Letters to the Editor (Nov. 28)

Too many sites for championships

Three Sedgwick County high schools — Derby, Bishop Carroll and Andale — played for state football championships the Saturday after Thanksgiving.

Unfortunately, football fans from across the county and the Wichita area could only attend one of those three championship games in person. If they wished to follow the other games, they had to have a portable radio and hope they could pull in a station, or hope for internet service and view the game on a tiny phone or tablet screen.

The Kansas State High School Activities Association continues to do a tremendous disservice to football fans, players and coaches by continuing to refuse to hold all state championship games at a single location. Not only is it fan unfriendly, it diminishes the atmosphere for the players and coaches, who deserve the best possible facility and atmosphere for these contests, which will be the most important in the lives of many players and coaches.

Cessna Stadium would be a fine place for the games. So would Children's Mercy Park in Kansas City, or the stadiums at KU and K-State.

Shame on the KSHSAA for continuing to refuse to hold all state championship events, save track and field, at a single locale.

Opposition from a chicken region

Public opposition to a Tyson chicken production complex in Sedgwick County is well-founded. I hope it will be heeded. I speak as a resident of the eastern shore of Virginia which, together with Delaware and Maryland’s Eastern Shore, is a chicken industry-dominated region with thousands of chicken sheds on the main road and back roads and gigantic slaughter plants including Tyson.

If Sedgwick County lets Tyson in, the operation will likely expand, but even if it didn’t, a complex comprising a hatchery, feed mill, slaughter plant and chicken sheds would pollute the county and lower its value as a place where people want to live, because the sight, smell and sadness of the chickens cannot be hidden, even by the shrubbery Tyson plants to hide its activities. The trucks with their sagging loads of traumatized birds are in plain sight.

Tyson targets rural counties, expecting little or no resistance from impoverished residents desperate for almost any kind of work no matter how repugnant, violent, and degrading. The company was surprised when residents of Tonganoxie successfully withdrew their welcome after educating themselves of the outcome if Tyson got inside their gates. I hope Sedgwick County residents will likewise succeed.

Reasons to shoo Tyson away

For those in support of Tyson building a chicken processing plant, please know that for the people who live in southwest Sedgwick County, it is about more than just the odor. It is about pollution of our water or even total water depletion.

It is about airborne pathogens from the open transport of live chickens to the slaughterhouse. It is about the 100-150 farms required to each raise 100,000 chickens at a time. It is about the nitrates from the waste of those chicken farms being washed into streams, lakes and rivers. And, it is about plummeting property values.

But the real cost will be paid by the citizens of Sedgwick County. Those farms could be located anywhere in the county, not just the southwest. Do you really want the smell, water pollution, air pollution, and wear and tear on our roads? Tyson has paid millions of dollars in fines by the EPA.

And those 1,600 jobs? Can you support a family on $13 an hour? Sedgwick County has a 4-percent unemployment rate. Let's take that half-billion dollars Tyson will be asking for and invest it for the good of our community.

Warning: Trash ahead

While in Wichita for Thanksgiving in your fair city, we had occasion to drive by a mountain of trash with a blizzard of debris blowing across the highway. We have never seen anything like this, and originally thought we had ventured into a third-world country.

Upon inquiry, we were told that this is really a landmark city dump of which the city is really proud, as it has been there for decades.

You may want to put up some warning signs on the highway as it is quite a shock to suddenly venture into such a sight.

This story was originally published November 28, 2017 at 4:43 AM with the headline "Letters to the Editor (Nov. 28)."