Letterbox

Dear Watchers:

Would you like to work by yourself outdoors for $20 an hour? Would your teenagers?

In February I performed the annual mid-winter litter cleanup along my property on the Cascade River Road in eastern Skagit County. Here’s the good news: the amount of tossed trash is down by about 50 percent from last year’s collection.

This winter I collected a nice pullover sweater, a pair of clippers, one wine bottle, one bottle of Yukon Jack, two coffee cups, two beer cartons and two shopping bags. As well as:

8 beer bottles

34 beer cans

2 Gatorade bottles

3 whiskey jugs

5 soda pop cans

10 soda pop bottles

6 cigarette packages

7 water bottles

2 ketchup containers

1 tea bottle

13 odds and ends.

Unlike the previous collecting, no discarded condoms appeared from 2005, which we might consider good or bad news.

With a mandatory 25-cent deposit on all beverage containers, I would have earned $20 in less than an hour.

Editor’s Note: Bob Keller sponsored Initiative 256 in 1970 (“the Bottle Bill”) that would have required mandatory deposits on all beverage containers). It lost by less than 2 percent of the vote after being outspent $2 million to $6,600.

Dear Watchers:

Fluoridation of a community’s water supply is an issue that affects everyone who lives, works and visits there. The media plays a huge role in helping citizens become aware of the controversy over the safety and effectiveness of adding this toxic chemical to the water supply. Most people don’t know that the fluoride used in fluoridation is not pharmaceutical grade fluoride.

I am grateful for the quality of your reporting. Too often those who oppose fluoridation are ignored or put down by the media, but you haven’t done that. It helps that recent peer reviewed scientific studies of the fluoridation issue have brought an awareness of the higher incidences of hip fractures in fluoridated communities; the lack of dosage control—especially in infants and toddlers—due to fluoride contents of much of our food and drink; and the Harvard study, showing a strong link between fluoridated water and bone cancer in boys. Recent studies have even brought into question the effectiveness of using ingested fluoride vs. topical application of fluoride (via toothpaste) in effecting tooth decay.

There are many questions regarding the safety and effectiveness of fluoride in drinking water and the public deserves the right to know the dangers they face if their water is polluted with this poison. Thank you for reporting this side of the issue.