297 

 Senator Wirth. Renee Shewey. 



STATEMENT OF RENEE SHEWEY 



Ms. Shewey. Renee Shewey of Coffman Cove. Mr. Chairman, we 

 do not support your legislation. I feel that every single member 

 and their families in the logging communities — my family moved 

 to Alaska from Oregon about three and a half years ago. Before 

 moving to Alaska our lifestyle consisted of food stamps and many 

 bills and federal handouts, if you will. In fact we could not even 

 find a job pumping gas and in contrast we now have a future, we 

 have a comfortable home, we have food that we bought and paid 

 for and we pay our bills. We are paying taxes instead of living off 

 them. 



My 14-year old is a straight- A student instead of smoking and 

 drinking; he is involved in the battle of books, spelling bees and 

 lots of writing. We have high school students who take it upon 

 themselves to organize camp clean-up, a camp where kids of all 

 ages get involved, in not games but clubs with good purposes in 

 mind. When is the last time kids in your neighborhood did some- 

 thing like that? 



We have to shoo the deer population from our gardens; we have 

 black bear that visit us much to my chagrin. We live here where 

 we can watch the ugly clearcuts grow to lush dense forests. My 

 husband has more self-confidence in himself than ever before. Our 

 life is almost perfect. We thought we had a piece of the American 

 Dream but there is a dark cloud over us, this dark cloud is a group 

 of people who, under guise of the environment are saying we do 

 not belong here. They lie about the animals and the habitat being 

 taken from them. They take pictures of muskeg and pass it off as 

 clearcut. These environmental groups are clogged up and already 

 overloaded and just to make logging operations go broke waiting. 



Where is the justice in that? There are second and third genera- 

 tion families working here. Our story is not so unique. There are so 

 many stories of survival here. Reader's Digest and Sports Illustrat- 

 ed are missing some great opportunities for some real stories 

 Please don't write us off as non-consequential, we just want to con- 

 tinue to live the lifestyle we chose. 



If a bill must be passed let it be S. 237 and with this testimony I 

 am also submitting statements of people of Coffman Cove ^ who 

 could not be here. 



Senator Wirth. Thank you very much. 



All of you, thank you very much. [Applause.] 



We have had some really super statements this afternoon and 

 that ranks right near the top, Renee. Thank you very much, all 

 five of you, we really appreciate your being here. 



Senator Murkowski. 



Senator Murkowski. Well I think this guy probably as much as 

 any other represents genuine concern on both sides of the issue 

 and of course sends the message to the three of us who represent 

 the rest of our colleagues and take the responsibility to try and re- 

 solve this because I do and we can both see we are worlds apart in 



' Statements retained in subcommittee files. 



