In a state that already has the most stringent requirements for land use in the United States, I have to ask myself, the planning commission, and all those in attendance here, why the state of Oregon is in the process of further restricting our individual private property rights.

We are being asked to accept additional unnecessary land use regulations in the state and county.

Meanwhile, the state of Oregon and Klamath County are allowing, uncontested, the siting of the largest gas fired electrical generating facility in the western United States, in a strictly zoned Exclusive Farm Use agricultural area just east of Klamath Falls.

The absolute hypocrisy of Governor Kulongowski, and his state agencies involved in forcing this 138 acre heavy industrial COB plant into the midst of a rural farming community is incomprehensible.

This plant will provide no benefit to the rural area in which it is being located.

How can anyone contemplate accepting further restrictions on regular commercial businesses, when state and local politicians have turned their backs on the community and its citizens?

How can our state and county representatives endorse this plan to turn the eastern half of Klamath County into a massive heavy industrialized zone?

How can they ignore the impact of tens of thousands of semi trucks travelling Highway 140 East, day and night for several years while the plant is consrtructed?

How can they ignore the hundreds of millions of tons of particulate pollutants that will be generated by this plant and spread over the rural farming area for decades?

With the siting of the COB plant, the current crop of Oregon and Klamath County politicians and bureaucrats have sold its citizens an untenable bill of goods.

The only exception is Commissioner Steve West who has publicly stated his opposition to the rural siting of this plant.

On one hand, through the implementation of goal 14, Oregon and Governor Kulongowski seek to require local governments to restrict building size to 3000 sq. feet in rural areas.

On the other hand, at the same time they are endorsing the construction of a building complex totaling millions of square feet in the same county in an EFU zoned rural area.

The hypocrisy is palpable.

We have a multitude of unnecessary, and untenable land use laws already on the books in Oregon that apparently have no relevance, and provide no protection to individual property owners .

Why in the world would we want to further burden ourselves with more irrelevant and hypocritical rules?