Acid Rain

Clinton TardinessI became a Democrat because Franklin D. Roosevelt was my role model, because Hubert H. Humphrey fought for the passage of the first major civil rights law for persons with disabilities (1973 Rehabilitation Act), because Jimmy Carter brought the idea of ethics to foreign policy, because our party nominated the first woman to run for vice president and because of the efforts of such Maryland Democrats as Rep. Steny Hoyer and Rep. Kweisi Mfume for the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990.

The owner of Maryland's largest power plant was talking to federal regulators about installing pollution-control equipment in 2002, when the Bush administration began weakening cleanup requirements for old coal-burning utilities. So the plant's owner, a subsidiary of Mirant Corp., walked away from the table, leaving the Chalk Point power station in Prince George's County belching pollutants that cause smog, acid rain and asthma attacks. "Mirant was talking about cleaning up their plants.

Breach of FaithEditor: According to Sandy Banisky's Dec. 20 article, the governor's Commission on Efficiency and Economy in Government is urging the state to break its faith with hundreds of faculty and staff of the University of Maryland System.The promise of tuition remission has been repeatedly used to attract faculty and staff into the university system who might otherwise have taken higher paying jobs elsewhere. Yet the commission has proposed that free tuition for non-faculty staff and their families be ended permanently and that faculty tuition subsidies be reduced temporarily to 50 percent of current levels.

ST. PETERSBURG - During the "White Nights" summer solstice celebrations in this fairy tale city, with its stone-lined canals and pastel palaces, crowds stream along Nevsky Prospekt as twilight lingers after midnight. Home to the world famous Mariinsky Theater and the State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg is one of the world's cultural capitals. The strolling sightseers, like those in Paris or London, might be tourists from around the world eagerly spending money in restaurants and concert halls.

Clear Skies plan adds to progress cleaning the air The Sun's editorial "Audit the messenger?" (March 1) repeated the erroneous argument that doing nothing would be better than enacting President Bush's proposal to reduce pollution by unprecedented levels. However, if the Clear Skies Act proposed by the president is passed, it will drastically improve the nation's air quality by requiring U.S. power plants to reduce emissions of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides and mercury by an average of 70 percent.

Now that the games are over and the medals counted, we should bear in mind the words of Fritz Marz, president of the German Alpine Organization: "The Alps are being literally reconstructed because the good Lord was obviously not a skier."Raped might be a better word.The Albertville Olympics may have been a mother lode of white gold for a few corporate sponsors and international athletes, but "mining" the mountains has exacted a terrible price: the destruction of the very environment the event was meant to honor and celebrate.

WASHINGTON - A 10-year government study of air quality at major national parks found foliage-killing ozone levels rising at 20 of the 32 parks surveyed, including Yellowstone, Shenandoah, the Great Smoky Mountains and the Everglades. About half of 29 parks surveyed for acid rain were found to have continuing or worsening problems from nitrate deposits. Sulfate concentrations associated with acid rain were on the rise in five parks, with Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore reporting a slight decrease.

Once upon a time, children's books were the stuff of princesses menaced by dark forests and big, bad wolves gobbling up innocents. Now the people threaten the forests, and the wild creatures are themselves the innocents.In a new wave of books that promote such causes as recycling, forest preservation and pesticide-free food, publishers and authors are attempting to make money and mold young minds with environmental message books for children.The themes have proven as popular with publishers as they are noxious to industry, which complains that the books are often manipulative and one-sided.

Great Smoky Mountains National Park is the most polluted in the nation, an environmental group has reported after analyzing government air-quality data.Readings for ozone, poor visibility and acid precipitation, grouped into a single air-pollution index, have risen sharply in the Smokies since 1993, the data show. A second park in the southern Appalachians, Virginia's Shenandoah, ranked second-highest among the 10 parks scored."The parks are in trouble," said Appalachian Voices Chairman Harvard Ayers, an Appalachian State University professor who did the analysis.

When it comes to dessert, there's no place like home. Oh, it's true that a glorious dessert cart is a grand sight in a restaurant, but for most people, the most memorable desserts in their lives are the ones that Mother used to make -- the butterscotch pudding, the apple pie, the German chocolate cake, the bread pudding and the simple fruit and cream fools.There's a comfort in returning to tradition, and this seems to be the year when people are returning to their pasts when it comes to sharing holiday meals.