Letters to the editor: June 8, 2024

Student letters

Thanks to The Monterey Herald for publishing student letters and to Shelley Grahl for her inspiring teaching. In the letter about human trafficking, Chase Ford’s last sentence about not leaving “a broken and chained world for the future” hit a nerve.  Human trafficking as well as pollution, genocide, etc. have already broken us (sorry Chase), but it is comforting to know that a smart, new generation is willing to face these big issues head on. Thank you.

— Donna Foote, Pacific Grove

No to the MST/TAMC Surfway

The proposed Surfway bus lane is an ill-conceived pork barrel project, with a budget of $55-95 million, most of which is federal money.  Rider fares only account for 10% of MST’s budget.  Take a look inside all those large MST buses wandering the streets.  Many are empty, and many more have just one or two riders.

How about a proof of concept trial first?  The highway between Marina and Seaside is six lanes.  For a period of two years, designate the outside lanes as HOV from 7-9 a.m. southbound and 4-6 p.m. northbound, as those are the only times we really have a “rush hour.”  If MST/TAMC can prove buses under this trial period are at least 50% full, only then consider more expensive options.

Preserve the old railroad right-of-way for the future.  Perhaps as a feeder link to a high-speed rail in the Central Valley a few decades from now.

— David Blaskovich, Pacific Grove

A helping hand

A Memorial Day had passed, and mine had also, without a drum roll. Along with 30 other religious communities my Unitarian Church opens its doors once a month to homeless women and also men, but not co-ed. The program is known as I-Help and congregation volunteers donate food, overnight sanctuary and generally four hours of warm interaction.

At my recent evening, nine diverse women of all ages and experiences gathered for dinner and hopefully conversation. They are an affable group, but do not physically reach out to us. One mid-60s, toothless, smiling woman I recognized from last month, takes me in a strong-wordless embrace, then heads toward the kitchen.

At the buffet, we five volunteers have provided an attractive and healthy menu. The women move around the buffet choices filling china plates, picking up silverware and cloth napkins, our warm gesture to the worthiness of those used to paper and plastic.

Conversation, mainly by the volunteers, is rare and mostly about food choices. Small take-out cartons are available for those who want a later snack. After dinner, the women quickly begin to store the remaining food, clean up the tableware and return clean items to their well-labeled places.

I leave as some are staking out their sleeping spots. The petite Asian woman I recognized from last month because of her pristine, vogue-worthy colorful jacket and unique hat, takes my hand and whispers “Thank you, be safe.”

I leave this other world knowing I have received so much more than I have given.

— Nellie Ryder, Pacific Grove

Pure Water Monterey expansion

In recent Herald articles that discuss water supply and demand issues pending before the CPUC, a glaring, but camouflaged, issue has not received appropriate attention. Cal Am’s motion to strike desal from CPUC hearing briefs exposes this truth.

Cal Am does not want its regulator, the CPUC, to realize that no matter its decision on water supply and demand forecasts, Cal Am’s desalination project cannot succeed. Why? Because Cal Am’s desal water source, the Salinas Valley Groundwater Basin, is under Sustainable
Groundwater Management Act supervision to ensure its critically over-drafted aquifers are rehabilitated from seawater intrusion by 2040. This means Cal Am, without water rights, intends, as explicitly stated in its CPUC Certified Environmental Impact Report, to take its desalination project source water from the SVGB aquifers – not the ocean. No person with a moral conscience would accept stealing Marina’s potable water.

To justify its desal project, and invalidate accurate water supply assessments, Cal Am inflated water demand estimates to mislead the CPUC. To illegitimately extract SVGB aquifer water and transport it, at great cost to ratepayers, to the Monterey Peninsula is one of the most
despicable underhanded business transactions ever perpetrated on us. Depleting Marina’s potable water supply, while not providing a single drop of water to Marina citizens is criminal.

Water is critical for survival, not a monopolistic for-profit commodity!

— Margaret-Anne Coppernoll, Marina