Letter to the Editor of The Gray Times

Dear Editor, 

I found several errors in the news article that you published on February 21, 2001. It IS true that chlorine is killing the fish. Several things are responsible for the fish kill, and chlorine is one of them. The chemist DID test the water, and there was no chlorine, but Ken Unballe was cheating. He let out all of the chlorinated water a couple days before the chemist tested, and then refilled his pool with river water. I have proof that he didn't add chlorine-on Friday, January 19, 2001, 26 children caught E. coli. One of them died. The germ was given to them in the pool, where there should have been chlorine to kill it. 

Also, there were phosphates in the pond. Phosphates do poison fish. But we tested the water dumping into the pond from the town, the golf course, and the cattle ranch, and the cattle ranch was proven innocent. The small town's water was clean, as was the water from the cattle ranch. The golf course is dropping in all the phosphates. They use too much fertilizer to keep the lawns green, and lots of water. The water from the golf course had to many phosphates in it. So the golf course was the one dumping the poisonous phosphates into the pond, thereby killing some fish. 

Fish autopsies did find oil in the stomach and intestines of SOME of the fish they tested. Only some. And how do we know that the oil that killed those fish came from his refinery? It could have been the tanks that spilled, or car oil that spilled onto the street and into the river. Only 14 of the 50 fish they tested died of oil in their stomach/intestines. That isn't a lot. 

Sediment does get into the water, but it makes the rivers to HOT for fish, not cold. The sediment is dark, so it attracts the sun to it. The water will heat up. Warm and hot water doesn't hold oxygen as well as cold water. In the heat, the fish need more oxygen to be able to function, but there is less oxygen actually there. And the sediment is NOT coming from Don Juan Tuno's logging operations. It's coming from Parallel Park! If mountain lions are allowed to be hunted again, there will be more deer. The more deer there are, the more grass they need to eat. They will overgraze, causing there to be no grass roots to hold in sediment on the banks, causing sediment to fall in the water. 

There is acid rain in the area, but it NOT coming from the oil refinery. The refinery has scrubbers, a thing that they put on the smokestacks to clean out all the pollution. Also, there are two types of acid, nitric acid and sulfiric acid. It is the nitric acid rain, and nitric acid comes from the pollution cars give out. Anyway, pH8 acid rain isn't even acidic. 1 is the most acidic, 7-8 is okay for fish, and 8-14 is too basic. So pH8 acid rain isn't a problem, because all the rivers are more acidic than 8. 

This is my proof that none of Don Juan Tuno's operations are causing the death of these fish, and that it is really everyone who drives, hunts, swims in the water slide, and all that. Everyone else, maybe including Don Juan Tuno is responsible, not just one person.

                                                                      Liliana Echeverria