We've got mail!

Water over

the dam!

To the editor:

After eight years of draining, demolition, reconstruction and filling, water is finally going over the new spillway at Lyman Lake.

The water began to trickle over the sides of the central "V" in the long labyrinth spillway on Sunday afternoon.

That evening's rain gave the final push to send water cascading down the sidewalls into the pool and riffle ponds below.

From there, the water rejoins Lyman Run, eventually going into the West Branch of Pine Creek to where it joins Pine Creek at Galeton.

Now when you stand at the spillway overlook, you can actually hear the water falling down the spillway. It has been a long wait to hear that sound again.

The design of the spillway is such that it can carry almost three times the capacity of water that the old spillway carried. It also allows the water to be tumbled around, which aerates the water, making it environmentally healthier as it continues downstream. Lyman Run is a Class A trout water above the lake, but as the water spread out on the lake's surface, it heated up and allowed the oxygen to dissipate into the atmosphere.

By the time the water returned to the run below the dam, the waters dropped to class C. Now, with this new dam design, and the ability to add water from cold water release pipes located at the base of the spillway face wall, the quality of the water should vastly improve downstream.

This fall, the bridge going over the spillway should be installed, allowing park maintenance personnel to drive over to the control tower. This bridge will also be open to pedestrian traffic allowing easy access to fishing off the breast of the dam.
Chip Harrison
Manager
Lyman Run State Park
Travelers beware!

To the editor:

Look out for Operation Yellow Jacket.

If you see a PennDOT truck parked along the road or traveling behind you, it could be a

state trooper. Other patrols are being launched in unmarked cars.

It's part of a speeding ticket frenzy. Targeted areas include: Rt 1, Rt. 220, I99, I95, I279, I276, I376, I76, I80, I79, I70, Rt. 60, Rt. 66 and Rts. 22/322.

Just 5 mph above the limit can justify a ticket.

Starting on Aug. 15, the price of a ticket for failure to show a driver's license, registration, or insurance card when you are stopped is going from $44 to $173.

Make sure your vehicles have the proper documents in them. If you jump in the car to run to the store and forget your wallet with your license in it and you are stopped, oh well.

Make sure everyone knows about this. Maybe it will slow down some people, which is a good thing. Leave a few more minutes to get where you're going and you can slow down a bit.

It's safer and it consumes less gasoline.
Timothy Johnson
State College
Health care crisis

To the editor:

Do you care about universal health care?

Here are some of my recent costs: hospital bills, $3,762; insurance company settles for $583. Ambulance bill, $1,358; insurance pays $293.

So, where's the money go? To the insurance companies.

Highmark's CEO makes $3.2 million a year and he's got thousands of employees who provide no medical care. Plus, they've got $2.8 billion in reserves. They spend piles of money on advertising.

At Medicare time, Highmark, Blue Cross, Aetna, Humana and Geisinger sent me 20 pounds of advertising.

That's what they call health care. The only thing Highmark and Blue Cross are missing is stock dividends, because they're not publicly held.

What would we lose if we cut them and Medicare out? We'd miss the continuous ads of drugs to uninformed viewers overselling questionable products; we'd skip the volumes of printed material and the enormous make-work hassles of getting medical care and drugs without having to override them.

For billions less. What a relief. (Their cry about jobs lost is easily answered; people needing health care aren't an employment agency.)

Let's get some legislators who recognize that. Just check out Canada and the European countries to see how it should work.
Joseph P. Grier
Hampden Township, Pa.
Wind energy myths

To the editor:

As we go to the gas pumps and pay record-breaking prices, many well-meaning people in our community sincerely believe that the construction of a collection of industrial wind energy installations in various townships throughout Potter County will eliminate our dependence on foreign oil and lower the high cost of gas.

To the contrary, this will do nothing to resolve the current oil crisis.

In 2007, only 1.5 percent of our nation's electricity came from burning oil and most of that usage came from a tarry residual oil, or coal-like petroleum coke, both otherwise almost useless byproducts of refining.

In 2007, the U.S. exported significantly more than twice as much oil as we burn to make electricity. These facts, among others, prove that wind-generated electricity has absolutely nothing at all to do with U.S. oil dependence.

Wind can never provide reliable power on-demand. It is simply the electricity version of the ethanol scam. It costs more energy to make a gallon of ethanol than it provides.

Because there was money to be made in the name of "green energy," politicians supported the effort. Now we're left with the consequences of the rising costs of food and anything else associated with corn. The ethanol craze did nothing to alleviate our dependence on overseas oil.

It is sad to me that wind developers have created a campaign of misinformation extolling wind as a fabulous source of energy in every state in the United States.

That is simply not the case. Wind installations are not "wind farms"; wind turbines are not "windmills." These installations are industrial - pure and simple - and should not be built in close proximity to residential homes.

Furthermore, wind is not equal in all parts of the country. Potter County's wind speed is marginal, classified as a No. 2, while Altoona and other areas south of us are far windier. The state of Texas is probably the best location for industrial wind activity.

The presence of hundreds of 410-foot-high industrial wind turbines within the borders of Potter County will have absolutely no impact on the high cost of gasoline at the pumps. For that matter, these turbines will have no significant impact on the electricity generated into the Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland Grid. Their presence here will save the world from extinction, as some people claim.

Wind, as a source of energy, is simply not reliable. Building 410-foot-high industrial wind turbines within the borders of Potter County will simply scar our magnificent and precious countryside forever, while only rewarding that evil called corporate greed.
Joan Hendershot Miller
Ulysses