Agenda for Cleaning Up Our Dirty Air

Could someone please explain to me how Southern California could be a model (“The Clean-Air Agenda,” editorial, June 14) for many of President Bush’s ideas. We have the dirtiest air in the nation, admittedly by everyone, and yet we will be probably the last ones to benefit from this new “so-called clean-air act.” If we are models, then we certainly haven’t followed our own examples. Where is this all coming from? Who is setting these examples, and where are they becoming reality? When you can smell, touch, and taste the air you breathe (cough, cough) then something is very wrong.

I can’t for the life of me understand how the South Coast Air Quality Management District can look anyone in the eye (with both eyes open) and say that we are working on a clean-air clean-up campaign and that it is only going to take 20 years to see it become a reality. We can all be dead by then.

And what air do they breathe? Do they have some secret we don’t know about? Get real! As long as smog can produce money, then we won’t ever clean it up. It isn’t profitable to clean up the air. The name of this game is G-R-E-E-D. It always has been and it always will be.

TONI JACOBSON

Monterey Park