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Airport officials shirk
growing responsibly
Re: “Port of Oakland Commission certifies environmental report for Oakland Airport expansion” (Page B1, Nov. 24).
Your article suggests that Oakland Airport was simply replacing an outdated terminal. It didn’t mention that by increasing the number of flights, the proposed new terminal will greatly increase noise, cq comment=”and ” ]the emissions that cause climate disruption and the health impacts of air pollution, which the airport pretends don’t exist.
Almost all of the speakers making public comments at the port commission’s certification meeting pointed out the many ways that the airport is shirking responsibility. It has refused to follow the most recent noise impact regulations. It has refused to make a health impact assessment as requested by the Alameda County Public Health Department. And it has proclaimed that greenhouse gas increases from expanding the airport will be “significant, but unavoidable,” even though it could easily avoid that increase by modernizing the airport without expanding the number of flights.
Lin Griffith
Oakland
Airport expansion
discounts pollutants
Re: “Port of Oakland Commission certifies environmental report for Oakland Airport expansion” (Page B1, Nov. 24).
Thank you for your informative article on the environmental impact report for the Oakland Airport expansion. One mind-boggling part of the meeting the article missed: the staffer’s explanation of why they disregarded the Alameda County Public Health Department’s recommendation for a study on health impacts in East Oakland.
After showing a map of flight paths, she said: “the flight tracks do not … go over populations directly at a low level.” For this reason, “you don’t see … a significant impact, from a local air quality perspective, in East Oakland.”
Do they believe that pollutants from Oakland flights fall directly down from the flight path into the bay? Or that pollutants aren’t dispersed by winds?
It was unclear to me and to the physicians in the audience how the commissioners could believe such an obvious untruth. Pollutants from planes impact nearby communities, even if many flight paths go over the bay.
Heather MacLeod
Oakland
State misses its chance
to halt bird flu spread
Re: “Health officials detect bird flu in child” (Page B1, Nov. 20).
California, with 1.7 million milk cows, is the largest dairy farming state. In August, California had no influenza A (“bird flu”) H5N1-infected herds.
One would think that, forewarned by nine months of expanding virus infections among dairy herds, the California Departments of Food and Agriculture and Public Health would protect dairy farmers and all of us by assertively surveilling the situation and quarantining farms. This was not to be so. By mid-November — within 10 weeks — California had 398 infected dairy herds, 93 commercial and backyard infected poultry flocks and 27 infected dairy farm workers. Influenza A viruses mutate very rapidly and can easily adapt to humans, a risk multiplied by all these mammalian infections around us.
Influenza A caused worldwide pandemics in 1918-20, 1957-58, 1968-69, 1977-78, and 2009-10. This explosive agricultural epidemic and increasing risk was 100% preventable. The next human pandemic may already have been seeded.
Dr. Jeoffry Gordon
Santa Cruz
Gabbard poses threat
to U.S. national security
Re: “Republicans lash out at claims that Gabbard is ‘compromised’” (Page A3, Nov. 25).
While several Trump nominees for cabinet positions are unacceptable because of sexual improprieties and crimes, Tulsi Gabbard poses a far more serious threat. The polite word describing her unsuitability to be Director of National Intelligence is “compromised.” A more direct description might be “useful idiot,” “willing collaborator,” or even “spy.” She should never be near our nation’s most vital secrets. Not ever.
Journalists need to amass as much information about Gabbard’s actions in support of Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Syria’s Bashar al-Assad now, even before Senate hearings (if the Senate will even investigate), to hopefully force her withdrawal from consideration.
If I were doing sensitive, confidential work for the CIA, NSA or FBI and Gabbard was installed as DNI, I’d quit instantly before this untrustworthy American with questionable loyalties might blow my cover.
Bruce Joffe
Piedmont
Who will help mitigate
Trump’s vengeance?
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During the 2024 presidential campaign, Sen. Amy Klobuchar appeared on “The Reid Out” on MSNBC. During the show, Joy Reid played a tape of Donald Trump saying, with the most serious tone I’ve ever heard him use, “revenge takes time.” He said it with such venom and hatred in his voice they appeared to shudder. He meant what he said.
Has this so-called self-proclaimed “Christian” read Deuteronomy 32:35: “Vengeance is for Me, I will repay, says the Lord”?
As one can clearly see by his incompetent cabinet and department-head choices, he has already begun to take revenge. Is there no stopping him anymore? Will his MAGA supporters, court choices and congressional Republican supporters continue to enable him? Will he get away with all of his illegal and criminal acts?
Do the average Trump voters really know what dangers he has in store for all, including themselves?
Ramona Krausnick
Dublin
