Continue to support energy technologies

Editor:

IGS Energy CNG Services recently announced plans to build a new compressed natural gas station on Spring Street, next to the Foodland grocery store. The station is part of a CNG (Compressed Natural Gas) Corridor the company will construct on I-79 in West Virginia and Pennsylvania.

The governor, Legislature and other stakeholders worked to create legislation that approved tax credits for this type of infrastructure, which will generate new investment, new jobs and a long-term diversified tax base in the state. State officials should be commended for their efforts to attract the interest of natural gas companies to our area.

With newly accessible natural gas resources in our state, all West Virginians, as taxpayers and as individuals, should benefit from our own domestic natural resources. Utilizing these reserves would reduce our dependence on foreign oil and create jobs here at home.

Economic development is important for our region and the state's future. Kanawha County is leading the way with alternative transportation-fuels infrastructure and natural gas vehicles. In order to cultivate the next generation of young leaders, attract business and remain competitive, West Virginia should support policies that continue investment and innovation into energy technologies.

Matthew G. Ballard, president & CEO, Charleston Regional Chamber of Commerce

Charleston

Legislature only looking out for itself

Editor:

A reader wondered why our Legislature is concentrating on gun issues and not other, more important problems. My thought is that, rather than concentrate on real problems that would require them to take on the powers that be (and their donors), they have decided to manufacture a problem where none existed - the threat to gun rights.

They have simply announced that the president is going to take their guns, etc., and reacted to it as if it were fact. Rather than ask, "Where is the threat," many West Virginia residents, further egged on by the NRA, have joined the litany of Chicken Little rants of, "The sky is falling. The sky is falling."

I predict that this legislative session will accomplish little of importance, except to make the powers that be happy, especially the coal companies! Has anyone else noticed that our elected officials will rally around the miners when they are killed in mine accidents, yet I am not aware of any state legislator who has asked the governor why his agencies are not enforcing the new mining laws enacted to prevent these tragedies?

The Legislature very rarely enacts any legislation that is beneficial to the average West Virginia voter but rushes to the aid of corporations and wealthy supporters at the drop of a dollar.

Bill Skeat

Athens

'Innerview' with Tom McGee rings a bell

Editor:

I am a big fan of Sandy Wells's "Innerviews," and she rang the bell again with Tom McGee.

Sandy quotes him as saying, "I was a stupid drinker." During 20-plus years spent in the bars, I never encountered any other kind of heavy hitter.

By Tom's standards, I probably don't qualify as an alcoholic either, since I was only arrested once for drunken driving. A jury in St. Clairsville, Ohio, acquitted me in 1981. Of course, I had a brilliant lawyer.

H. John Rogers

New Martinsville