Letters for January 30, 2014

Kill your lawns!

Re “Water ways” (SN&R Editorial, January 23):

First imperative step: Lose the lawns. The amount of acreage in lawns in the Central Valley and on the edge of a desert in Southern California is insane. Anyone making water decisions should have to keep one average lawn green through one summer watering it by hand instead of out-of-sight, out-of-mind automatic sprinkler systems. They would soon realize that it takes enough water per day to meet the needs of an average family for a week. Now, multiply that by all the lawns around all the homes and business parks, and the waste is astronomical.

George Selkirk

Carmichael

Too much Facebook over city council

Re “Minute by minute by minute” by Nick Miller (SN&R News, January 23):

Nick Miller laments, “The average citizen, who may care about certain issues, probably never actually learns that they’re being debated, because they’re not tapped into the public process.” When regular folks don’t have time to “tap in,” but seem to have plenty of time for Facebook, People magazine, reality TV, etc., the extremists from both sides are able to easily take center stage at these meetings. As for “government’s antiquated, technology-unfriendly approach to civic interaction”: Gee, you can show up in person, watch live on basic cable or the Internet, and also have the luxury of emailing or phoning or old-fashioned letter writing to let your representatives know what issues you care about.

When you don’t participate in democracy, you get the government you deserve.

Tonja Edelman

via email

Water business

Re “Water ways” (SN&R Editorial, January 23):

Residents of the city are asked to restrict their water use. That’s terrific; we obviously have a very fragile water supply.

But what about businesses, many of which have large and lush, well-irrigated spreads? And if Nestlé, which our then-new mayor invited to partake of our water to bottle and sell, has set up shop, will they cut the amount they drain of our most precious natural resource? I wonder if K.J. played hardball with them, making them agree to cut usage in the event of a drought?

And the arena project. How much additional water will be required to support it—assuming the accuracy of the arena proponents’ predictions of wondrous new development which will accompany the arena? If the result of such an analysis is as I suspect it will be, the project should be aborted before more money is wasted on it.

Miles D. Wichelns

Sacramento

Smoke-free, inside and out

Re “Ban smoking?” (SN&R Editorial January 16):

I’m very disappointed to see SN&R’s regressive stance against smoke-free outdoor dining in Sacramento. We heard all the same now-discredited Chicken Little hysteria from the restaurant industry 16 years ago, such as prohibiting smoking inside restaurants will drive away patrons and cause business to suffer. But what has happened since the state Legislature prohibited smoking inside bars and restaurants back in 1998? Studies showed clear evidence that smoke-free laws did not hurt restaurants and bar patronage, employment, sales or profits. In fact, they often improved business. What’s more, polls consistently indicate that diners overwhelmingly prefer their restaurants and bars smoke-free. The pioneering California law swept the nation and the world. Even pubs in Ireland are smoke-free now. But smoking remains the leading preventable cause of death in California, and, according to the U.S. surgeon general, there is no safe level of exposure to secondhand smoke. Unfortunately, your lungs can’t tell whether you are dining inside or outside when they take in secondhand smoke. It is time to finish the job started 16 years ago and make dining smoke-free inside and out.

Jim Knox

vice president, government relations, American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network