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Soil erosion estimates EDITOR: I have read your first three articles on soil erosion in Illinois Issues. They are excellent articles and I commend you for an excellent job. I have found one error in the first article (September 1981), repeated in the third (November 1981): that the Illinois average annual soil erosion loss is 11.7 tons per acre annually. According to the Water Quality Management Plan, January 1979, the average annual soil loss for all agriculture land was estimated at 4.9 tons per acre and 5.7 tons per acre on all cropland (table 10). The figure of 11.7 tons per acre is the average annual soil erosion loss from cropland where soil erosion generally exceeds the soil loss tolerance, 9.6 million acres (tables 12 and 16). The Soil Conservation Service estimate printed in 1978 estimates the average annual soil erosion loss from cropland at 6.72 tons per acre based on 23,819,000 acres of cropland. Your statement that 1.5 bushels of top soil is lost for every bushel of corn grown is about in line with 6.7 tons average annual soil loss per acre from all cropland. The average annual soil loss per bushel of corn grown on land with erosion generally exceeding the soil loss tolerance would be nearer 2.5 bushels of top soil for each bushel of corn grown. I don't consider this a serious problem with your articles but I felt compelled to call it to your attention. The soil erosion figures are just ball park estimates due to the averaging that must be done in arriving at the figures. I use the figures and consider them the best estimates that we are able to make today. Robert D. Walker Housing Issues in Illinois EDITOR: I wish to express the appreciation of members of the Board of Directors of the Springfield Local Department Corporation for the contribution which you and your staff have made in Housing Issues in Illinois. The breadth and thoroughness of research evident in the document are a tribute to your good efforts and confirm its value for the entire State of Illinois. Housing remains a number one priority of concern with the Board. Currently, our attention is fixed on the successful promotion of single-family home starts in Block 31 of Pioneer Park. G. Ernst Giesecke East St. Louis EDITOR: I just finished reading East St. Louis Treadmill to Oblivion and, in a phrase, found it to be very shallow. I was very disturbed over the fact that you picked one or two instances of problems in the community and gave the impression that the problems were rampant. That was a very amateurish approach to describing our community. East St. Louis is the home of 55,000 hard working middle class people struggling to make ends meet like most other Americans. It is not an area where gun fights and muggings occur every night as you describe. I am also getting sick and tired of hearing about the problems of East St. Louis as if nobody is doing anything about it. Why didn't you describe some of the positive happenings? I am talking about such events as completion of Phase I of planned downtown improvements; an $8,000,000 new Bell Telephone Exchange building; a large multi-million expansion underway at Pfizer; and the list could go on. We are going to overcome our development problems. Stories like yours full of emotional misconceptions do make it more difficult for us but we're going ahead anyway. In conclusion, I found your article very opinionated and discrimatory. I feel it was inaccurate and an apology to the residents of East St. Louis is in order. Ted Hauser EDITOR'S NOTE: The discussion of the various attempts to revitalize East St. Louis which Mr. Hauser finds missing in Ben Dobbin's first article on the city is contained in his second article, "East St. Louis: Down but not out, "published in December. After the second article was written, the U.S. Congress passed and President Reagan approved a $5 million Federal Railroad Administration grant for engineering on the St. Louis Metropolitan Area Rail Gateway Enterprise (MARGE) project. The project will consolidate rail yards in East St. Louis and St. Louis, improving rail freight operations and freeing up riverfront land for economic redevelopment. February 1982/Illinois Issues/5 |