Letters to the editor, July 5

City tosses trash bags — and workers

None | The New Mexican

7/5/2008 - 7/5/08

I read in The New Mexican that the city will stop giving out trash bags. Giving. Right. Haven't we been paying for them with our garbage assessments? But no, because the bags will cost more this year, the city is investing in an entirely new system.

Surely less expensive are the 95-gallon plastic wheeled containers, one per household, and the new vehicles with forklifts that lift, empty and replace those containers. Of course, the crews are reduced from three persons to one; guess that's where the cost savings has been designed and directed. This program admits to and reflects our garbage culture.

What a streetscape.

Polly Rose
Santa Fe

Delays hurting Navajo

It's hard to read, "Richardson urges EPA to save our state's air," your June 13 editorial about the Desert Rock power plant, given it gets nearly every fact wrong about Gov. Bill Richardson and Attorney General Gary King's recent effort to further slow the snail's pace of the project's air permit.

It's difficult to imagine that three years overdue would be acceptable for any budget he requested of the state Legislature or for money that state tax collectors expect from New Mexico's residents each April. Simply, EPA is more than three years late in granting the strictest permit ever. If this was such a concern that it be delayed even longer, perhaps the governor or his staff should have attended any of the environmental-impact public hearings, including one in Santa Fe, held less than two years ago.

The real loser if this process is delayed is the Navajo Nation. The revenue, jobs, economic development and self-determination are the opportunities its members will be denied.

Frank Maisano
Desert Rock Energy Company

Laborers' loss

Regarding "Los Amigos del Parque banned from state lot" (June 27):

It seems that the erstwhile New Mexico Department of Labor doesn't care to support laborers.

Pat D'Andrea
Santa Fe

Let's bee friends

The Marc Simmons "Trail Dust" column of June 28 about the chandler cottage industry of New Mexico's 18th and 19th centuries highlighted the interesting point of a historically successful bee business in Cuba.

I wonder how the bee business is now in Cuba, and if there is a potential for Cuba to bail U.S. beekeepers and crop growers out of the drastic reduction in pollination bees now present in the United States?

I was fascinated by the Associated Press article in the June 27 New Mexican, and to learn of the 15 billion dollars in annual U.S. crops that rely on bee pollination, and that with the present bee shortage that food prices will be rising.

If the Cuban bee business is in fact booming still, here lies a viable negotiation mission for our governor.

Thomas McIntosh
Santa Fe