Poet says creek is 'ours to hold and keep holy'

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• LETTER: Supports Linville for Bellingham post

  LETTER: Supports Linville for Bellingham post

  It's very difficult to express in 200 words how qualified I believe Kelli Linville is for the position of mayor of Bellingham.

  For many years, when she was a state representative, I worked with her on the Department of Natural Resources landscape plan.

  For those who don't remember, that was the state plan to clear cut and build logging roads on unstable slopes in our drinking water supply.

• LETTER: Would stop energy exports from U.S.

  LETTER: Would stop energy exports from U.S.

  According to the U.S. Census our biggest export is fuel. Our refiners exported 117 million gallons per day of gasoline, diesel, jet fuel and other petroleum products offshore to the world community, while America remains the world's largest importer of crude oil. From January to October, our country imported 2.7 billion barrels of oil worth roughly $280 billion.

  The mantra of the Republicans is that we need to produce more oil in our pristine wilderness and clean oceans to achieve energy independence. I believe Republicans are demanding that the Keystone pipeline be built, our oceans soiled and wilderness cleared for the profits of the oil companies that sell our energy overseas.

  We pay higher gas prices so the oil companies and their political supporters can make a bigger profit. It should be a crime to export energy until we are truly energy independent.

• Meridian Middle School makeover on hold, district may lose $12.3M in state funding

  Meridian Middle School makeover on hold, district may lose $12.3M in state funding

  LAUREL - Meridian School District is stopping the major remodel of its aging middle school, expecting to lose $12.3 million in state construction money.

  That's because two bills moving through the Legislature would change how the state helps pay for school construction.

  The measures, which have bipartisan support, would bar school districts from including Alternative Learning Experiences students who live outside the district in the calculation used for state funding for construction.

• Russia admits brief cut of gas supplies to Europe

  Russia admits brief cut of gas supplies to Europe

  Russia's state-controlled Gazprom natural gas giant acknowledged for the first time Saturday that it had briefly reduced gas supplies to Europe amid a spell of extreme cold.

• NORTHWEST VIEW: Pipeline to Texas beats oil tankers in Strait of Juan de Fuca

  NORTHWEST VIEW: Pipeline to Texas beats oil tankers in Strait of Juan de Fuca

  Opponents of the Keystone XL pipeline: Be careful what you wish for.

  Environmentalists have been furiously fighting the plan to pipe Canadian crude oil across the Great Plains from Alberta to refineries on the Gulf Coast. The political firestorm has gotten so hot that the Obama administration recently punted the decision to the far side of the presidential election.

  Northwesterners ought to be aware of a potential consequence of the project's failure: That same tar sands oil could wind up getting piped west to Vancouver, B.C. - there to be shipped on supertankers through our very own and very vulnerable Strait of Juan de Fuca. China could then nail down long-term contracts for the Canadian petroleum.

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