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Will high-speed rail
repeat VTA’s mistakes?
California’s high-speed rail project continues to be a favorite of Rod Diridon Sr. In his opinion piece on May 20 (“Let’s find the courage to complete high-speed rail project,” Page A6) he claims the HSR’s benefits to Californians with no evidence to back his views.
According to Marc Joffe, of the Reason Foundation, climate justification has weakened considerably for HSR since voter approval in 2008. Voters approved a system through Altamont, not Pacheco, pass. The current design is at street level cutting Gilroy, San Martin, Morgan Hill and San Jose in half. The plan would create horrible traffic backups (pollution) and could impede emergency vehicles.
Improving commuter transit with the electrification of Caltrain would be a far greater use of transportation funds.
Let’s not forget Diridon’s other pet project, VTA light rail, which seems only valuable for festivals and football games. There are lots of empty, expensive trains blocking traffic. Let’s not make the same mistake twice.
Joanne Beebe
San Martin
SJSU community sounds
off on president’s search
Members of the San Jose State faculty, staff, students and surrounding communities participated in an open forum with the California State University Trustees Committee for the selection of its president in person last week. The purpose of the open forum was for the committee to know the views of representatives as to what type of leader they are looking for.
Expressing my thoughts as a representative of the Sikh American Community of San Jose, I urged the committee to focus on a prospective leader who can provide academic and administrative governance with community outreach.
I also underlined the extraordinary role of SJSU Charles W. Davidson College of Engineering as a hub of innovation in the Silicon Valley thus attracting the largest number of international students.
We earnestly look forward to the final outcome of the presidential search committee.
Baltej Mann
Professor, San Jose State Universtiy
San Jose
State must expand
use of recycled water
Re. “Newsom urges approval of desalination project,” Page A1, April 30:
On May 12, the Coastal Commission’s vote on the proposed Poseidon Huntington Beach desalination plant was a unanimous and resounding no.
Desalination is not the best solution for California’s water problems, especially privately-owned desalination.
We’ve been fighting California American’s investor-owned desalination here on the Monterey Peninsula for years.
But now recycled water is recharging our groundwater and providing one-third of our potable water through Pure Water Monterey.
What California really needs is a massive state program to get potable recycled water projects up and running. Orange County has the largest recycled water project in the state. That project has been replenishing its groundwater for decades, and that’s one of the reasons it didn’t need Poseidon’s desalination plant.
Californians count on the Coastal Commission to make decisions based on science and the facts and to ignore political pressure. This was quite a victory over corporate greed and political coercion.
Melodie Chrislock
Carmel
More honest assessment
could boost cleaner air
Political will to fix the dirty air problem is lacking. Yet our own EPA publishes misleading descriptions of numerical values of the Air Quality Index (AQI) that are parroted every day by weather and news organizations, namely: “good”; “moderate”; “unhealthy for sensitive groups”; “unhealthy”; and “hazardous.”
Calculation of the AQI is complicated. Buried in the details is that, in the “good” category, the EPA allows 20% more 2.5um particulates than the WHO’s uppermost limit for healthy air. These particulates readily penetrate the lungs and pass through the brain-blood barrier with serious health consequences for everyone without exception. Researchers in the United States and around the world support the veracity of the WHO limit.
An independent press should refuse to trumpet the false EPA descriptions of AQI numbers, and instead publish “cigarettes/day” equivalencies. Daily equivalency reports might cause political will to skyrocket and facilitate air pollution cleanup.
Kathleen Early
Palo Alto
Source: www.mercurynews.com