It was so nice to see so many of the 2002 football team return to Wendover last week.
Obviously this town and that time meant something very important to them. It was also nice to learn that quite a few of them stayed close to home having found jobs in Elko’s mining industry.
Wouldn’t it be nice if we had a mine little closer to home?
Something say between Wells and Wendover.
That would make is possible that instead of staying close to home a graduate of Wendover High or West Wendover high could actually stay home with a good paying job.
Every year this town loses between 50 to 100 of our best simply because there are very few jobs to be found.
Sure the casinos are always hiring but compared to even an entry level job in the mining industry the pay is pathetic. Besides Nevada miners don’t have to worry about losing their livelihoods to a foreign ‘student’ who will work twice as long for half as much pay.
And yet there are those who dismiss Long Canyon as insignificant or potentially dangerous to our water supply.
Really?
As parents who have three children living far away from home, we say that even if the mine detractors were 100 percent right. If all their worst case scenarios were truly borne out we would still be in favor of the mine and giving the people who want to build it every break in the book and then some.
At the very, very worst we can always dig a new water well. Can that cost compare living in a city where multi generational families are the rule rather than the exception?
We find it hard to understand that many of the same folks who are demanding a pound of flesh from Newmont are so generous with the city’s money in their quest to buy a failing gas company and then build a natural gas pipeline.
One one hand we have a company that will provide up to 700 direct well paying jobs perhaps double our population, triple our tax base and our city tries to extort them to the point that there is real doubt whether they will bother to deal with Wendover at all.
On the other hand there is the sorry tale of the near bankrupt Wendover Gas Company some of the same people who think Long Canyon is not such a great idea want to buy.
They want the city to shell out $2.4 million for a company that often does not make ends meet paying its workers well below the union scale a public employee makes.
We do not get it.
The only thing extorting Newmont away from Wendover and buying the gas company is have in common is that both are incredibly stupid ideas.
Oh, now we get it.