Water district stymies one man’s effort to save water

To the editor:

I decided to try to get rid of a 250-square-foot area of grass in my back yard that I have seeded and covered with sod twice at a cost of about $1,200. I had the sod done by a landscaper both times. I contacted the water company about the $2 per-square-foot rebate they were offering for the removal of grass and installing water-efficient landscaping.

About three years ago, I had my front yard completely redone by a friend of mine who is the head landscaper for one of the large properties on the Strip. I paid the entire bill out of my pocket without any help from the rebate program. The entire system was installed exactly as the literature from the water district suggests -- drippers and emitters at all the individual plants.

When the representative from the water district arrived at my home, she told my wife that the person who installed the front landscaping obviously didn't know what he was doing. She looked at the back yard, where the grass doesn't want to grow, and decided that we did not qualify for the rebate because some of the desert landscaping -- rocks around our above-ground pool and red fines lining the grassy area -- did not have the proper weed block under these materials. Even though we have three palm trees, one ash tree and several oleander bushes, she decided that we needed another bush of some variety in the middle of the area.

I had planned to remove the grass that I am dumping water on in an unsuccessful attempt to get it to grow with artificial turf, which would require no water at all. I am also a senior citizen and would be glad to pay less on my water bill and help conserve water at the same time. But I guess the water district would rather have me continue to dump water on 250 square feet of dirt rather than grant me the $2 per-square-foot rebate to help conserve water.

Bill Schaefer

HENDERSON

Green Gore

To the editor:

Considering his recent arrest for marijuana possession, it appears that Al Gore III has taken his father's advice to "go green" to heart.

Jeff Silverman

LAS VEGAS

ONE voice

To the editor:

There are many different forms of public service and volunteer work. They are as varied as the people who have felt the obligation to serve others in some capacity.

For me, public service means volunteering to carry the message of ONE Vote '08 to all of the presidential candidates (Erin Neff column, Tuesday Review-Journal). A trip to South Africa and further education on these issues has made not acting an impossibility for me.

ONE Vote '08 is an unprecedented, high-energy, nonpartisan campaign to save lives and secure America's future by energizing presidential candidates and ONE's 2.4 million members to make the fight against global extreme poverty a key foreign policy issue in the 2008 presidential election.

Already volunteers of ONE in Nevada have personally spoken with several of the presidential candidates.

We ask each and every candidate not to forget the 30,000 children under age 5 around the world who die each day from treatable, preventable diseases. As a member of the ONE Campaign, I continue to urge each candidate to fight AIDS and extreme poverty if they become president.

Please join me and more than 2.4 million Americans by adding your support for the ONE Campaign, at www.ONE.org. You can use your voice here in Nevada to help save lives around the world.

Adam Bellamy

LAS VEGAS

Liberal agenda

To the editor:

The Liberalista Democrat Bush Whackers never give up. In his Thursday letter to the editor, Ty Weller wrote that President Bush shredded the Constitution by commuting Lewis "Scooter" Libby's 30-month prison sentence. President Bush acted within his authority, just as President Clinton did when he pardoned 140 people in the final hours of his second term, many of whom had made large donations to President Clinton. Where was Mr. Weller then?

The whole Libby fiasco involved Bush Whackers spending a lot of time and money prosecuting Libby for a crime he did not commit. Basically, he testified that he did not remember some things and incorrectly remembered other things -- he didn't lie. The Libby case should have been dropped when the prosecutor found out that Libby was not the one who leaked the CIA agent's name.

Don Savage

LAS VEGAS

Union takeover

To the editor:

The Teamster challenge to the Clark County Education Association apparently has been couched in terms that once would have been used only on bosses. Phrases like the ones reported in the newspapers -- the "Teamsters have never walked away from a fight," and, "We're about to get into a big one" -- just don't sound like the spirit that was driving unionization during the 19th and 20th centuries.

It seems to me that if the Teamsters were truly interested in the workers -- teachers in this case -- they would be working with the association, helping to improve skills rather than trying to destroy the union. It's one thing to come into a shop that does not have an organization and put something new together. It's an entirely different matter trying to do away with an organization because you don't happen to like the way they are doing things.

Unions were created to help workers pull together; they weren't formed to pull one another apart. Solidarity is missing here.

I wouldn't want to think this is all just a political ploy, using the teachers as a football. I wouldn't want to think this was just an attempt to gain control of the dues contributed by some 18,000 current members of the Clark County Education Association. There has to be some underlying feature that makes the Teamsters want to destroy an existing union and take its place, but I can't figure out what it might be.

Wonder what Joe Hill and other union martyrs would have said about all this?

Marshal Taylor

LAS VEGAS

Test site

To the editor:

When is the money, already allocated for former Nevada Test Site workers, going to be given to them? The test site's newsletter shows $33 million being spent on the site's cleanup and $18 million for communications. What about those who gave their all?

They are not asking for something that isn't there. The money is there. Give it to them.

When is someone going to care about the U.S. citizens? Why is always about other nations and the illegals?

Melissa Towbin

LAS VEGAS

Not news?

To the editor:

There is nothing new or novel about news as entertainment -- it has been presented this way for decades. But at what point did the introduction of a product, like the iPod or the iPhone, become classified as news by the media?

Has Thomas Edison been reincarnated at Apple? Will these incredible devices now supplant Mr. Edison's light bulb, his phonograph or Alexander Graham Bell's telephone?

What would happen to our world as we know it if the i-whatevers were never manufactured at all? Or even worse, what if the news media never told me about their existence? I shudder to think about all the possibilities.

Richard Rychtarik

LAS VEGAS