I'm still waiting for correct information

A tennis ball sized aluminum foil sphere has been staring at me for the past four years as a reminder of an item of misinformation that needs to be corrected.

Back then is when Morlene Plouzek started her campaign to monkey-wrench the Thompson River Co-gen plant. I attended her first rally held at the Thompson Falls High School gym in 2004. At that meeting she had a chart of her own making, which stated that the plant would emit 2.7 tons (5,400 pounds) of mercury per year. (This was also published in an article in the local media.)

Cesar Hernandez, her hired spokesman, did not question that figure and compared it to the size of a Subaru.

When questioned later about the validity of that figure and the source of the information, she said it was from the TRC engineering documents. OK, so what did those documents actually say? The expected amount of mercury, based on laboratory tests, according to the engineering report was 0.0027 tons (5.4 pounds) per year. Mrs. Plouzek et al were only 100,000 percent off. One hundred thousand percent high! I pointed that out to her and she basically shrugged it off.

Morlene, I'm still waiting for you to correct that misinformation in one of your many letters to the editor.

The space occupied by 0.0027 tons of mercury is about the size of a tennis ball, not a Subaru.

Over the past four years, how many of your other statements of facts and figures have been incorrect and possibly grossly exaggerated?

Ron Olfert

Plains