Support Measure A and save Wright library

The demise of H.P. Wright Library has not happened — yet. Its doors are still open, at least through the end of November.

The Save Wright Library Campaign has raised more than $92,000 from Ventura citizens with the hopes that H.P. Wright Library would not close before a municipal funding source could be identified, a way to keep Wright Library open at least at current service hours and levels.

That more permanent funding source is Measure A, the half-cent sales tax increase proposal on the Nov. 3 ballot. Our City Council has agreed to a spending plan that will see 6 percent of the funds raised by this tax increase go to keep Wright Library open and, perhaps, enable all Ventura’s libraries to increase hours of operation, services and enhance their book collections.

If Measure A does not pass on Nov. 3, H.P. Wright will close Nov. 30, 2009. Once Wright closes, it will never reopen.

Wright Library means so much to so many people, i.e., the children who attend the five neighborhood elementary schools and walk or ride their bikes to Wright, the seniors who walk across the street from their homes, the families who bring their children to story hour and special enrichment programs, the junior and senior high school students who do research or meet with tutors, adults who use the computers to look for work.

We can’t let bad economic times force us to lose institutions that are essential to our quality of life. I urge you to consider what the loss of Wright Library will mean to you, your family and neighbors, and I urge you to vote YES on Measure A on Nov. 3.

Berta Defren Steele, Chair, Save Wright Library Campaign
Vice President, San Buenaventura Friends of the Library
Ventura

Say no to the use of methyl iodide
If you could prevent cancer, brain damage, abortions, premature death and groundwater contamination by making a phone call or signing a letter, would you do it?

Japanese chemical corporation Arysta is lobbying hard to register its highly toxic, cancer-causing pesticide methyl iodide as an agricultural fumigant for use in California. It’s intended to replace methyl bromide, which is being phased out under the Montreal Protocol because it depletes the ozone layer.  

Applied as gases, fumigant pesticides frequently drift away from their targets, poison communities and cause long-term health problems. Methyl bromide has been a problem here when it drifted off of strawberry fields into homes and schools, sickening hundreds of people. Methyl iodide would be used as a fumigant. Methyl iodide is a greater threat to human health and the environment than methyl bromide.

Methyl iodide is so toxic that it is used to induce cancer in laboratory animals. Scientists working with it take extreme precautions when handling it in tiny amounts. It could be used at the rate of 175 pounds per acre on farm fields with no precautions.

Even buffer zones of 400 feet for a 40-acre fumigation would still result in a dose of methyl iodide to neighbors that is 375 times higher than the California Department of Pesticide Regulation (DPR) believes is acceptable. For workers, exposures are estimated at 3,000 times higher than acceptable dose. Fumigant gases do not recognize buffer zone boundaries.

• Methyl iodide is listed as a carcinogen under California’s Proposition 65 statute.

• Methyl iodide affects the nervous system, the lungs, liver and kidneys, and could be especially damaging to the developing brains of children, fetuses, pregnant women and the elderly. The EPA’s evaluation indicates that methyl iodide causes thyroid toxicity, permanent neurological damage, and fetal deaths in experimental animals.

• Methyl iodide is also a known groundwater contaminant.

Because it is so dangerous, more than 50 scientists — five of them Nobel laureates — sent a letter to the U.S. EPA expressing astonishment that the U.S. is “working to legalize broadcast releases of one of the more toxic chemicals used in manufacturing into the environment.” New York has refused to green-light the extraordinarily toxic chemical.

Look around at where strawberry fields are located, and notice wind currents and fog that can carry pesticides long distances. From the hillsides of Ventura to the breezes in Simi, this affects our whole Ventura County community! Will our exposures be 375 times higher or 3,000 times higher than acceptable doses? It doesn’t matter. This chemical can harm health in much smaller doses.

As scientists and policymakers weigh the opinion of pesticide manufacturer Arysta versus the health of California’s people and environment, make sure that your voice is heard. Say “NO” to registering this pesticide in California! Not registering this toxic chemical will prevent its use in California. Call the governor’s office and go to www.panna.org to Take Action to Keep Methyl Iodide out of California Strawberry Fields!

Strawberry growers should be asking scientists for less-toxic solutions instead of putting Californians’ health and groundwater at risk.

Deborah Bechtel, Camarillo

Oil extraction severance tax justified
Ventura County Taxpayers Association President Don Facciano objects to California imposing an oil severance tax (Letters, 9/24). No surprise there. I can’t recall a single time when the taxpayers association has spoken out in favor of a tax levy. Maybe they should just be upfront about it and rename the group the Ventura County Tax Avoidance Association.

Nevertheless, in the middle of the association’s knee-jerk letter of opposition, Facciano does pose a substantive question: “From a taxpayer’s perspective, the question is: Why pose a higher punitive tax rate on any specific industry, which in this case happens to be petroleum?”

Ignoring the word “punitive,” which simply assumes the conclusion he wants us to reach, the question is a good one. Why pose a higher tax rate via a severance allowance on a specific industry, in this case petroleum?

The answer lies right there in the wording of the tax. It’s called a severance levy. It’s paid by industries that dig up or pump out a nonrenewable resource that lies beneath the surface of a state.

It has nothing to do with oil companies’ profit levels. It has everything to do with the fact that resource extractions are a one-time deal. Once a particular resource is depleted, it’s gone forever. Companies are asked to pay for the privilege of being a part of that one-time depletion.

Severance taxes are not imposed on the timber industry because timber is a renewable resource. Nor are they imposed on field crops or fish harvests, both renewable resources also. But coal mining companies pay them, gold mining companies pay them, copper mining companies pay them. And in every state other than California, oil companies pay them.

I suggest that voters ignore the association’s warning that imposing an oil severance tax will lead to decreased extraction of California oil. As I’ve pointed out, every other state imposes an oil severance tax. There’s no state to move to where oil companies can avoid paying one.

Rick Scott, Ventura

Intoxication is not temporary insanity
Re; ‘Treatment not prisons for the mentally ill’ (by Gary Ryan, Letters, 8/27)

Mr. Ryan cites the positive influence that the old Camarillo State Hospital (where he worked until the facility was closed and ultimately converted into the CSUCI campus) had on mentally ill drug and alcohol abusers and others, as a reasonable alternative to incarcerating the mentally ill in our prison system.

While I agree wholeheartedly that chronically mentally ill individuals warrant special consideration by the courts, I take exception to Mr. Ryan’s assessment that mental health resources be spent on those who commit crimes while under the influence of drugs and/or alcohol, or on what Ryan calls individuals with “drug-induced psychosis.”

I call it criminals getting high on drugs and/or alcohol before committing their crimes so that, if caught, they can claim the “temporary insanity” defense (and call in witnesses like Ryan).

By Mr. Ryan’s token, anyone who does anything wrong while drunk or high is a “dangerous psychotic” who needs his help.

Premature labeling and dangerous drugging by the psychiatric profession (including of our children in many cases) is a serious problem in our country, indeed throughout the world.

There are many crimes committed while under the influence of drugs or alcohol, by criminals who are otherwise perfectly sane and who deserve no special treatment by the courts. Especially at the expense of the truly mentally ill person who gets arrested on occasion, or at the expense of mental health budgets throughout the nation.

In my experience as a baby boomer, with many years observing the mentally ill in Ventura in particular, I find the mentally ill community to be quite docile and harmless for the most part. Occasionally, you find one or two talking to themselves or even yelling at no one in particular on any given day, but that’s about it.

If we are to be concerned about anyone besides criminals who abuse drugs and alcohol and who try to use their substance abuse as an excuse for their criminal behavior or to reduce their sentences, it would be the psychiatrists who enable them to do so.

Justin Markman, Ventura