Letters for March 23, 2017

In the drink

Assembly Bill 193 would force Truckee Meadows Water Authority to fluoridate drinking water. Both your columnists Senator Leslie and Brendan Trainor should inveigh against this proposed legislation.

Environmentally, it is disastrous to add a toxic metal to water. It ultimately returns to the Truckee River and thence to Pyramid Lake in a closed watershed. It was the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service together with the Paiute Indian tribe who nixed fluoridation the last time it was proposed. Fluoride does not evaporate, so the concentrations in the lake—a closed sink into which the river drains—would build up to levels lethal to fish.

Mass medication with a proven neurotoxin, known corrosive, and suspected carcinogen violates core libertarian principles. Who is the Legislature to make the trade-off sacrificing the health of individual water consumers for questionable improvements to the community’s dental hygiene? Fluoridation defies logic. How can a substance toxic enough to kill oral bacteria via momentary exposure not ultimately be harmful to our minds and bodies as it is absorbed into vital organs? Reno-Sparks voters were wise to have turned down fluoridation in the 2002 referendum, as was the Authority in its unanimous vote against the current bill.

Bill Stremmel

Pahrump

One man’s perjury

At his Jan. 10 Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing, Jeff Sessions stated: “I did not have communications with the Russians.” In January, in response to a written inquiry from Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) in which he was asked, “Have you been in contact with anyone connected to any part of the Russian government about the 2016 election, either before or after election day?” Sessions responded with one word: “No.”

Senator Sessions lied under oath to Congress and then again in writing to a senatorial colleague. As our representatives from Nevada, Sen. Dean Heller and Rep. Mark Amodei should call for Attorney General Sessions to resign. As the top law enforcement officer of the United States, his perjury makes him unfit to serve as attorney general of the United States.

William Fraser

Reno

You say Republican, I say republic

Re “Separate the powers” (Let Freedom Ring, March 9):

Contributor Brendan Trainor helped perpetuate a common mistake in his “Separate the powers” opinion piece in the March 9-15, 2017 issue of RN&R. A republic (lower case “r”) form of government is one in which power is vested in the people who exercise it via elected representatives. A Republican (upper case “R”) form of government is the kind Donald Trump and some of his cronies would like to force on the citizens of the U.S.

Clarence Basso

Reno

Fifteen questions

All the talk about health care reform has me thinking: why do humans require so much health care? Did evolution screw up, or what?

Do giraffes get stiff necks? Any owls with glaucoma? Kangaroos that fall and break their hip? Do three toed sloths get morning sickness? What about childhood cancers in seal pups or zebra foals? Can you imagine squirrels with Lou Gehrig’s disease? Lizards with diabetes? Hawks in need of corrective lenses? Breast cancer in hippos, asthma in cheetahs, snakes with back pain? Do dolphins need health insurance?

I realize wild animals get diseases. (Domestic animals don’t count here; they’ve been weakened by domestication.) But we get many more maladies than they do. Is there a cold and flu season amongst rabbits? Deer with allergies? Bears with hemorrhoids?

April Pedersen

Reno

Trashy tale

Re: Waste Management

We were delivered two humongous green bins the other day, designed to our street address. The one with blue lid is for recycled material, well described at the top of the lid. We also received a bunch of yellow labels to be attached to garbage bags, and a folder with so many sweetly spiced instructions that I just put it in the drawer.

WM is a business. I am a garbage deliverer. Who do you think decides the price of my garbage? Wait a minute! Who is the customer? Some fill their trailer-size green bins every week, while some can’t get them full in a month. Let’s not get personal, let’s just get FAIR. Same price? Fair? I suggest that WM zap every time they empty a bin, whichever color the lid and also zap every time they haul out a yellow labeled bag. Then bill us accordingly. Later on, it would be a clever thought to zap green lids twice and blue lid only once. Bravo for recycling! WM needs to make money, I understand this much. But it feels damned unfair that they make an equal amount of money on smaller consumers as on the big trashers.

Mette Elfving

Reno