BY DAVID REAGOR
Los Alamos County Councilor

Two letters have been sent to the Los Alamos Reporter by Terry Wallace and David Izraelevitz responding to my letter on the county zero carbon energy plan.  Neither letter addresses the main point: We are too small to have any effect on the worldwide carbon budget. We will never see any benefits from such a local action. It is an elite vanity to have a pretense of addressing Carbon, but there is no substance in our little county.

The first point it to focus on sustainability issues we actually control. The most significant sustainability issue is solid waste.  We no longer have a county landfill and the landfills we use are filling up. The future cost is an unknown, but we can anticipate problems with expense and even availability. Second, we also expect to need more electricity in the future. The state is shutting down power plants, but we need to publicly support the existing power sources outside the county. We also need to add flexible power sources to the local grid and use them to balance out an expanded local solar program. The last and most significant problem with utilities is the replacement and maintenance of aging equipment. This is where most of the available funds need to be spent.

The costs of these zero Carbon plans are significant and will fall on the all of the public. In the county we have many residents that live on social security or work service industry jobs. They do not need elites adding useless burdens. Our local republican candidates for county council, Gary Stradling, Reggie Page, and Sharon Dry are all focused on small business and housing, making the town more livable for all our citizens. This is the main point of this election, we need to put the town on a path that supports citizens at all economic levels.