L.A. Sunsets

The rest of you can complain about smog all you want, but you have to admit it produces beautiful sunsets. All that talk about rain clouds and silver linings is OK as far as it goes, but give me a thick layer of ozone, nitrogen oxide and carbon monoxide to amplify that sunlight refracted on those clouds, and I’ll give you an industrial-strength sunset in glorious Technicolor!

A tip for the uninitiated and out-of-towners. Listen in to the radio for weather and air-quality forecasts. If you can find a partly cloudy forecast combined with a Stage 3 smog alert, you’re in for some real entertainment at sundown. And plan that trip to Santa Catalina when the Santa Ana winds are blowing all that smog out to the island. Any other time out there, all you’ve got is fresh air and drab sunsets.

There’s good news from Washington and Sacramento. Their legislatures are working to do away with our clean-air laws, so we can look forward to ever-increasing smog and ever-more-beautiful sunsets. They’re working for you. You’re probably going to quote all those doctors who say that smog can cause or contribute to emphysema or even lung cancer, but hey! You can’t have everything. Right?

JACK MORROW

Long Beach

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I am so angered by the passage of the Clean Water Act in the House of Representatives (May 17). Rep. Bud Shuster (R-Pa.) said the American people spoke on Nov. 8. A minority of people voted in this country, many of whom are not in favor of polluted bays, rivers and disappearing estuaries. This issue is not about the American people suffering under a radical environmentalist fringe. This issue is about preserving the health and well-being of the American people against corporations that care only for profits and getting away with less restrictions.

BRAD CAPENER

Thousand Oaks