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Letters

  • U.S. EPA needs to take over ash spill handling

    I was shocked to learn about a federal lawsuit filed against  Jacobs Engineering Group Inc., a company employed by TVA to remediate the ash spill site in Roane County.  

    The allegations set forth in the suit are serious.

    Early on in the spill aftermath, I raised concern about the impact on the health of the Roane County residents due to the toxic constituents in the coal ash.  

    We were told time and again by the TVA that the ash was harmless.  

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  • You can benefit from supporting Dunn Center

    Do you realize how fortunate you are to live in Roane County?  

    Not only do our citizens have the benefit of a new, first-class hospital to treat people with a multitude of illnesses, but we also have the Michael Dunn Center to care for people with a multitude of disabilities.  

    The Michael Dunn Center provides services for more than 300 people each day, and is one of the largest employers of trained personnel in Roane County.

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  • Too much focus on sports, too little on studies

    Allow me briefly to respond to the most erudite column of the honorable Gerald Largen in your paper of Aug. 9.

    I consider Mr. Largen to be a friend for whom I was permitted to write historical columns, from about 1993 to the phasing out of The Standard in late 1996.

    It was a great learning experience for me for which I will always be grateful to him.

    Mr. Largen is a wordsmith without peer and well versed in many fields of endeavor of which sports is an exception.

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  • Testing the best way to measure what is taught

    “Students are more than a test score, and so are their teachers,” headlines a recent Roane County News article.  

    Of course, but that’s not the point of the article.

    The point of the article is that judging teachers by how much the teacher’s students have learned during the year is unfair.

    I attended grade school, high school, college and graduate school.  

    Nearly all the teachers I had believed they could tell what I learned by giving me a test or, usually, several tests.  

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  • Misspelled sign photo troublesome for Tea Party

    A couple weeks or so ago, the Roane County News chose to print a picture of a Tea Party member holding a sign with the word “Impeach,” as in “Impeach Obama” — except the sign was spelled wrong.
    Since the photographer took many more pictures of Roane County Tea Party members holding the signs, why was the only one that was misspelled make it into the paper?
    The girls who made the signs ran out of room for all of the letters only on that one sign.

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  • Old Blackie — time to ditch her or save her?

    Lawns, loyalty and luck — they are three things that would seem at first to have no connection to each other.

    But I am a loyal person with a car parked on my lawn, and for the life of me, I cannot imagine life without the old black Honda. It’s sitting there, depriving the grass of sunlight, rare though it has been these past months.

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  • The sting of that attack still burns — and itches

    Like Middle-Eastern terrorists, they were lying in wait, armed and dangerous, with revenge on their minds.

    Territorial, yes, and very capable of serious damage and inflicting terrible pain.

    Camouflaged by bands of colors —  dull reds, yellows and darker tones against a background of dull grays — they were virtually invisible.

    Unaware of their presence and intent, I blundered into their field of fire.

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  • Immigration reform both pro-growth, pro-agriculture

    Earlier this year, the U.S. Senate passed a commonsense immigration reform measure in a strongly bipartisan fashion. This was an important step in the right direction – especially for producers, farm workers and rural communities.
    The historic legislation passed by the Senate provides a pathway to earned citizenship for the 11 million people who are in our country today without authorization. They will have to go to the back of the line, pay fines and settle taxes they owe our nation.

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  • Consolidation of schools? Writer doesn’t like idea

    The school board has mentioned it is planning a study on school consolidation.  

    Consolidation is not a good idea in my opinion. Say Rockwood High was closed and then we had to bus high school students to Kingston where a larger high school was build.

    A lot of new families moving to Roane County would probably not move to Rockwood if they had to bus their children to Kingston  and so would live in Kingston or wherever there was a high school.  

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  • Wish we could all turn $10 into $40 like initiative did

    The 2013 Pro2Serve Challenge for Roane Imagination Library has drawn to a very successful close.  

    Approximately 100 businesses and individuals in the county took to heart the challenge of raising $7,500, an amount to be matched by Pro2Serve.

    That amount would be matched once again by the Governor’s Books From Birth Foundation.  

    That’s right, a donation of $10 turned into $40.

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