Senate Republican Leader Tim Knopp, R-Bend, speaks with other lawmakers on the floor of the Senate in the Oregon Capitol in Salem in January. 

Oregon’s drug decriminalization experiment known as Ballot Measure 110 has failed to address the drug addiction crisis. We have all seen the statistics: addiction, crime, and homelessness at record-breaking levels, and it’s only getting worse. What was sold to Oregon voters as a better way to connect addicts to treatment has instead made it more difficult by removing tools from law enforcement all while taking lives and decimating our communities. That is why Oregonians overwhelmingly support a repeal of Measure 110.

I serve on the recently formed Joint Committee on Addiction and Community Safety. Its purpose: finding solutions to address the failures of Measure 110. We must convince a majority of the committee that repealing Measure 110 is the solution. There will be a public hearing on Monday, December 4, 11:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. I encourage you to sign up to testify in-person, virtually, or submit written testimony. This is your opportunity to share with the committee the devastating impacts of Measure 110 on our community. It’s time to repeal and replace this failed experiment.

Register to testify online or in-person here: tinyurl.com/M110comment. Submit written testimony to this email: JACSR.exhibits@oregonlegislature.gov.

— State Sen. Tim Knopp, a Republican who represents Bend

The op-ed “No Ceasefire with Hamas” from Nov. 26 is clearly a “cut and paste” attempt to cobble together a history of Palestine that whitewashes Israel. The author is no authority on the history of Palestine. Perhaps the best response to such a distorted hodgepodge is the following ad that according to the London Review of Books appeared in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz on 22 September 1967 after the Israeli conquests:

“Our right to defend ourselves against extermination does not give us the right to oppress others.

OCCUPATION entails FOREIGN RULE.

FOREIGN RULE entails RESISTANCE.

RESISTANCE entails ISRAELI REPRESSION.

REPRESSION entails TERROR and COUNTER-TERROR.

Holding on to the Occupied Territories will turn us into a nation of murderers and victims of murder.

LET US GET OUT OF THE OCCUPIED TERRITORIES AT ONCE.”

So far, the Israelis have killed 15,000 Palestinians in Gaza including thousands of children.

— Gary Leiser, Sisters

Cascade Natural Gas reports that next year, “Central Oregon will face peak gas supply shortfalls.” Can we make it without gas?

Can we build a solar-powered electricity-generating facility to replace the 20 million cubic feet of gas per day contracted to Oregon that the Gas Transmission Northwest Xpress project would provide? We would need a project about 1.7 times larger than the combined Bakeoven-Sunset- Daybreak (BSD) project in Wasco County, just to replace the GTN X volume.

BSD needs 16.5 square miles for 951,900 panels, batteries, transmission line and boundaries. Likely cost between $697 million to $1.26 billion. BSD will start up in 2025, after four years of planning and five years of construction. Compare that to GTN X: $75.1 million and 13 months to complete the entire 150 million cubic feet of gas per day project.

You can extrapolate the size, cost and time for your replacement project.

Greenhouse gas emissions? The emissions from the entire GTN X project is 0.06% of the annual GHG emission in the USA.

Did you know that about 52% of the gas that is consumed in Oregon is used to generate electricity?

Switching from coal to gas has cleared the air as emissions from gas are about 58% of the emissions of coal.

Are gas pipelines safe? Everything has risks but the serious incident record for 305,000 miles of U.S. gas transmission pipelines is 2.8/year or 0.0126 incidents per year for the entire 1,377-mile GTN pipeline. How is the safety record for lithium batteries?

Will we destroy our economy on the way to a green future?

— David White, Bend

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