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Red bird, red bird fly away home. Your house is on fire, your children will burn. The nursery rhyme helped us learn to speak our first words. Lessons learned. Some birds are red. Birds have homes. Homes burn. Children and birds can be burned in fires.

A Consumers Energy overhead power line started a fire near Manistee Michigan last month. Three hundred acres burned before noble firemen put the fire out. Firemen evacuated 30 people so their homes could burn but not their babies. Firemen were proud that no human lives were lost. Presumably many homes of birds were burned—maybe some bird babies.

A tree fell on Consumers Energy electricity line to start the fire. Consumers Energy provides electrical power to 6,000,000 in Michigan. (I am enjoying the power they provide.) Putting overhead power lines in forested areas like those around Crystal Lake and Sleeping Bear Dunes are an example of old-time thinking. The Michigan Public Services Commission (MPSC) can require new and older power lines to be placed underground in forested areas.

Can you consider reasons why they do not order underground power lines? The safer underground lines cost more money. It seems to me Consumers Energy and the MPSC are largely indifferent to red birds and forest fires.

In California, Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) and California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) ignored underground lines. Their overhead lines in forested areas caused many fires and deaths before CPUC started a program to put electric lines underground.

It’s time for new thinking and a major underground power program from the MPSC and Consumers Energy. Stop overhead wires to all new homes in forested areas. Make Consumers Energy pay for the homes they burn. Make the MPSC do new tree planting after fires.

Patrick Quinlan | Frankfort

Michigan’s Aquifers

The article “Michigan’s Sixth Great Lake” in the July 31 edition of your paper brought to attention the various threats to Michigan’s aquifers, but one very big threat that was overlooked is the commercial pumping of groundwater out of our aquifers by big money corporations to sell for profit for a mere $200 permit filing fee.

I think a good follow-up article that points this out and tracks the legislative efforts that have allowed for this plundering of our precious natural resource, as well as efforts to curtail commercial extraction, would be timely. Another negative aspect worthy of mention is all of the plastic used in bottling production and the resultant environmental degradation that follows.

Thomas Vajda | Traverse City

Northern Express gets our crossword puzzle from a third party, and unfortunately we did not receive the crossword this week. We apologize to our avid puzzlers and expect to have it back in the paper for you next week!

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