Thursday, September 18, 2008

'Sarah Palin's dead lake'

"By promoting runaway development in her hometown, say locals, Palin has 'fouled her own nest' -- and that goes for the lake where she lives." Full story here.

Sept. 19, 2008 WASILLA, Alaska -- Every morning she's at home here, Sarah Palin wakes up to a postcard view from her lakeside home. Out the windows of her two-story wood-framed house stretch the serene, birch-lined waters of Lake Lucille. Ducks go gliding by the red-and-white Piper Cub floatplane docked outside. With the snow-frosted Chugach and Talkeetna mountains looming in the distance, the scene seems to define the Alaska that Palin celebrates: rugged, majestic, unspoiled.

And, yet, the lake Sarah Palin lives on is dead.

"Lake Lucille is basically a dead lake -- it can't support a fish population," said Michelle Church, a Mat-Su Valley borough assembly member and environmentalist. "It's a runway for floatplanes."

Palin recently told the New Yorker magazine that Alaskans "have such a love, a respect for our environment, for our lands, for our wildlife, for our clean water and our clean air. We know what we've got up here and we want to protect that, so we're gonna make sure that our developments up here do not adversely affect that environment at all. I don't want development if there's going to be that threat to harming our environment."

But as mayor of her hometown, say many local critics, Palin showed no such stewardship. . . .

The two lakes are the town jewels, the only eye relief along a harrowing corridor of strip malls, big-box stores and fast-food drive-throughs that is Wasilla. "Lord, help me get through Wasilla," reads one Alaska bumper sticker. . . .

John Stein, Palin's predecessor as Wasilla mayor, tried gamely to get a handle on the commercial free-for-all. He made an effort to restore the health of Lake Lucille, which, he said, "was turning into a bog." . . .

But while Mayor Stein tried to impose some reason on Wasilla's helter-skelter development, and its growing pressures on Mat-Su Valley's environmental treasures, when Sarah Palin took his place, she quickly announced, "Wasilla is open for business." . . .

"Sarah was such a great cheerleader for Wasilla, but she did nothing to protect its beauty. She'd go to these Chamber of Commerce meetings and say, 'Wasilla is the most beautiful place in the world!' And we'd just sit there gagging."

A city official in nearby Palmer, who has lived in the Mat-Su Valley his whole life, sadly admitted: "Sarah sent the growth into overdrive. And now they're choking on traffic and sprawl, all built on their ignorance and greed.

"I try to avoid driving to Wasilla so I won't get depressed," added the official, who asked for his name to be withheld, to avoid Palin's "wrath."

"You get visually mugged when you drive through there. I take the long way, through the back roads, just to avoid it."

Wasilla City Council member Dianne Woodruff hears the same lament about her town all the time. "Everywhere in Alaska, you hear people say, 'We don't want to be another Wasilla.' We're not just the state's meth capital, we're the ugly box-store capital. Was Sarah a good steward of this beautiful valley? No. I think it comes from her lack of experience and awareness of other places, how other cities try to preserve what makes them attractive and livable. . . .

"Sarah hasn't traveled outside of Alaska much," said Kilkenny. "She hasn't seen dead lakes and rivers."

Now Palin can see one right out her window.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Alaska is the most crucial of all the Americas natural resources. Republicans want to rape it. Sarah Palin is the instruments to initiate the M.O. Republicans know that they may not win this election; the country is so deep in trouble that the next President whom-ever will likely be blamed.
That will be or the next election. So they are setting their fangs in Alaska now. This is exactly what they have been doing in each election cycle, thought-out the post WWII era. Here is my synopsis of the industries they have violated pilfered and made themselves rich and powerful. Some industries such as the auto industry will never fully recover, and some are (Savings & Loans) defunct forever. Some are government agencies and have already had a bailout, or is irreparably in debt.
Nixon/Ford: NASA Contracts, (remember the $ 1000.00 toilet seat) weapons, etc- Chrysler bailout, mortgaged our economy to China.
Ford: continued rise of China in our pockets, (suddenly everything was "Made in China, sold weapons to all old enemies and erstwhile colonies of England and others, (Angola, Uganda, Argentina, Egypt just to name a few. Cut away all social programs this is where our society began to suffer and deteriorate. The Auto industry Ford was the "car salesman" from Michigan he sold them out alright.
Then it was Regan, what a "big lie"
CRACK cocaine, yes, you read that right, Iran Contra, Panama, Haiti, wake-up it was ALL ! About drugs.
Republican became the biggest pushers in the world. Crack was the ultimate blow to our nation, it would never be the same; gone was any innocence that we may have still enjoyed as 1 nation. Also, Reagan's customer was Japan, as his reward they actually bought and gifted the home where he died and where his family lives today. Paid in full blatantly, lock stock and barrel, and the industry they raped Savings & LOANS
Then there was Bush Sr. greedy greedy greedy, here is a man that to this day believes he can engineer a democratic-dictatorship, thank GOD and the Clintons he was broken-up for awhile, he fortunately wanted it all, he wanted to rob the world instead of just us, egotistical spy, spread them way to thin to win anywhere and gambled on a second term. He still managed to make his connections in the Oil industries and with England to try to kick it off with a big war but he got suckered by the Saudis, and Lee Atwater died on him, he sent Howard Baker away so he was surrounded by dummies including his know all oldest son who alienated all intelligent people around and the dummies all went along with the boss's son and thus we have what we have now!
LOOK WHAT THEY HAVE DONE TO OUR NATION!! I AM SO DAMN MAD!!!!

I can not stand to see Alaska dripping with OIL WELLS, depleted of wild life and its natural state, they will also instigate a war up in that area with Russia, and I just know they will. JOIN ME LETS TAKE OUR NATION BACK