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Development dampens
the urge to conserve
I don’t get it. We are being asked to cut back on water usage and encouraged not to use too much electricity. However, a quick drive through Walnut Creek reveals there are many new buildings being erected. This is fine as long as we have ample utilities to support these new additions.
So, I have a recommendation. I will seriously cut back water usage, for example, if all of these new buildings discontinue their building until such time as we have enough water to support what each unit will need. If not, I will use as much water as I want because it doesn’t seem to matter when it comes to this new construction. Also, each unit could conceivably have two tenants and potentially two cars. Think of the impact this will have on traffic.
Shirley Krohn
Walnut Creek
Bus lane cheats threaten
neighborhood’s rebirth
The new Tempo bus system on International Boulevard now gives us fast, dedicated bus lanes between Oakland and San Leandro through East Oakland. International Boulevard is changing from a dreary, beat-up highway through neglected neighborhoods to a new Main Street for East Oakland. Our neighborhoods are healing, growing and thriving.
But selfish drivers are using the new bus lanes as personal speedways, endangering drivers and pedestrians who respect the law. Last week, the East Bay Times reported that a bus lane violator struck a family in a van at 90 mph, ejecting and critically injuring two children. Oakland police are never visible responding to these reckless traffic violations.
If reckless drivers don’t understand that they will be punished, they will continue to treat the new bus lanes as race-car lanes. Please, Oakland, let’s catch and ticket these bus lane violators and show these outlaws we are not OK with them hurting vans full of kids.
Guy Baldwin
Oakland
Drive for growth is
strangling Bay Area
I agree with Mike Scott of Walnut Creek. regarding his letter saying that “Population, not housing, is what ails Bay Area.” (Page A6, Sept. 14, referring to the Sept. 8 article “Reject Bay Area cities’ appeals to shirk housing obligations“)
There is, I believe, a “just right” or optimum population density. And that we should agree to figure out what this optimum number is, rather than constantly pressing for more, more, more.
The market forces that advocate for more over better, are dangerously short-sighted. Overgrowth of cells in a body is called cancer, after all. There is such a thing as too many people. Instead, we should look to improve, beautify, and strengthen, our cities.
John Hollis
Berkeley
Gutt COVID info bill
exacerbates mistrust
Your editorial, “State lawmakers cave on COVID transparency,” (Page A6, Sept. 14) points out why ordinary citizens have no trust in today’s legislators. The level of misinformation in the public COVID arena rivals that in today’s financial system. And clearly most of us who try to stay on top of integrity, truth, and reality have learned that repetition does not make for truth.
Israel is having major increases in COVID “cases.” At least 69% of Israeli citizens have already received at least one dose of vaccine as of Sept. 15. Yet the vast majority of these new cases are from people who have already been vaccinated. This suggests the vaccine has serious issues with respect to effectiveness while the jury is still out as to its long-term safety.
Confusion reigns, and so-called truths are questionable. It’s outrageous that state lawmakers are fighting against honest transparency that presumably would attempt to clarify the massive confusion.
Chris Kniel
Orinda
The costs of pollution
are higher than you think
It’s time for us to spread the word: Pollution is a gigantic, unacknowledged, unvoted-on, financial and emotional indirect tax on us, and a national security threat.
Ordinary taxes support public infrastructure, health and safety, etc., while pollution costs the opposite. Whether from fossil fuels, fine particulates, chemicals or plastics, pollution damages infrastructure and lives. Ever costlier, fossil-fuel and global warming-amplified droughts, wildfires, hurricanes and floods tax us while fine particulate pollution taxes families with higher medical bills, work and school absences, preterm births, premature deaths and asthma.
If pollution’s costs continue to be ignored in our pricing of goods and services, our children will be paying for the costs of pollution with higher taxes and deteriorating health as adults. As national security includes environmental security, pollution is also a national security threat. Accordingly, any political group that opposes reducing pollution in effect is undermining national security and supporting the killer “pollution tax.”
Tom Kahan
Oakland
