Post by cottontail on Nov 27, 2005 0:00:07 GMT -8
I'm on the Save Van Tassel email list and I thought that other people would find this copy of an email of interest:
Attention: All who are interested in saving the mountains
There is an article in the L A Times website, dated 11-19-05 called MINING FOR TROUBLE
It can be found online, if you paste the following address into your browser:
Mining for Trouble Story
www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-lands19nov19,0,7436968.story?coll=la-news-comment-editorials
This OP-ED piece mentions a troubling provision in the bill for the 2006(or 2005?) Budget, which would allow the government to sell off millions of acres of public land for mining, along with mineral rights.
This might mean that the land north of the present Vulcan mine in the Angeles National Forest Land could be opened to strip mining.
Since the bill has already passed the House of Representatives, Save Van Tassel suggests that you write your Senator urgently requesting that the Budget bill be amended to remove this provision. A suggested letter format is shown below, which you can copy/paste into your own message, but you can change the wording, add your own ideas, or personalize it however you wish.
We also suggest that you forward this message to anyone you know who wishes to protect our wilderness areas and ask that they contact their congressional representatives.
At the end of this e-mail is contact information for your congressional representatives. We suggest that mailing or faxing the letter may be more effective, since e-mails are sometimes deleted by spam blocking software, but it would not hurt to send a copy by both fax and e-mail. The fax letter gives a hard copy that must be handled and may be more likely to be read and passed along.
This issue is urgent, because the Senate is scheduled to consider this bill this week (Nov 28 – Dec 2)
Thank you
the Save Van Tassel group
__________________________________________________________________________________
SAMPLE LETTER:
(date)
Senator (name)
(address or fax number or e-mail)
Re: Provision in 2006 Budget for Sale of Public Lands
Dear Senator (name):
I have read about the provision in the Budget Bill for sale of public lands (placed there by Rep. Richard W. Pombo, head of the House Resources Committee), and would like to ask that you make every effort to remove this giveaway of our wilderness lands. If left in the budget, this provision would allow the government to sell off millions of acres of land in national forests and open up old claims in national parks (complete with mineral rights) for very low prices.
The danger to our wilderness areas, especially in the Angeles National Forest near where I live, is a cause for great concern. The San Gabriel Mountains, located very close to highly populated areas of Los Angles County, provide a very important place of refuge from the stress and crowding of the cities. The 20 million people who live in the LA basin should not be deprived of this natural beauty, clean air, and connection with nature, just so that mining companies can despoil the land.
There are presently a number of grass-roots movements trying to prevent the destruction of the land, air and water by powerful mining interests in the Los Angeles area.
In Santa Clarita, millions of dollars has been spent by the city, fighting the expansion of a large gravel mine there. (The citizens group has information on that battle at
In Claremont, mining interests are suing to force the city to allow them to destroy land with new gravel pits (see www.nominesinclaremont.org/)
Between Duarte and Azusa, a citizens group (www.savethemountains.org) is organizing opposition to a mining company that is pushing to expand its ugly open face mine that has torn apart the front range of the San Gabriels.
Public opposition to the desecration of our National Parks and Forests is strong, but if legislators under control of the mining interests can hide their method of destroying public lands inside a budget bill, the will of the citizens can be circumvented and the terrible results will only be obvious when it is too late to do anything.
Please do anything you can to amend this bill and protect our Nation’s irreplaceable wilderness lands.
Thank you very much,
(your name and address)
Attention: All who are interested in saving the mountains
There is an article in the L A Times website, dated 11-19-05 called MINING FOR TROUBLE
It can be found online, if you paste the following address into your browser:
Mining for Trouble Story
www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-lands19nov19,0,7436968.story?coll=la-news-comment-editorials
This OP-ED piece mentions a troubling provision in the bill for the 2006(or 2005?) Budget, which would allow the government to sell off millions of acres of public land for mining, along with mineral rights.
This might mean that the land north of the present Vulcan mine in the Angeles National Forest Land could be opened to strip mining.
Since the bill has already passed the House of Representatives, Save Van Tassel suggests that you write your Senator urgently requesting that the Budget bill be amended to remove this provision. A suggested letter format is shown below, which you can copy/paste into your own message, but you can change the wording, add your own ideas, or personalize it however you wish.
We also suggest that you forward this message to anyone you know who wishes to protect our wilderness areas and ask that they contact their congressional representatives.
At the end of this e-mail is contact information for your congressional representatives. We suggest that mailing or faxing the letter may be more effective, since e-mails are sometimes deleted by spam blocking software, but it would not hurt to send a copy by both fax and e-mail. The fax letter gives a hard copy that must be handled and may be more likely to be read and passed along.
This issue is urgent, because the Senate is scheduled to consider this bill this week (Nov 28 – Dec 2)
Thank you
the Save Van Tassel group
__________________________________________________________________________________
SAMPLE LETTER:
(date)
Senator (name)
(address or fax number or e-mail)
Re: Provision in 2006 Budget for Sale of Public Lands
Dear Senator (name):
I have read about the provision in the Budget Bill for sale of public lands (placed there by Rep. Richard W. Pombo, head of the House Resources Committee), and would like to ask that you make every effort to remove this giveaway of our wilderness lands. If left in the budget, this provision would allow the government to sell off millions of acres of land in national forests and open up old claims in national parks (complete with mineral rights) for very low prices.
The danger to our wilderness areas, especially in the Angeles National Forest near where I live, is a cause for great concern. The San Gabriel Mountains, located very close to highly populated areas of Los Angles County, provide a very important place of refuge from the stress and crowding of the cities. The 20 million people who live in the LA basin should not be deprived of this natural beauty, clean air, and connection with nature, just so that mining companies can despoil the land.
There are presently a number of grass-roots movements trying to prevent the destruction of the land, air and water by powerful mining interests in the Los Angeles area.
In Santa Clarita, millions of dollars has been spent by the city, fighting the expansion of a large gravel mine there. (The citizens group has information on that battle at
In Claremont, mining interests are suing to force the city to allow them to destroy land with new gravel pits (see www.nominesinclaremont.org/)
Between Duarte and Azusa, a citizens group (www.savethemountains.org) is organizing opposition to a mining company that is pushing to expand its ugly open face mine that has torn apart the front range of the San Gabriels.
Public opposition to the desecration of our National Parks and Forests is strong, but if legislators under control of the mining interests can hide their method of destroying public lands inside a budget bill, the will of the citizens can be circumvented and the terrible results will only be obvious when it is too late to do anything.
Please do anything you can to amend this bill and protect our Nation’s irreplaceable wilderness lands.
Thank you very much,
(your name and address)