Guest commentary: Who are these people telling us how to live?

Talk about it

We have been following the issue of the cell phone tower along Fernberg Road. I see it was blocked surprisingly by a judge in Hennepin County. Don’t we have judges that are familiar with Lake County and the people living in it?

Why is it that whenever there is an issue such as this the people in the Twin Cities area have the say over what we do in northeastern Minnesota? Why do we have judges if we can’t use them to determine the outcome of issues that pertain to us?

Apparently Judge Philip Bush has no idea what is going on here or has never had to rescue people in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness with very limited communication. I have had to do this. He can sit there in Minneapolis, as well as the so-called Friends of the Boundary Waters, with every modern convenience you can think of and then say a shorter tower is adequate for those backwoods people. Would he be willing to go out on the sidewalk to make a cell phone call. I think not.

As I know after living up here for 48 years, the BWCAW has been secretly expanding for some time. Now the Friends want to govern areas that are not in the restricted area. The sad part is they get a bleeding heart judge from their own turf to make the decision.

How can one man say that “on street” coverage is adequate for the people in this area?

I believe that we should not allow any more expansion into our beautiful farmland of Minnesota. I really miss seeing the beautiful rolling farm land and grazing animals. We are losing a lot of that and something should be done.

I also think there should be no more disturbing this beautiful land by making wider and more freeways. We should stick to single-lane roads that do not destroy valuable farm land. I travel through that area a couple times a year and I can put up with single lane roads just like the few that  might happen to camp in a sight that might be in such a spot that you might see these terrible tower lights.

They should be able to tolerate this for a night of camping when they are used to all the lights where they come from – where it is so bright you can never see the stars.

I think this group is just trying to see how much power they can muster. We should not allow decisions on matters such as this to be determined by any judge from outside the concerned county. I think that the people concerned in this case should stick to their guns and get a judge that is in this part of the state and fight this decision.

Tags: two harbors, boundary waters canoe area, opinion, finland