Plant trees in existing 16-foot buffer strips to mitigate farm runoff, soil erosion, river bank collapse and flooding. Individuals, who are not farmers, environmentalists or scientists can realize that large trees and vegetation will use fertilizers, stop soil erosion and help flooding — while using smaller tracks of land, than is possible with mere grasslands. Large vegetation should help create and add to “natural drainage” and thus lessen the need for man-made tile. Added large vegetation should help with effects of global warming if you believe that allegation. It adds desperately needed habitat for wildlife. So, just what is to be lost by adding trees and keeping existing buffers?

Or should we waste tax dollars on poorly designed solutions that are not effective, and worse, further harm our economy and businesses that support us all? Should we believe that experts at University of Minnesota, etc. cannot determine which species of trees, shrubs and vegetation would thrive, if not “love,” the chemical runoff, polluting our waterways? Not to mention catch and stop soil erosion. After seeing results of edicts, “coming down from on high,” from across the nation, perhaps I should ask that local farmers and officials determine best vegetation for local areas.

While I have great respect for the nation’s experts and politicians, we have all witnessed their less-than-stellar moments. We have watched our economy slowly dying, while businesses and jobs continuously go overseas to the world’s greatest polluters, while we further strengthen our environmental laws and increase importing products from pollution capitals of the world, further adding to the world’s pollution because of new necessity to transport those imported goods from thousands of miles away instead of making those products here at home in our own environmentally friendly factories.

As a nation, we stupidly added to the world’s pollution by importing products from worst polluters, added unnecessary transportation that further compounds pollution problems and then attempted to mitigate those problems by passing more extensive anti-pollution laws in our little corner of the world. A child can see that will not work.

We can never decrease air/water pollution enough here to overcome effects caused by nations from which we import. Even if that was possible, the unnecessary added transportation caused by importing goods still causes more pollution than when same products are made in the USA.

Don’t forget that their polluted air drifts over our land every day; so again, no matter how you look at it, the biggest failure ever faced by this nation has been the loss of manufacturing in the USA. Think about this and you must agree.

When any governmental official wants to add a new tax to combat global warming or wants to increase current anti-pollution laws, stop and think and then just say no. We can do much better to combat the world’s pollution by simply increasing manufacturing back here in the USA and that will benefit all of us — instead of further destroying our economy by encouraging the exodus of our manufacturing to polluting nations overseas.

 

Richard Becker

Albert Lea