Inequities in Coverage of Spills

Your article on the Aliso Beach sewage spill (April 19), though well reported if Terry Brandt and Michael Dunbar were quoted correctly, is a great illustration of the inequities imparted by the media to the public and private sectors on environmental issues.

The corporate world is chastised and condemned as ruthless and uncaring plunderers of the environment while the reoccurring blunders of our civic leaders and municipal governments are buried on the back pages, save for fraud and scandal.

Exxon, BP and the oil industry in general transport hundreds of millions of barrels of oil around the world daily and only on rare occasions suffer accidents resulting in environmental damage, none that have been proven to cause permanent harm.

Had the chairman of Exxon stated, “I don’t want to belittle the environmental impact of Wednesday’s spill, but the amount of sewage out there is very small compared to the tremendous amount of water in the ocean,” he would have been hauled before Congress, publicly condemned and given an IQ test for making that brilliant statement. Fear for your water supply, folks! That quote was attributed to (Dunbar), the assistant general manager of the South Coast Water District.

You have to wonder if his quote would have been buried on Page 7 of the Orange County Section if he was assistant general manager of the San Onofre Nuclear Power Station and he had said, “I don’t want to belittle the environmental impact of Wednesday’s radiation leak, but the amount of radiation out there is very small compared to the tremendous amount of air in the Earth’s atmosphere.”

Let’s be equitable and get the mayor of Laguna Beach before a public hearing and demand her job if she can’t assure the public that her municipal services can move sewage safely for several miles from citizens’ homes to treatment facilities without the risk of exposing its population to the plague. Let every community from San Diego to San Francisco have the same number of sewage spills annually, and we can give up water sports.

Seven spills last year for Laguna Beach sure makes Exxon and BP look good by comparison and certainly more caring about the environment.

JOHN L. WILLIS

Laguna Niguel