Letters: GWP should be burning Scholl landfill gas; offended councilmen owe apologies

Re: “Glendale officials abandon plans to expand Scholl Canyon,” Sept. 18. Recently Glendale Water & Power suspended sending the Scholl Canyon Landfill gas to our Grayson Power Plant. As a retired superintendent of Grayson who was involved in originally accepting the landfill gas I am questioning why GWP has done this.

We burned this gas at Grayson for more than 20 years, and now it is being flared directly to the atmosphere. When we burned it at Grayson we met all of the South Coast Air Quality District environmental requirements.

I am thinking that GWP has not spent the necessary money at Grayson to keep the plant running, which gives officials there the excuse to stop sending the gas to Grayson and forcing our city to build a small power generating station at Scholl Landfill.

GWP should continue to burn the gas at Grayson until it gets approval and builds the plant at Scholl. Also it was announced that our city is not going to expand the landfill, which could give the utility the opportunity to put solar cells on top of the landfill of at least 100 megawatts of electrical energy. If the Glendale City Council and GWP do nothing for the next year or two we are all going to be having controlled blackouts for some time until they get moving on this problem.

Larry Moorehouse
Retired superintendent of Grayson Power Plant
Glendale

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What a pity that the recent incident at the Royal Canyon Property Owners Assn. party has become something so unfortunate for every citizen of our city.

It’s astonishing how much ugliness has grown out of something that could have been defused by an adult conversation between the parties involved.

Instead, despite conciliatory comments made at a City Council gathering by Beth Volpe, president of the homeowners association, Councilman Gharpetian discussed the incident with the press and turned the misunderstanding into a racial issue. His comments included words such as “hostile” and “hate.” Similarly, Mayor Ara Najarian and his wife punctuated Gharpetians’ inflammatory comments with their own accusations of racism.

These men obviously never stopped to think about the fact that the Royal Canyon Home Owners Assn. is comprised, to a large extent, of Armenian families who were in attendance having a wonderful time. They also never reflected on the countless wonderful Armenian and non-Armenian friendships and associations that have existed in our city for decades, they certainly never stopped to reflect on the fact that many of us have wonderful friendships with people of Armenian descent that began in the 1950s and exist to this day.

So I personally resent their comments and insinuations and feel that they owe an apology to every citizen of our wonderful city, regardless of race, creed or color.

Kym Murphy
Glendale