The mercury scandal

Remember the Bush team's proposal to allow more arsenic in our drinking water? Now the Bush administration has proposed to stop regulating mercury as a dangerous poison, and instead to allow power plants to emit mercury pollution 10 years longer than the Environmental Protection Agency concluded was necessary.

California already has 13 mercury advisories, covering 64,000 lake acres and 40 river miles. How will the $2 billion spent on recreational fishing in California each year be affected by mercury poisoning resulting from the Bush team's laissez-faire approach to poison?

The EPA was initially planning to require power plants to reduce mercury emissions by 90 percent by 2008. In December the EPA announced a mercury plan that will expose our children to far more mercury, for far longer, than what the agency has said is achievable and cost-effective.

This is outrageous. The EPA must protect our children by making all power plants install controls to stop mercury pollution by 2008.

Timothy Rood,

Piedmont

The real Sierra Club

While I agree with Sanjay Ranchod's views on the inanity of the Sierra Club taking a position advocating restrictions on human migration, I find Ranchod's Opinion piece cum campaign statement to be quite unbelievable when it extols nonexistent virtues of the club and the usual unsubstantiated charges against our current Caesar [Opinion, 3/31/04].

Ranchod states, "These are the Sierra Club's strength – its welcoming grassroots democracy and its history of organizing and inspiring volunteers to effect political change."

Actually, the club has a very recent history of thwarting grassroots democracy within the organization. The club management famously undermined a membership vote on ending commercial logging on public lands in the mid '90s.

Ranchod goes on, "divisive positions would alienate many of our allies and hamper our ability to build broad coalitions in support of conservation goals."

Again, if the "divisive position" happens to be the leadership undercutting true grassroots activists, it doesn't matter – witness the club's embrace of Clinton's 1994 Northwest Forest Plan-the Ancient Forest liquidation plan or the club's 2002 deal with Sen. Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) on logging roadless areas in Paha Sapa (the Black Hills). Club CEO Carl Pope said, "This is how these matters should be addressed." It's no surprise that club darlings Democratic senators Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Dianne Feinstein (D-Ca.) used the Daschle model when they sponsored and passed last year's Healthy Forest Restoration Act.

Bush as the "most anti-environmental president in history?"

Prove it. Bad as Bush's rhetoric is and his desires may be, more ancient forests fell under Clinton than under both Bushes. More acres of public land were opened to oil exploration under Clinton, without any opposition from the club. Far more on-the-ground degradation took place under Reagan and Carter.

Michael Donnelly,

Salem, Ore.

MHDC and democracy

While there are many loudmouths in the Mission Housing Development Corp. wars, fired MHDC director Carlos Romero was not one of them [Follow That Story, "Mission in Limbo," 3/31/04]. To the contrary, Carlos was a rare voice of reason amidst turbulent controversy. His organization, however, hosted both folks who contributed to innovating creative housing solutions as well as those hotheads who used their power to exclude.

In the same way that the nondemocratic structure of the MHDC allowed some of its employees to marginalize Mission residents from the planning process, now it is the employees who are being marginalized by the board of directors. This shows what happens when government outsources operations to nonprofits – privatization in other words – that don't have shareholders to check a rogue board of directors like for-profits do or elections to influence government services.

Some MHDC employees have been active with the San Francisco Community Land Trust (www.sfclt.org), which promotes novel models for democratic, permanently affordable housing rooted in the neighborhood. It is time for the Mission to demand that MHDC reinvigorate itself as a CLT so that the residents, neighbors, and wider community can inform policy of this 900-pound political gorilla.

Marc Salomon,

San Francisco

For the record

The March 17 Stage Critic's Choice contained an error: standing-room tickets at San Francisco Ballet performances entitle patrons to a standing-room place only.