A threat to states’ rights

Re “Power Lines and Pipelines Draw Closer to Parklands,” May 23

What a surprise! The Bush administration is trying to make an end run around environmental laws that protect our state and national parks by approving new power-line and pipeline corridors that the Department of Energy and Bureau of Land Management couldn’t get past the American people. If approved, states would lose control over what can be built and where. It seems strange that although more than 63% of Americans think the environment is important, this Republican administration does not and has done everything in its power to soften environmental protection laws. Just another example of a secret, sneaky way of doing business.

JO ANN MICHETTI

Rancho Palos Verdes

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Besides the obvious destruction of precious, irreplaceable public wilderness lands, the squandering of the inheritance of generations yet unborn and the enrichment of construction and utility companies at the public trough are a constitutional issue of true states rights for the regulation of utility lines. The 10th Amendment of the Constitution states: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

At what point will the American people declare it is time to take the power back?

LARRY GOLDBERG

Laguna Hills