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STATEMENT OF BARREL RANGER 



Mr. Ranger. My name is Barrel Ranger and I want to thank you 

 for the opportunity to speak before you. 



What I would really like to talk about is the environment. Have 

 the environmentalists really told us the truth? The environmental- 

 ists told of the damage to wildlife when the Alaska pipeline was 

 put in. I worked at Prudhoe Bay for three years and had the privi- 

 lege to see a musk ox scratching his neck on the pipeline. I have 

 enjoyed watching Arctic fox chase and play with one another on 

 and around the oil pipe. 



For 12 years I worked in the Longview, Washington area as a 

 field mechanic. I spent considerable time in the Mount St. Helens 

 area. On several occasions I had to stop my truck and wait for deer 

 and elk cross the road in front of me. 



Man made logging did not drive the deer or the elk away. Even 

 when Mother Nature logged off Mount St. Helens, and she did a 

 good job of it; the wildlife is now returning to Mount St. Helens. At 

 the Weyerhaeuser plant in Longview, Washington they have devel- 

 oped or grown trees that are better, closer grained, faster growing, 

 35 to 40 years, compared to natural growth of 60 to 80 years and 

 more resistant to disease. 



Trees are America's truly renewable resource and let us not pre- 

 serve them all because they will eventually die, but let us cultivate 

 and plant more. 



Recently, it was stated on television that Congress had voted to 

 spend 14.1 million dollars per month on the contras in Nicaragua. 

 The contras, as I know them, do not pay income taxes, sales taxes, 

 gasoline taxes, Social Security taxes, or unemployment taxes. If the 

 Senators from New York, California, and Colorado can support the 

 contras — why cannot they support the people of southeast Alaska? 



Senator Wirth. Thank you very much. 



[Applause.] 



Senator Wirth. Ms. Walker. 



STATEMENT OF DIANE WALKER 



Mr. Walker. My name is Diane Walker. I love Sitka. I enjoy my 

 job and I am very proud to be an employee of the Alaska Pulp Cor- 

 poration. I have lived here since 1976 and most of those years I 

 have worked in the pulp mill. I have quit APC twice in the past for 

 personal reasons and I have returned because I have not found 

 anything else that will compare to Sitka and APC. 



We choose to live here because of the environment, hunting, fish- 

 ing, clean air, life style and our jobs. 



I feel that we have more than an adequate amount of wilderness 

 in this area, in the U.S., for that matter. We as a family enjoy the 

 use of logging roads and wish there were even more to use. 



Basically, I feel APC is 25 to 40 percent of Sitka, in terms of rev- 

 enue, income, people and community based efforts. 



If the mill is forced to close it will be very detrimental to my 

 family, as my husband is also employed at APC. 



I have very strong feelings about what my country is doing to my 

 employer and my family. I cannot believe my country would de- 



