Since 1992 Eastmoor United Methodist Church in Marion has been a "Creation Care Church." Valley United Methodist Church has also earned this award.

The church congregations receiving this distinction are part of a continuing project of the Conference Commission on Church and Society. These churches "recognize the responsibility of the church toward lifestyle and systemic changes in society that will promote a more ecologically just world and a better quality of life for all creation" (United Methodist Discipline).

Each congregation participates in four areas to earn this distinction. One action has been to recycle all office paper and church bulletins. We also have discontinued the use of styrofoam coffee cups.

A recent article in The Wichita Eagle described the recycling program in Newton. The cities of Peabody and Hillsboro currently have recycling services available.

Now with a newly elected city commission in Marion, I hope we can be a progressive community, too, and offer recycling.

Recycling newspapers saves 17 trees for each ton that is recycled. Aluminum and "tin" (steel) cans saves 65 percent to 95 percent of the energy needed to produce new cans.

A tin can will last in a landfill for 100 years, and aluminum takes 200 to 500 years to decompose. It is undetermined how long a glass bottle lasts when buried in a landfill, but it may be as many as 1,000,000 years!

Not only could we save valuable resources, but we could reduce the amount of MSW (municipal solid waste) that is trucked to the landfill from the transfer station.

Eileen Sieger

Marion

Kudos to commission for sensible zoning

Hats off to the Marion County Board of Commissioners for clearly stating the goal of making Marion County friendlier to those who would choose to live within our county borders, but not necessarily within the borders of any given city, through zoning changes.

The March 29 Free Press article related to county zoning demonstrates how misguided our zoning system has become.

For more than 100 years, our rural population has been dwindling. This fact is due largely to shrinking profit margins in the business of traditional agriculture. Where 100 years ago a man could make a living for his family on 160 acres of land, it is simply no longer true.

Consolidation of farming operations has caused, for example, Scully Estates tenant rolls to shrink from 300-plus tenant/families to less than 100.

Illustrated on a county-wide level, for all landowners, that shrinkage should be multiplied by 10. This means there are 2,000 fewer farm families buying groceries and attending our schools.

Unfortunately, these displaced farm families have not all found work within our communities, but have instead left the area over time.

This is cause for alarm. For those wanting to see the businesses within the county survive, it is not a time to create zoning bureauecracies that tend to keep new residents out.

For the most part, Marion County's new zoning rules tend to do that. While our Marion County zoning process may be democratically based, it is cumbersome and seems to be driven by an attorney who resides in an area where excess growth maybe perceived as a problem: Topeka.

That problem does not exist here. Rather, we need population growth, whether within our towns or within our county, for our schools, towns or businesses to survive.

Without this growth, the taxation burden associated with good schools and services will be too much for those remaining to bear. It takes private-sector jobs and people to make a town or county go, not a government bureaucracy that essentially reduces land available for rural ranchettes.

With gain prices typically below the cost of production without farm subsidies, apparently due to oversupply, it is ludicrous for a local government agency to rule that certain land is not eligible to be sold for home sites because it has "food production value."

In land-use economics, there is a term called "highest and best use" that should dictate any use made of land. The highest and best use should be determined by the "market." It is why land on East Kellogg in Wichita ceases to be used for agriculture, and instead becomes a commercial area. That determination was made by the "market," or the result of population growth, i.e., a higher economic use of the land.

Wind-farm sitings have also been affected by zoning. There have been discussions with international companies interested in locating in southern Marion County. My understanding is that zoning rules, and attitudes by those who want to control land usage, was such that these companies decided to go where their reception was better.

The cost to our area landowners and general economy was great, and demonstrated in yet another way how expensive zoning can be. It also demonstrates that private-property rights are seriously eroding, much like land eroded in the Dirty '30s.

If preserving farmers is a priority of Marion County zoning, as purported, then the opportunity for them to sell off parcels of land that have greater value for other uses should be allowed. For some, that cash injection into their operation may be the jumpstart they need.

Companies involved in the wind-farm business have highly paid people to determine where the proper location of a wind farm should be. It is not required to be located under or adjacent to transmission lines. Some have been located 10 or more miles from the transmission lines.

Therefore, any county planning group is out of their league trying to make a decision of this magnitude by the use of an "overlay system."

Again, I applaud the determination of our commissioners pertaining to land-use issues such as these. It is time for sensible, practical zoning implementation for the sake, of Marion County.

Doug Sharp

Scully Estates agent/landowner

Marion