know it.  

The Russians want that nuclear re-enrichment plant located near the Ukrainian border (just across it in Romania) so the scientists in Russia can re-enrich their aging nuclear arsenal, which is rapidly becoming a collection of non-functioning relics of the cold war.  That little border nexus area in the lower part of the Donbas, and the corridor passage from it up into southern Russia is everything today, yet almost none of our children have any idea about where any of it is or that nuclear war could well be fought over it.  

The Russian’s are not going to allow themselves to slowly fall back into being a country without nuclear weapons simply because they have neither the money the time nor the ability to build another ‘Oak Ridge’ kind of facility, not when there’s still that leftover one sitting in plain sight just across the Ukrainian border into Romania.  The Russian’s well know what happened to Iraq and Afghanistan, two other countries our young people can no longer find on a map, and Ukraine, that ignorantly surrendered its nuclear arsenal after being promised by the U.S., Great Britain, and Russia that it would never need the weapons it was being convinced to giving up.  

The Russian’s are going to be given no choice.  The U.S., NATO, Europe and the Ukrainians are not going to back down.  The Russians can’t back down.  There is only one solution left, and that involves big blossoming clouds rising up in places our young people will only come to know very slowly and painfully over time, as there was nothing given them to learn and their parents forgot what learning they received so many years ago.

Physicist asking to be anonymous, Williams Bay visitor and Alabama resident