Commentary — or the lack thereof

An Overhead Shot Would Have Helped

Re: City Lights: “City’s Shocking Crosswalk Cover-up”

Judging by the top photo, I can see why the city engineer thought the crossing was safe: good signage, clear signals, etc. What he didn’t see was someone like the guy in the red shirt, crossing against the green. Clearly a driver here would have the right-of-way and the red-shirt guy is crossing illegally. If he got hit, who’s fault would it be?

So, as with many other crossings, it is safe if you follow the rules. I certainly hope the victims in the story were crossing on a green light.

Is the second photo (with the overgrown plants) of the same intersection? The bottom photo shows a yellow pedestrian sign missing in the top photo and the top photo shows traffic signals missing in the bottom photo. Are the two guys in the bottom photo even in a crosswalk? One seems to be walking but the other appears to be just standing there, sideways. Inquiring minds want to know.

What would have helped explain stuff is an overhead shot showing all the traffic lanes and crosswalks with circles and arrows (on both sides) showing what happened.

• Oofy Prosser
• Hillcrest

No Comment

I am the vice chair of the Peninsula Community Planning Board. We are the planning board for the Point Loma area in San Diego.

In this article (“War over Roseville's 40-foot house continues”), there is a lot of false information and accusations about our chairman of the board and our board members and our planning board and association. It’s very accusative and it’s kind of disrespectful.

I wanted to see where you got your info from because we weren’t contacted at all for comment, and this article is very biased.

• Robert Goldyn
• via voicemail

The author responds:
I contacted more than one member of the planning board well ahead of publication (including chair Jon Linney) several times. He wasn’t interested in participating. He gave the green light to another man (Don Sevrens) on the board to do so on his behalf.

The original idea was to find out where everything was and get the city, local planning members, and builder to reflect on lessons learned and how that would be applied moving forward, also an update on the status of the footnote. I wanted to ask them all the same questions, but no one was interested reflecting on anything. I finally talked to the main interviewee on behalf of the community, and the article shifted at that point. I also talked to another person that used to be on the planning board, but I didn’t quote him in the article.

I let the city, Don Sevrens, and Jon Linney know at that point that the article had shifted so they weren’t surprised. They were all well aware of the direction the article had taken before it was published. After letting him know, Sevrens still only wanted to talk about what a great victory the footnote was for the community.

• — Julie Stalmer

Baja Is Becoming a Toxic Waste Dump

We are an environmental group and we really liked your articles about the sewage and toxic waste that is contaminating the ocean. Also you wrote an article many years ago about this specific issue about one of these companies. Part of this problem is due to several U.S. and Mexican hazardous waste management companies based in Tijuana and Tecate that are not treating their hazardous waste and are dumping into the sewage system or directly into the river (mostly when it rains to disguise it).

Baja California is becoming a toxic waste dump. Please help us spread the word of what is happening with hazardous waste coming from the U.S. to Mexico to hazardous waste management companies that "recycle" but are really contaminating our earth on both sides of the border.

Just in the last six months we have had the environmental contamination from the following companies: Temarry Recycling (this US waste management company has been contaminating for several years. U.S. environmental authority CALEPA has banned some U.S. companies from sending their hazardous waste to this company, but is still allowing others to send their waste to this company which has been denounced by several environmental groups for simulating recycling hazardous waste but really landfilling it in Mexico), Schaffer Grinding Company, Pacific Treatment (second time this U.S. hazardous waste management company located in Tijuana burns completely to ashes spewing hazardous chemicals into the air because all the hazardous waste stored in their transfer station burned down, more than 300 tons this past December), Samex (another hazardous waste management company also burned to ashes last December with several tons of hazardous waste contaminating our air. They mostly handle waste generated in baja california from US and other international companies), Baja Wastewater Solution (another hazardous waste "recycling" company that was shut down for not recycling and throwing their waste into the sewer), Grupo Amniental del Noroeste Gan (also burned their hazardous waste transfer station).

The worst part of all of this is that all these companies are still in operation and no one is doing anything. All these companies are located less than 300 meters from the US MEXICO border. This means that all this contamination is flowing to the San Diego area rivers and oceans as well as by air.

• Grupo Protector Ecologico
• via email