Editor:

I too agree that respectful responses are always best. I also think that when someone is telling such an outrageous, egregious lie as the speaker was that it is difficult to let it go.

I do wish that the one speaker would have waited for his turn to speak to correct such misleading false information, but I get it. I think it was terribly inappropriate for the hearing examiners to, at that point in the hearing, call a recess.

This seemed to me to be a deliberate attempt to chastise the entire audience and punish us. It was overly authoritarian and patriarchal in tone. They didn’t seem to want to be there, and their demeanor the entire evening indicated this. This took time away from the hearing.

I also take exception to Morgan White’s biased judgment of the people who were present to give comments (“Curry more favor,” Aug. 16). He cast us as immature individuals and out of order when in fact there was very little of that. There were just a few laughs and the one out-of-order comment. Most of the speakers were very respectful.

It is our lives that will be radically changed by a pipeline and compressor station in our community. It is our water that is being threatened.

To single out the actions of a few and to respond as if this was the entire group as a whole is offensive and misleading. It clearly shows a bias on the part of this reporter.

I wonder if this attitude is in part because of the way we were being regarded by the Department of Environmental Quality examiners.

We are being asked to sacrifice our land, our livelihoods, our health and, in this case, our water. I think we, in turn, deserve some respect.

Chad Oba

Buckingham