As it always has been in the West, everything boils down to two things: land and water. One renders the other useful, beautiful, complete. We feel that these two issues will continue to dominate the news in the year to come.

Water will make itself heard in two ways. In Enterprise, the sewage treatment facility is going to be worked on, probably replaced. If you’ll remember from this past summer the amount your water bill went up, you’ll know that funding for the much-needed project is already being collected.

One project that currently has no funding is the Wallowa Lake Dam. No one wants to see the upper end of the valley go dry – we’ve been in the middle of dry-land farming, and it’s no picnic. Concerned water users – and all residents – need to forget looking to the federal government for a handout and develop another, long-range financing plan for this vital project. To do that, close cooperation, like that of those involved with the successful Lostine exchange project, will be needed.

In regard to land and its use, Measure 37’s passage and inevitable defeat in the Oregon Supreme Court shows that we desire land use reform, but still have a ways to go to get to a fair solution. Oregonians have to remember how to compromise to make this happen. While having a distant, unrepresentative government plan out your life on your land smacks of communism, arbitrarily imposing one’s will upon others from a position of unequal power borders on the fascist. For our future’s sake, we must meet in the middle.

Locally, defining development and the path of growth in terms of business and housing must have community input. No one wants someone else digging up their backyard, and by extension, altering the face of the community in the Wallowa Valley without a say so.