Letters to the editor June 10

Congrats, graduates

Thank you for the uplifting stories of the area high school graduates. Such positive, refreshing coverage is much appreciated during these chaotic times. Reading these young peoples stories was so uplifting and gives all of us hope for the future. Each and everyone of them have goals and aspirations along with many of their classmates.

Congratulations and best wishes to each of the graduates valley wide and go make our country a beacon of hope.

— Linda Olson, Kalispell

Water level excuses

Energy Keepers, Inc. is once again surprised to discover that snow doesn’t melt twice and water doesn’t magically appear in July. 

Their recent press release reads like a dramatic monologue: “unseasonably warm,” “required minimums,” “operational sacrifice,” all the language of heroism, as if they’ve been performing open heart surgery on the watershed. In reality, these statements are less about transparency and more about deflection.

Let’s fact check the spin. While May started with a couple warm days, the back half of the month was downright chilly. The average temperature for May actually came in 1.7 degrees below normal. Which explains why locals were wearing fleece instead of flip flops.

And the water situation? According to the NRCS, water year-to-date precipitation in the Flathead Basin sits at 91% of normal. Not a banner year, but not exactly the Dust Bowl either.

So no, this wasn’t just “unseasonably warm” or “unprecedented drought.” It was a season with opportunity, wasted by a strategy that hoped for miracles and ignored actual runoff patterns. When your water management hinges on late-spring luck instead of sound planning, you’re not managing. You are gambling.

Now we’re looking at never hitting a full pool, power generation is down, docks are dry and the CEO is already narrating next year’s excuses.

Flathead Lake deserves better than crisis PR. It deserves leadership.

— Daniel Gaugler, Polson

Red flag

The article “Whitefish residents push to investigate police call to Board Patrol” (Inter Lake, June 4) has a red flag. 

A presumably well-meaning Whitefish City Council member saying, “It makes me really sad that people don’t feel safe here, Brown people, Black people, orange people, whatever” tells me this: “I don’t understand how racism works and have never experienced it myself.” 

That a council member feels “thrown under the bus” suggests he is empathizing neither with Beker Rengifo del Castillo (the documented immigrant recently hauled off to ICE detention in Tacoma for six days) nor other Latinos in the valley who are fearful this may happen to them but rather himself feeling victimized for being made to feel “sad.”

— Chris Dodge, Kalispell