Letters: Sept. 22, 2019

ICE arrests break civil rights law

I am writing about the recent ICE detentions. Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, signed into law by LBJ, protects any citizen from being prosecuted for birth alone. One must commit a crime to be prosecuted and birth cannot be grounds for prosecution alone.

Trump and his cronies cannot touch immigration as long as a judge protects the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Doing nothing on guns not an option

Dan Deckert’s guest opinion was full of misinformation and insincere objections to a serious national problem. Gun control methods DO work and Dan’s unwillingness to acknowledge that is discouraging and unacceptable. Some 39,773 people died from gun-related injuries in 2017.

Not impressive enough for you, Dan? The Odessa shooter purchased his AR-style weapon through a private sale without a background check. He was a felon and would have failed a Universal Background Check (UBC). Combining UBCs with national licensing and registration would have identified him, and he would have been arrested before being able to buy a gun and preventing eight deaths. Duh, Dan!

The Federal Assault Weapons Ban was a subsection of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, which included a prohibition on the manufacture for civilian use of certain semi-automatic firearms that were defined as assault weapons as well as certain ammunition magazines that were defined as "large capacity."

Try to keep up, Dan, these have already been defined! This ban saved lives when it was active. We need a serious conversation about gun violence, not simple-minded objections. We can solve this problem if we try but doing nothing is not an option.

Moving Hanford waste a concern

You recently described Senate Committee legislation to add $419 million to the Hanford Budget [TCH Sept. 13]. This legislation requires $10 million to be spent on a “Test Bed Initiative” to grout 2,000 gallons of Hanford Tank Waste and ship it to Texas.

Sen. Murray spoke of Tri-City “sacrifices” in managing Manhattan Project waste, but did not consider in this legislation that DOE will take 2,000 gallons of tank waste from the 200 Areas where it belongs and ship it to the Perma-Fix facility in North Richland. Toxic radioactive waste and its vapors will be delivered nearly to the doorsteps of Preferred Freezer Services, Lamb-Weston and Hanford High School.

In addition, the Perma-Fix Dangerous Waste Permit is inaccessible to the public (it’s not on Ecology’s web page). And DOE excludes Perma-Fix from the Hanford Air Operating Permit because the Perma-Fix Business is less than 50 percent from DOE/Hanford. However, EPA Biennial Reports show that the share of Perma-Fix work from Hanford is actually 97 percent, which is well above 50 percent.

Richland should be concerned that DOE is asking for legislative “help” to transfer tank waste from isolated facilities in the 200 Areas into town.

This story was originally published September 22, 2019 at 12:04 AM.