Environmental laws only work if enforced

Re “How Environmentalists Lost the Battle Over TCE,” March 29

A “safe America.” This is the Bush administration’s mantra. How? With its policies creating catastrophic debt? With its abuse of civil liberties? And now with the public’s health?

The men and women of this administration and those who support them should be ashamed of themselves. They have no interest in serving the public -- just their own myopic, misguided, self-serving interests.

But don’t worry; Halliburton will surely be given a massive, no-bid contract to clean it all up.

JULIE KENNEDY

Los Olivos, Calif.

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The cavalier and ongoing compromising of our environment promises dreary and dire results if left to the devices of our corporate and political greed mongers.

My mother recently succumbed to a rare cancer, mesothelioma, which is largely attributed to asbestos exposure on military bases during World War II. She served, honorably, in the Coast Guard at Pearl Harbor during that time. The trichloroethylene stonewalling by our military-industrial and political leaders is the latest, sad example that we just don’t get it, or just don’t care.

BILL KAHL

Santa Clarita

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Angelenos should care deeply about Pentagon interference in cleaning up the toxin TCE because the L.A. area is rife with the pollutant. There is TCE in the soil at the Rocketdyne lab site above Chatsworth. In Burbank, Lockheed’s extensive use of TCE has turned the area into an EPA Superfund zone. An old aircraft plant in Fullerton has saturated the area’s groundwater. And there are dozens more TCE-riddled sites here in the Southland. The military is sworn to protect U.S. citizens. Why then does it, and its wealthy contractors, continually try to circumvent environmental laws designed to protect us?

JONATHAN PARFREY

Executive Director

Physicians for Social Responsibility

Los Angeles