'Civic-minded People' 

Editor:

It doesn't take a trained hydrologist to note that people's wells are going dry and streams are shrinking up in Kneeland ("An Industry on Edge," March 16). How sympathetic I am to the concerns of the growers depends on how big they are. I am concerned about the large operations with the money and influence to manipulate the very people charged with regulating them.

To the environmental organizations, saying they share the same concerns as the petitioners but they just want a process different than their perceived rigidity of the initiative process, I say, we already have the experience of written regulation without adequate oversight resulting in residents watching their access to water disappear.

These are families, not "Karens," people who have tread lightly on the land with efficient plumbing and drip systems for their gardens. I can say from nearly 30 years of partying with them, they are certainly not anti-cannabis. They are civic-minded people protecting their homes, the way they always have, by putting in the energy, time and their own money to keep things safe for all their neighbors, be they growers, teachers, musicians or business owners, doing things like erecting a fire station equipped with an ambulance and a firetruck. This is who is being labeled as anti-community? All they are saying is that they are already witnessing large negative impacts from what is currently permitted, and that the proposed issuance of further permits needs to be severely curtailed.

Marcia Wolhandler, McKinleyville