Mailbag

Development has drained our water

The letter by Deborah Dentler regarding water conservation (“We ought to pull together on water,” May 1) really raised my blood pressure. She has all these helpful suggestions about how the citizens of Glendale can conserve water, i.e. take shorter showers, water your lawn less, don’t let the water run when you brush your teeth. Meanwhile, any thinking person with two eyes in his or her head has only to look around them and see the result of the massive building boom that has totally changed the character of our town.

Hundreds of single-family homes have been torn down, and in their place are water-hungry condos and apartments. In the downtown area, huge office buildings and hotels have been built, all as a result of our city officials being too cozy with developers. I applaud my fellow citizens for turning out of office two members of the City Council who were the worst examples.

The unfairness of the new city conservation measures is breathtaking. In 2006, I was already taking short showers, not using a dishwasher and not over-watering my lawn. I don’t have any children. Now I have to cut back my water usage by 10%. However, prolific water wasters, who have big families, dishwashers, water-wasting sprinkler systems, and who used water on a lavish scale in 2006, need cut back only 10% from that level.

This system is both cheap and easy to enforce, and also dumb.

STEVE ASIMOW

Glendale  

Presidents keep repeating history

April 24, 2009 . . .

And history repeats itself — the most powerful man on Earth, leader of the most powerful nation on Earth, reneges on his pre-election promises to formally recognize the 1915 genocide that the Armenians suffered at the hands of the Turks — as did his predecessor George W. Bush; as did the one before that, Bill Clinton; and the one before that, George H. W. Bush; and most probably the one before that, Ronald Reagan (“Struggle for recognition ensues,” May 2).

They all promised, they all graciously accepted campaign contributions and votes, and at the last minute they could not bring themselves to formally acknowledge a historical fact accepted as such by practically every country in the world — the horror of the holocaust against the Armenians.