Friday's letters: How to help control red tide, resist radioactive repaving

Advocate to improve health of waters

Up and down Florida’s west coast, beachgoers are coughing and hacking, and seeing and smelling dead marine life. Tourism and fishing, both commercial and recreational, are being directly affected.

While walking on the beach, I saw a boy who was looking for sharks’ teeth turn to his dad and ask, “Why are there so many dead animals in the water?”

Red tide is a natural phenomenon, but some of the things we are doing have made things worse. Perhaps if more people understood how to help control red tide, more would be done. Sarasota County has posted “10 ways to improve water quality in your local communities” on its website.

While informative, this is passive communication. What’s needed is more public advocacy. For starters, perhaps advisories could be distributed with utility bills, published in newspapers or shared on social media.

More: How to send a letter to the editor

It will cost something, but how does that compare with the value of our ocean environment, human health and tourism?

Registered Florida voters: Please go to FloridaRightToCleanWater.org to print, sign and mail a petition for a constitutional amendment, “Right to Clean and Healthy Waters.” As concerned citizens, we all can help make every day “another day in paradise” again.

Peggy Lichter, Venice

Media voice counters misinformation

I am so grateful that the Herald-Tribune published “Don’t proclaim liberty while banning books,” in the March 5 issue and added the note stating that it was written on behalf of USA Today Network-Florida editorial boards.

Our current Republican governor and Legislature are destroying liberty and democracy with what they label as anti-woke legislation.

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The media’s voice is so important in broadcasting the negative consequences of that one-sided, untrue and dangerous limitation on the spread of knowledge and actual history.

Phyllis Prager, Sarasota

Empathy from another sad card collector

In response to “Old baseball cards and spilled milk,” a letter March 6: When I graduated from college in 1968 and went in the Army, my mother threw out all my baseball cards and over 2,000 comic books from the 1930s and 1940s that an older friend had given me.

I can’t begin to determine how much my collection would be worth today. I know how the letter writer feels.Gary Dornbush, Sarasota

Governor has debased our principles

The disagreement between State College of Florida and Embracing Our Differences about what was said, and how the decision was made, to pull the art exhibit from the SCF campus, is far less important than the fact that we live in a state where the concepts of diversity, equity and inclusion may be seen as “offensive.”

And that the fear that violence may come from such offense may be used as a “cover” by SCF officials to avoid confronting our governor, the “offendee-in-chief,” is tragic.

More: Exhibit leaders, State College continue to clash over display

These concepts are important enough to conclude our Pledge of Allegiance (“... with liberty and justice for all”) and are expressed in the motto of our country (e pluribus unum, out of many, one). They are the foundational principles of our society.

Diversity, equity and inclusion are not offensive. They are sacred. If we allow these principles to be so debased by the governor, if we stand silently while a minority cancels them, then the fault is our own.

Achieving these principles in ever greater portion is our work. Protecting them is our responsibility. And resisting all efforts to defile them is what we must do with all the wisdom and might we can muster.

Bruce Rodgers, Sarasota

Proposing radioactive roadwork

A little radioactivity could be coming your way. State Sen. Jay Trumbull and state Rep. Lawrence McClure want to set up a demonstration project for using radioactive phosphogypsum in our roadwork and in construction (SB 1258/HB 1191).While I can applaud those in the fertilizer industry for trying to solve the problem of their waste, I would suggest that they first talk with NASA and their contractors about the feasibility of using phosphogypsum in rockets going to and staying in space. With, radium's 1,630-year radioactive decay half-life, space can certainly handle it better than Earth can.Or maybe Trumbull and McClure would volunteer to have streets in their neighborhoods repaved as part of the experiment to show their commitment to their proposal on behalf of the phosphorus industry.

Irony of ironies, Trumbull is chair of the Commerce and Tourism Committee and vice chair of the Appropriations Committee on Agriculture, Environment and General Government. Anybody else see a conflict here?Vicki Waters, Bradenton

Venice resident complains of airplane noise

A friend of mine was wondering about moving to Venice. I told her she would love it if she didn’t mind constant airplane noise.

I also told her to save money by skipping a lanai. It’s way too loud to enjoy it.

Margaret Gemmell, Venice

This article originally appeared on Sarasota Herald-Tribune: Advocate to control red tide, another sad card collector