Letters To The Editor

Two million visitors a year drive on Oceano Beach for a day trip or on their way to Sand City, 1,000 unmarked campsites for $10 a night, and the Sand Highway, the off-roading playground on the dunes. Driving back, they carry on their tires tons of sand. Most of it is deposited on Pier Avenue […]

During the recent government shutdown, the shortest on record, our national parks have become pigsties. Without government employees picking up after visitors’ refuse, the parks look like downtown LA or San Francisco. Solution: Hand out trash bags so people can cart out what they bring in. In fact, weigh each visitor and their tote bags […]

Clean water for drinking and ag use is surely a good thing. Three oil companies want to vastly increase drilling between Santa Maria and Los Alamos. If they have their way, hundreds of new wells would be drilled right through the groundwater basin that provides water for tens of thousands of people. If our water […]

At the start of our Christmas season, Exxon Petroleum (aka Aera Energy), dropped a lump of coal into Santa Barbara County’s stocking. They submitted a draft environmental impact report to the County Planning Commission to dramatically increase oil and gas extraction below the Santa Maria groundwater table. With hundreds of new wells, Exxon plans to […]

Joe Armendariz writes that Santa Barbara County could generate more in annual property taxes from increased oil and gas production (“Man-made disaster and unforced error,” Dec. 13), which is needed because our county is in a “chronic financial crisis.”  I respectfully disagree on several points. The number of tax dollars from increased oil production cited […]

Three oil companies (Aera, ERG, and PetroRock) have proposed to drill 768 new oil wells in Cat Canyon, through the Santa Maria groundwater basin, which provides drinking water to 200,000 people in 12 cities. The chemical-filled wastewater will be injected back into the ground, compromising the safety and health of the aquifer. Meanwhile, Shell/ExxonMobil (who […]

“Man-made disaster” more appropriately refers to the mess we have made of the air, water, and oceans of planet Earth (“Man-made disaster and unforced error,” Dec. 13). Global climate change is unambiguously the result of human activities, primarily the use of fossil fuels. “Disaster” does not refer to “losing” the purported value of the oil […]

Water is necessary for life. We all drink it. In addition, it makes this agricultural economy strong, providing more than 25,000 jobs in Santa Barbara County. And the quality of our water is as important as its quantity.  Water that is contaminated with toxic and cancer-causing chemicals causes illness and makes land unproductive. Our health […]

Due to the current market price of crude oil, Santa Barbara County has the capability and capacity to generate as much as $30 million per year in annual property taxes to Santa Barbara County, roughly 50 percent of which would go to our county’s K-14 public schools, roughly 25 percent of which would go to […]

I was reading through Erik Huber’s letter “The folly of nationalism” in the Nov. 15 edition of the Sun. I was wondering about the purpose of his historical review of the so-called issues of “nationalism” and wondering why he wrote the letter with all kinds of nasty comments on the past world history for 100 […]

What’s the smart money doing with nuclear power while California is abandoning it? China is looking more and more like the new world leader, taking over from America. Smart management has seen the Chinese economy growing nonstop, decade after decade. What about their take on carbon-free nuclear power to run their mighty economy? According to […]

The “settled science” of the ’70s predicted a coming Ice Age. Of course the lazy press went with the sensational without examination. Time magazine used the same cover with a penguin perched on an iceberg to sell the coming ice age in 1977 and then global warming in 2007. I guess they got a three-for […]