City needs more, not fewer, buses

I am an adamant bus rider. With all of the budget cuts that the acting mayor is making, you would think that the large sign at the downtown transit center wouldn't be up, saying that last year was a record-breaking year for rider numbers. Getting rid of two Eagle River routes is not going to help. More people have decided to utilize our public transit system in hopes that they will save a couple of extra dollars a month but it seems like the city is working backwards instead of moving forward and helping us.

-- Adam Davis

Anchorage

Clock ticking to try Bush, Cheney

Allowing the statute of limitations to expire on the wiretapping and other crimes committed by the Bush/Cheney administration is an error that will harm our country's domestic integrity and global credibility forever.

-- Kathy Lynn Douglass

Willow

Wi-Fi has no place on aircraft

I am alarmed by the announcement that Alaska Airlines will be doing a trial period with Wi-Fi (wireless Internet) during flights.

Is Wi-Fi having a negative impact on our bodies, minds and health? Has the safety of its liberal use been established?

Why would we want to experiment with this technology while confined in a steel tube at 30,000 feet going 500 miles an hour?

I feel like an unwilling mouse in an unbridled and unethical test center that intends to offer a constantly available Internet connection to its grateful and addicted recipients.

Who is driving this blanket exposure?

Can we afford to continue to pretend there is no risk to our health?

Wi-Fi is a kind of radio wave that is designed to allow for transmission of very large amounts of data. Wi-Fi radio waves also emit great amounts of electromagnetic radiation.

Submitting everyone to the Wi-Fi signal while in flight, when its safety has not been convincingly established, is dangerous and unconscionable.

-- Debra Lee

Anchorage

Death for a death is the only justice

I am responding to Allison Perry's letter about the death penalty: Where was she when the murderer destroyed someone's life and family? I understand her reasonings, but when someone commits such atrocities against his fellow man/woman, he/she should be held accountable.

Instead they are sent to a place where he gets three square meals a day, exercise and usually an education paid for by those of us who pay our taxes and hope and pray nothing happens to us on the way home from work or play. I know it is not a glamorous life, but it is living. I know because I have family in all aspects of law enforcement and they see how many of them are repeaters.

Eye for an eye. Take a life, lose yours, not just your freedom. As it is most people on death row will live years before they are executed. Enough is enough. We need stricter laws and hold people accountable for their actions. It would solve a lot of problems.

-- Tom Tunnell

Anchorage

Homer Electric's hydropower plans for Kenai will destroy land, fisheries

Renewable energy funding by the Alaska Energy Authority is chaotic. AEA is operating in a vacuum without local input, resource agency coordination or recognition of public policy.

AEA just awarded $816,000 to Homer Electric Association, dba Kenai Hydro LLC, for a high-impact, low-output hydropower proposal involving Grant Lake and Falls Creek near Cooper Landing and Moose Pass. One of several schemes diverts Falls Creek into Grant Lake, which would be dammed, resulting in a reservoir surface varying 34 feet. Falls Creek would be totally de-watered, which ADF&G has repeatedly said is unacceptable. Further it is well known that the Kenai River Comprehensive Management Plan and Kenai Area Plan both prohibit future dams in the Kenai River Watershed.

HEA has other outrageous hydropower proposals involving Crescent Lake, Ptarmigan Lake, and Victor Creek. An additional $380,000 was awarded in 2008 for feasibility studies. These are predatory business ventures outside the HEA service area.

Cooper Landing's natural alpine setting provides for an economy based on outdoor recreation and tourism. We are, incredibly, forced to defend our homeland against high-impact business proposals subsidized by public money.

Business developments designed to change natural flows in the Kenai River Watershed are unacceptable. HEA appears indifferent to a fishery at risk. AEA is clueless. The integrity of the Kenai River System is far too important to allow these speculative proposals to advance.

-- Bob Baldwin, president

Friends of Cooper Landing