Pacific lamprey disaster could have been prevented

The massive Pacific lamprey kill unfolding this week at the Winchester Dam on the North Umpqua River could have been avoided, but state wildlife officials chose to put the narrow, penny-pinching interests of a handful of well-connected private lake owners over their mission to protect our invaluable fish and wildlife.

Now all of us are worse off as one of Southern Oregon’s most spectacular river systems is degraded. A heat wave is forecast to hit Roseburg this week, so it is likely some of the the river’s few remaining summer steelhead and spring Chinook will be the next aquatic life to die, bottled up in the warm water below the dam for three weeks, instead of swimming to the many miles of cold water upstream.

River advocates knew this would happen and pleaded with the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife and other agencies in charge to reject the low-cost, high-risk repair proposal of the dam owners, Winchester Water Control District. We were ignored.

This latest disaster and the public records from their past dam repair disasters make plain that Winchester Dam’s owners feel free to ignore regulations protecting people, fish, and water quality. It’s one of the many reasons this dam must be torn down, and WaterWatch of Oregon is committed to making that happen.

In the meantime, the dam owners and their primary dam repair contractor TerraFirma Foundation Systems must be held accountable under the law.

Jim McCarthy / Ashland

County assessor comments need to be fact-checked

Any interview with Jackson County Assessor David Arrasmith should include fact-checking. Once again, he has been allowed to publish false statements.

I am referring to the article with the headline “A property tax win, but not for Central Point man who spurred it.”

Mr. Arrasmith was quoted as follows, saying he doesn’t know of any legal mechanism to give me a refund:

“I would need statutory authority, and there is none that I know of,” he said. “There has to be the authority to deviate from a constitutional formula.”

His comment is complete fog and displays absolute ignorance of the fact that HB 2086 was written specifically because of him, changing the wording from “may” correct to “shall” correct, because of his refusal to use his statutory authority to make corrections? (ORS 311.205 and 311.234)

The basic qualification for his position should be knowledge of statutes that he is responsible for administering. The tax court magistrate recognized his statutory authority and presumed that he would have used that authority to do the ethical thing and make corrections.

The legislators recognized his authority to make corrections and amended that authority to protect taxpayers from such abuse of authority.

Alvin Woody / Central Point

Family doctors editorial sounded like an ‘SNL’ skit

Something must have gone wrong at The Times to allow the editorial about the shortage of family doctors to run. It talks about a serious and complex problem in our medical care system in a way that suggests little thought.

You lump nurse practitioners and physician assistants together as if they’re interchangeable, even though they don’t have the same training or scope of practice. Is it because both practice medicine without medical degrees?

You cite no statistical or anecdotal data to support your assertion that primary care may suffer without doctors. You discredit nurse practitioners and physician assistants for the simple reason that they have fewer years of training than doctors. This sounds like something the AMA might have dished up in the past.

Your conclusion, “because let’s face it, folks. Nurse practitioners are not doctors,” sounds like something a cheesy politico might say in a “Saturday Night Live” sketch.

Richard Spencer & Mary McHughes / Ashland