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Letters to the Editor

Letters to the Editor: Pig iron plant evokes past respiratory disasters

Julie Reiten Minot The proposed pig iron plant has me pondering the industrial disasters Minot has experienced in the last 40 years and how they have affected our respiratory health. On April 4, 1987, the Westchem agricultural chemicals company’s warehouse on South Broadway caught fire. The warehouse contained 54 different chemicals, many of them toxic. It was the United State's first major agricultural chemicals fire, and it featured 40 foot flames and a mile-wide cloud of black smoke that drifted north over the city. 10,000 people in Minot were evacuated, and there were numerous ...

Letters to the Editor: Now who is ducking, covering?

Don Morrison Bismarck When I was young, our school in Minot had a drill. We would crouch down under our desks and put our hands above our heads to practice how to survive in case of a nuclear attack. It was called “duck and cover.” It was the height of the Cold War and we were preparing against the possibility of the Soviet Union launching nuclear missiles at us. North Dakota was Ground Zero because we had bombers and fighters – as well as a couple hundred nuclear-tipped missiles located in bunkers under our topsoil. That meant the Russians would hit us first. ...

Letter to the Editor

NEPA overhaul should cut red tape, not corners Rep. Lisa Finley-DeVille Mandaree January 20, 2025, President Trump initiated an overhaul of the National Environmental Protection Act through Executive Order 14154, "Unleashing American Energy.” The order specifically directed the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) to provide new NEPA guidance, propose rescinding its regulations, and coordinate agencies as they rewrote their own NEPA procedures. NEPA is the only measure for the general public to give direct input on federal projects that impact our lands, that's why it's being ...

Letters to the Editor

Service was opportunity of lifetime J. Patrick Traynor Fargo (Editorial Note: Among the Minot agencies associated with the N.D. Department of Health and Human Services are First District Health Unit and North Central Behavioral Health Clinic.) As I reflect on my last 15 months in Bismarck, there’s one word that keeps coming to mind: “blessed.” Blessed that Gov. Kelly Armstrong gave me the opportunity of a lifetime to work on a set of issues I am so passionate about. Blessed that the boards of Dakota Medical Foundation and Impact Foundation encouraged and supported me for the ...

Letters to the Editor: Social Security must be protected

Nancy Guy Bismarck Margaret Fitzgerald Fargo Volunteers, AARP North Dakota Executive Committee For millions of people, Social Security is much more than a monthly check. It is the financial security earned through a lifetime of hard work. Most of us have worked since we were teens, paying in at every step in our work lives. We’ve earned our Social Security. At a time when the cost of everyday essentials like groceries, housing, utilities and health care continue to rise, our peers tell us that those payments matter more than ever. And they don’t just matter to current ...

Letters to the Editor

Minimize disruption from city road construction Luke Wegner Minot So what’s the deal with all of this road construction? It seems that any time you want to drive somewhere, you are guaranteed to run into some form of blockage or detour. The big one that I have a gripe with, though, is how often 16th Street and Broadway are shut down. My thought process and issue with this is the fact that those two streets are the main thoroughfares and essentially the only way to get from one side of the city to the other without taking some crazy back roads. If construction needs to be done on ...