Readers Write: Photo voltaic farms, medical health insurance, Enbridge Line 3, homelessness, U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar

It could be one factor if the agricultural residents of Washington County have been arguing in opposition to the creation of photo voltaic farms (“Photo voltaic vs. surroundings: Panels sow division,” entrance web page, March 20) as a result of the builders have been proposing to clear-cut native forests, pure prairies or water-cleansing wetlands to create these photo voltaic panel arrays. However there’s actually not a lot that is inherently extra “pure” or attractively rural about mammoth fields planted with genetically engineered corn, irrigated by monumental circulating irrigation wheels which are decreasing groundwater provides at an alarming fee; corn that, for probably the most half, shall be used to provide livestock feed to nurture cattle that produce methane gasoline as they supply federally sponsored beef that helps Individuals maintain their ldl cholesterol at report ranges; and fields which are sprayed with 1000’s of gallons of chemical pesticides and herbicides which are obligatory if you wish to develop trademark-protected hybrid plant species produced by Cargill and different firms.

I, for one, suppose that photo voltaic arrays and wind farms are a heck of much more visually enticing than a lot of what passes for “pure” rural agriculture as of late.

Bryan Trandem, Minneapolis

HEALTH INSURANCE

Some seniors in Albert Lea are shocked and upset as a result of they pay out-of-network charges to make use of their native MercyOne clinic that’s not of their Blue Cross and Blue Defend supplier community (“Albert Lea seniors caught in insurance coverage quagmire,” Enterprise, March 20). They’re asking the Minnesota lawyer common to jawbone Blue Cross to change a federal Medicare Benefit plan. Blue Cross is the improper goal. The true villain is staring again from the closest mirror.

These individuals are capturing themselves within the foot by ignoring the annual adjustments of their Medicare Benefit plans in the course of the fall open enrollment interval and altering plans if crucial. Additionally, they’re ignoring the January-through-March Medicare Benefit alternative to vary plans if they’re sad. Strikes to totally different plans can nonetheless be made. I counsel they name the Senior Linkage Line for recommendation at this time.

As a former Medicare educator for over 20 years, I’ve knowledgeable of us who’re contemplating selecting Medicare Benefit over unique Medicare that they are going to be managing the standard and price of their well being care by partaking in an annual battle of wits with a bunch of insurance coverage firms. The plans have altering options together with premiums, copays, prescription drug prices, supplier networks and non-Medicare advantages. Carried out accurately, this problem is daunting, and most ignore it.

Consequently, the seniors in Albert Lea needs to be ready to make robust choices. For instance: Is switching to a plan with MercyOne in community acceptable if it has a prescription drug plan that’s rather more costly than the Blue Cross medicine? Which of your present medical doctors should not within the community with MercyOne?

Gerald Maher, Eden Prairie

ENBRIDGE LINE 3

Minnesotans needs to be livid however not shocked by the large launch of 300,000 gallons of water from Enbridge breaching three aquifers throughout Line 3 pipeline development (“DNR: Extra Line 3 aquifers broken,” March 22). Hundreds of involved Minnesotans gave skilled testimony, wrote letters and publicly protested concerning the environmental and social injustice of the pipeline. Enbridge argued that the challenge could possibly be performed safely and supply a number of hundred good-paying Minnesota jobs. As an alternative, many staff have been introduced in from out of state, one employee died, and the intercourse commerce enterprise arrived in close by native communities. We are actually left with a pipeline that for years will move with probably the most poisonous tar-sands oil on the planet.

Enbridge, the Minnesota Division of Pure Sources, the Minnesota Air pollution Management Company and Gov. Tim Walz ought to all know that we knew the challenge would by no means go easily and that the pipeline oil spills will ultimately happen. Pipelines and hard-rock mining have by no means been constructed or operated with out some type of catastrophe.

Within the phrases of Pete Seeger, “When will we ever be taught.”

Mike Menzel, Edina

•••

The Enbridge Line 3 debacle is tragic and would have been avoidable had our governor and lieutenant governor acted with braveness and foresight early on to cease the challenge. I visited a Water Protector website alongside the northern banks of the Mississippi River months in the past and was horrified by the clear-cutting of timber and harm alongside the river, and by the tales of the Indigenous Minnesotans protesting the challenge from the beginning. Now we’re listening to — after months’ delay — of many aquifer breaches and harm to the encircling land and water, all of this for soiled tar-sands oil from Canada. This lifelong Minnesotan is heartsick about our fealty to nonrenewable power and our lack of regard for the sanctity and fragility of our water and land.

Marjorie Hogan, Plymouth

HOMELESSNESS

Whereas the March 22 article “Invoice goals to search out resolution for outside encampments” is a commendable starting in acknowledging the well timed have to fund emergency shelters in Ramsey County, it fails to seize the magnitude and scope of this situation.

As an intern with the Minnesota Coalition for the Homeless, I’ve had the unbelievable alternative to interview greater than a dozen people from throughout the state who work in emergency shelters and/or have lived expertise with homelessness. I’ve been confronted with the unlucky actuality that homelessness will not be merely an city disaster, however one which devastates the lives of younger folks, Indigenous communities, domestic-violence survivors, households, and others from each rural and concrete communities.

Although the article highlights the “funding cliff” that leaders in Ramsey County are going through as they search to safe $14.5 million in state {dollars}, the monetary wants for emergency shelters throughout the state at massive exceeds this at $95 million in wanted funding for the Emergency Companies Program over the subsequent three years. Mary Westlund from New Pathways, a supplier in Cambridge, highlights this throughout an interview: “We’re in a really small neighborhood. We do not have entry to the massive funding streams which are accessible within the metro space.” Shelters like New Pathways face the chance of needing to shut their doorways or gravely failing to satisfy the rising want for shelter of their communities.

As Sen. David Senjem, R-Rochester, relayed within the March 22 article, the necessity for bipartisan help in allocating funding from this historic surplus towards offering shelter should eclipse each geographic and political boundaries, together with county traces.

Kate Larson, Edina

FIFTH CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT

A March 23 letter author cited U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar’s vote in opposition to the infrastructure invoice as an indication of her lack of help for President Joe Biden. However we have to have a look at this in context.

Omar and a handful of progressive Home members voted in opposition to the infrastructure invoice as a result of they felt the one approach to get Sen. Joe Manchin to barter in good religion on the Construct Again Higher invoice was to tie it to passage of the infrastructure invoice. Seems that Omar and her colleagues have been completely right. Weeks after the passage of the infrastructure invoice, Manchin declared that he couldn’t help the Construct Again Higher invoice, even supposing the entire price had been scaled again resulting from his calls for and most of the environmental protections had been stripped away in order that Manchin might proceed to make hundreds of thousands off coal.

There are issues about Omar that may be criticized, however along with her vote in opposition to the infrastructure invoice, she made the best name, whereas many Democrats, together with President Biden, made a silly alternative in trusting Manchin.

Craig Hewitt, Crystal

 

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