Dear Editor:

Last week, while listening to the news, an item slipped by me as I was only listening with one ear closed. You know us men do that constantly when women talk. But the more I thought about the contents in the news, the more my mind became boggled.

The news from our local TV 13 detailed that it was going to take 12 million tons of dirt yes that's dirt to reclaim the property at the zinc plant in Palmerton and 10 years to do it. Now, I did not think much about that at first, but later on I started to do the math. At 2,000 pounds per ton that is over 24 trillion pounds of dirt. Wow!

Several things really came to light. Where is that entire load of dirt going to come from? (Or is it going to be fly ash and not dirt?)

That's mountains worth, look out for "Blue Mountain Too" coming to your localtheater.

Then is the earth going to shift one way or the other by at least December 2012.

The major WOW factor that I had is this. If it's going to take 10 years to accumulate 12 trillion tons of dirt how long is it going to take to replace the trillions indollars of debt is NOT as cheap as dirt.

From the pen

of Ken Treger