LouLife [1]

Grades of Green

I appreciate and respect your treatment of environmental concerns in the May issue of Louisville Magazine. Obviously, the Author Forum editor Bruce Allar attended at the KentuckyCenterreally got his adrenaline pumping on this one.

But I was surprised at the lack of any honest debate in the more than 30 pages devoted to environmental issues and opportunities. Your roundtable members were all employees, or former employees, of government or non-profits. They all have good intentions, and I’m sure their hearts are in the right place. I do know some of them. But to accept an unquestioned endorsement of the STAR (Strategic Toxic Air Reduction) program, or mourning the loss of VET (Vehicle Emissions Testing), without honest debate of the merits of these programs was not a good service to your readers.

For instance, no one has explained why the loss of VET testing has had none of the negative consequences that had been predicted by its advocates. We’ve actually had fewer ozone action days, on average, since this testing was eliminated. I’ve often wondered what of substance was accomplished by having people driving their cars across town to a testing facility and waiting in line 15-to-20 minutes with their engines running just to have their vehicles tested. Some 97 percent of all vehicles passed, and many of the worst polluters were granted exemptions after showing that they spent money on attempted repairs.

The STAR program, as I’m sure you know, is also highly controversial, and its net benefits to this community are, to say the least, debatable. But one would never know that from reading the May issue of Louisville. The issue was filled with a lot of great information, good intentions, and many good ideas. But I think it would have been much better if a broader perspective had been presented.

Rich Gimmel
President
Atlas Machine and Supply, Inc.

As well as saying thank you for the significant mention in the Louisville Magazine “Green Issue” of our recent Kentucky Author Forum with Bill McKibben and Wendell Berry, I’ll say that it gives us great pleasure and satisfaction to see that our interviews have an impact on community dialogues far beyond their brief time in the Bomhard Theatre.

I was also so happy to see the profile of (Manual High School student) Casey Henry. How wise of you to include some very young activists in your issue.

Melissa Bernstrom
Associate Producer
KentuckyAuthor Forum

Correction

The resource list following the story “Tricks on Treatments” in our May issue provided an incorrect phone number for The Flooring Gallery’s Plantside Driveworkroom. The correct number is 966-4245.

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