LETTERS: DNR THREATENS PROPERTY RIGHTS

To the editor:

The mindless media via the St. Louis Post-Dispatch has struck again. The News Analysis section of the May 31 Post-Dispatch hysterically rambled on and on about the supposed negative impact that chip mills and logging might have on the Missouri Ozarks. The worst-case scenario is always trumpeted, while reason and logic are sacrificed on the sacred Altar of Environmental Extremism by members of the Sierra Club, the Missouri Department of Conservation, the U.S. Forest Service and, last by not least guilty of trampling private property rights, the Missouri Department of Natural Resources.

Steve Mahfood, the new DNR director, had this to say about your private property rights: If voluntary efforts don't work to control timber cutting that impacts the rivers, his department might have to step in.

In other words, if you do not comply with Big Brother's future suggestions concerning your private property rights, Mahfood just might use the DNR to step on you.

I somehow believe that Mahfood's tenure at the DNR is going to be shorter than either one of his predecessors, Tracy Mehan and David Shor. Good riddance.

ED STEWART

Middlebrook