It hasn't always been smooth riding. We take the same interest in state forests. You've been on the Osceola County Board of Commissioners for six years. Our creeks and rivers in the Pine River and Muskegon River watersheds were once high quality, deep, cold trout streams. Now they're ruined from erosion.
Old timers talk about catching trout out of streams that no longer exist.
We have health warnings on one of the main branches of the Hersey River because of creosote. We have 19,000 acres of state forest in our county, all of it designated as timber intensive. The DNR took this once beautiful biologically diverse forest and made it into a mono-culture of aspen. We have numerous sites where our drinking water is polluted. We really have no land use planning.