for Coots....

A

alinwa

oft dis'd member
Figgered you might "enjoy" this since you're a miner.

I share a portion of my driveway and some of the road out to the 600yd target butts with a rock mining operation.

We support the mine. (Of course)

As you well know, most people, even "conservatives" absolutely DO NOT.

Therefore we try make it to pivotal "public hearings" and such if nothing else just to see how people think but mainly to lend our support.

Last meeting there's 30+ "people" there shaking fists and ranting against mining and one lone voice of support. My Lovely Wife of some years now. I choose not to speak in public. Because I'm 'wayyy too good at it.

But I hadda' bite my tongue 'most clean OFF when this female human person got up, slowly surveyed the room and then in an an attempt at scathing rebuke began her rant in this wise........

"You people!....... You business people!! ....... You lowlife, selfish, profit-driven "Profit Over The Planet" people!!!"

"You refuse to see the forest for the trees!"

"GREEDY!"

"You all insist that "we need rock for our roads and infrastructure etc etc" .... But you REFUSE to see the whole picture! BECAUSE you're driven only by greed you will not look to answers that are blindingly OBVIOUS to the rest of us!"

"Look around you!"

LOOK AT how the business models are changing! How Amazon has changed the world!"

The ANSWER is right there in front of you!"

"You keep insisting that "we need local access to rock products and blahhh blahhh blahhh, and I UNDERSTAND people needing jobs but this is a no-brainer! Just set up a training program and move those people into other job environments where they may well excel in ways you can't even predict and get with the modern times!!!"




"Others have shown time and again, THE NEW MODEL IS TESTED AND PROVEN, you guys just need to move into the modern world and open trade with China. Everything I buy these days is cheaper BECAUSE smart innovative minds have opened these trade channels. I'm sure there's someone you can call who'll help you get the steps in place...."




grown-ass woman wants us to boat stones from China........



AGAIN I say...... how does one argue with this level of ignorance?



I guess I might should consider the "Good Side"....... I might be able to punch my range out to 1K......right out my loading room window.......



retar'ted






OK, rant OFF..... off to make my 10:00 pour....
 
Do you think prime shipping would be free on 50 tons of crushed limestone for my driveway?
Might have to check on it. :confused:

Joe Hynes
 
Al,

You need to open your eyes, see the whole picture, and start ordering your concrete from China as well. I'm picturing a bunch of ships with revolving drums/mixers sticking out their aft end coming and going across the Pacific.

Did anybody else find it ironic that she thinks the mine should be closed because it's destroying the earth, and that we should let China do the mining and earth destroying and buy rock from them instead?

Not in my backyard...

Justin
 
Ohhh, and it just gets richer speaking of "destroying the planet"

I quote this from yesterday's local paper (from a rockpit/trucking rant) "and these trucks are allowed to travel our roads uncovered as long as they "exhibit 6 inches of freeboard" so they're cruising down our highways, dust rocks and debris flying all over...... with no regard for our environment"

Now rocks and dust are harmful to the environment!

Seriously..... the mining company is considering just stopping operations and letting this county stew in it's own juices

AND I MIGHT GET that thousand yard shot from my yard!!!

And my phone's wringing off the hook because I'm a listed FFL and folks are buying semi-autos here in WA as fast as they can...... because We Thee Sheeple Of Thee Right Justificaceous State Of Total Confusion just passed a "law" making all semi-autos into "Assault Rifles".....!!!


Washington

State

Has

Made

It

Mandatory

That

I

Go

To

Classes

To

Own

A

10-22

!!!

Yesterday's paper has advertisements "classes offered"..... "2-day course"....... "get your assault rifle license"

"Not talking about it" shore don't seem to be making it go away :)
 
Al, your post really got me going. I've met those same self-righteous people at public meetings dealing with timber sales. They believe everything they say and you will never convince them otherwise.

I was working on a tractor thinning near a county road. It was not a big timber sale and the impact was minimal. A college professor who specialized in the effects of compaction and how it would be detrimental to the little critters who spend their lives in the dirt, suggested we lay down plywood on the skid trails!!! That was never going to happen but she was a recognized member of the environmental community, so it started an outcry. They ended up handing us our shorts because of guidlines which are just that and not law, said there should be no logging activity within x number of feet from a stream that supported anadromous fisheries. There were at least 250 feet of rubble and boulders from mining (sorry Al) between the stream and the timer sale. Any specialist with balls could say our activety would have no impact.... it is easier to just say no and not have to explain your decision to your peers.

Later some of the older Fir in that stand died and the County requested that any trees which could hit the road be felled. Hazard trees are an automatic cut which we did, and they were cut to log lengths which would enable us to sell them. But because it would be timber sale we couldn't put those logs on a truck. So we ended up letting the fire wood cutters haul it away by the pickup load. The mess that was left is probably still there. Clean up is mandatory under a timber sale...but who cares.

I could tell a hunderd stories just like this and you would all get bored, and since my blood pressure really sucks,writing this crap is detrimental to my health.

Mort
 
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Sorry Mort (BTW I've a brother Mort, his is Morris)

I don't get worked up over ANY-thing anymore :) Jesus, on the cross said "forgive them for they know not what they do" and I've learned to actually feel that way. I'm just venting for the fun of it because I'm in the middle of 25,000 acres of timber, less than a mile from an active rock quarry with a riparian waterway running thru my yard and dumping into a tributary of the Columbia River. I have spotted owls on my property......

From "Knotweed Control" to "Friends Of The East Fork" to lawsuits over the rockpit, if I had the capacity to get worked up I'd be found laying in my yard dead with my fist in the air.

Sooner than later :)

I DO "do something about it" every day/hour/minute of my life, but I don't let the opinions of sheep affect my mood.

Ahhh well, I lettered a gun ten minutes ago, I think I'll go try post a pic
 
Haven't been on here lately

Al

I've been through at least 6 land use change applications in the last 40 years. There were 4 for quarries and 2 for sand operations. The first 4 were posted in the local paper, and with no objections, were passed.

Seven years ago we bought some adjoining property at our Illinois Division and went through the process. When we bought the original property i went around and met all the neighbors and explained our business and invited them to let me take them on a tour. One old gal which I became friends with, had a problem with the previous owner. He had mined too close to her property and her fence had fallen into the quarry. He ignored her problem. I told her my plans to fix that over the next 3 years when we were moving overburden. I kept my word and she was happy. So we had a hearing over there and I was a little nervous about the outcome. There was another operator over there that tried to get a new operation going a few miles away about the same time i bought the original property and there was a lot of organized local opposition for that. So at the meeting, besides myself and the local county road commissioner the only people there were this old gal and another neighbor. THEY WERE BOTH ON MY SIDE. There was no one there opposing my expansion......

Then 2 years ago I bought some land here in Iowa for a sand operation. A green site, a new pit in some ground that was so sandy it barely grew weeds. It was in CRP and had a really low crop suitability rating. It was located right in the middle of a nest of NIMBYS. The ring leader was the local County Auditor and her husband, hiding in the shadows behind their minions. I went around before i applied for the land use change and let the neighbors know my plans. Of course, to my face no one said anything, but as time went on I heard about the meetings, petitions, gloom and doom, ect. In the county criteria for land use change it said something to the effect that locations such as this are specifically the perfect place for sand operations such as mine. I represented my self at the first hearing. They had to move it to the county court room because of the large turnout, mostly the NIMBYS. I had gathered a lot of facts about the aggregate operations. Things like truck traffic, environmental issues. the usual problems associated with mining. The opposition had hired a lawyer to represent them. I had one of the adjoining landowners speak for me that have duck hunting ground. We had worked out a deal where my entrance road would be so I wouldn't disturb their hunting. I also had a representative for the Iowa Water Quality Division give facts on the impact of a sand operation. I was a little nervous with that because I had no clue what he was going to say. It was all good from him. The opposition was grasping for straws, lying, making up facts. They said disturbing the sand deposit would cause a certain chemical to be released and the dairy cows down stream a quarter of a mile would give poison milk. Turns out that chemical is a product of smelting nickel. After hours at the first hearing the board tabled the permit. I had talked to all the members of the board before the hearing and had given them all a tour of the existing pit.
I had several neighbors of the existing pit speak for me at the hearing also. It was almost laughable some of the things the opposition spoke about. A few months later another hearing was held. I took along a lawyer and had done a lot of research on the pile of lies, misconceptions the opposition had spewed out at the last meeting. I weren't sceered. Every time they came up with another line of crap, I had my rebuttal printed out, told my side, and gave the board and their lawyer a copy. They were SOOOO predictable. When the hearing was over my lawyer asked me why I had him there, I had everything covered. I said that's what happens when you tell the truth and know of what you speak. After several hours at the second hearing they ruled in my favor.

The opposition didn't like that so we went to District Court later on. After several months they ruled in my favor. The best part of that was that the judge dressed down their lawyer for bringing such a ridiculous case to him.

They're out there.

But with that said, the moral to the story is to be a good neighbor BEFORE you want something and address issues that come up with the neighbors.

Dave
 
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Rock Pits and Succulents

We were going to do some road reconstruction and needed a source for surface material. There was a pit run (rippable) site in the project area that we had used before and I planned on using again.

There were succulents in the area that are fairly common and grew on dry rocky sites. They aren't even close to being endangered but someone determined that those in the project area were a related subspecies and needed to be monitored....just in case. Well, those little buggers had found a new home on the cut bank of the pit we had used before. A Botanist then wrote a negative report regarding our proposed use of the pit, and you know the rest of that story. I told the Botanist we could double the size of the pit and in ten years you would have even more of these little buggers to study. She didn't think it was funny and all I got from her was the stink eye.

We ended up bringing in the material from another pit farther away, which increased the haul cost...hey it's only money!

I got so fed up with this crap I walked away when I was 52. I found other woods work and never regretted my decision.

My blood pressure is okay.

Mort
 
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Well said Dave :) Thank You....

And well done.

This stuff affects us all. It affects me personally every day so I've selfish interests but would like to believe that I share concerns also with people with whom I've no common ground.......

Out here the decisions are made by an elected planning board and preliminary hearings take place before an "advisory council"........ it's kinda' like the age-old conundrum of "trial by a jury of your peers". (where ya' gonna' find 12 Dave Coots' ? :rolleyes: ) The electorate out here ensures that any elected position will be about 50/50 rights VS lefts (which the middle thinks is "fair" LOL)

Last meeting I was at we had 4 guys in nice clothes with bought haircuts, two longhaired fuzzy men, a spiky-green-haired woman and a guy missing who'd given unconditional proxy to the green-haired woman. In real life it didn't matter WHAT logic was advanced, decisions/opinions were foregone and "discussions" were laughable.

In addition, I live on an NRA sanctioned and WA State approved shooting facility which shares some road with the mining operation.

We in the shooting community are well served IMO to "know the opposition" lest more of us end up in the state of continual "surprise!" where many of my so-called conservative friends live.

July first of this year I will officially become a criminal in the eyes of our state because I have no intention of taking days off work to attend "safety classes"....... nor do I intend to give my shootin' irons to the state (they've already tried that one in our HE program, we told 'em to stuff it in their ears)

And to alla' you'se (Hunter???) who're gonna' chide me about posting sensitive views out on the innertube........ don't


please



I pray that all who read this will someday understand why guys like me will always spin on the ice, and ALWAYS poke the bear :)
 
I participated

in local , county and state government for a couple of decades and all I can say is it never ends, Ignorance, that is. We have seen the enemy and it is the ignorant public.

Pete

Now, being ignorant isn't a bad thing, necessarily because there is always the opportunity to learn and become enlightened. Hope springs eternal, eh?
 
Pete Wass said:
in local , county and state government for a couple of decades and all I can say is it never ends, Ignorance, that is. We have seen the enemy and it is the ignorant public.

Pete

Now, being ignorant isn't a bad thing, necessarily because there is always the opportunity to learn and become enlightened. Hope springs eternal, eh?
Click to expand...

Ignorance is curable

opinionated ain't :)

opinion=religion

and religion ain't curable :)


IME, no matter what one calls oneself if he walks up to you shaking his finger under your nose and preaching to you, he's an opinion-driven human. I know dozens of opinionated preacher types who've been "sending me to hell" for 50yrs

Use'ta'be it hurt me in my belly, but I've learned to be over it and smile, for REAL :)

Happy Happy Happy

My Momma done tol' me "actions speak louder than words" and I b'lieve Momma.......older, better, more.....
 
Conservation Reserve Program..federal payments for not producing crops. Grow trees, switchgrass, ect.
 
Dave Coots said:
Conservation Reserve Program..federal payments for not producing crops. Grow trees, switchgrass, ect.
Click to expand...

I've got a number of friends who've invested in farms and farming because they'd made too much money in construction, wanted write-offs and TO A MAN they came away shaking their heads......."You CANNOT lose money farming!!!

"You get paid more than any real or fair market value with prices in the field sometimes higher than in the store"
"You get paid even more if your crop fails"
"AND.... you get paid to NOT FARM!"


Add to this the fact that due to GMO's we now produce many times more, better, healthier crops in less space/time than ever before and it's a win/win for the farmer.

Unless you're in cattle..... then cowfarts!........ BAN COWS!

also in the news, fartless meat, for real....
 
Acronyms

Dave Coots said:
Conservation Reserve Program..federal payments for not producing crops. Grow trees, switchgrass, ect.
Click to expand...

Good to hear from you Dave,

I used a lot of acronyms when corresponding with folks who were familiar with it.If you wern't in the loop you were lost ,but I comtinued to use them out of habit.

Later Mort 55 Chevy 327 11.87 @.......I forget.
 
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