Surrounded by gas, fed up with hot air
To The Editor:
Re: “Concerns Linger Over Radon Levels in Spectra Pipeline Gas” (news, May 21, 2014):
I manage a small brownstone in the Chelsea neighborhood. It isn’t just cooking gas that concerns me. My building has five gas heating boilers and five gas hot water heaters in its basement. In each of its five apartments it has a gas counter range, a gas wall oven, and a gas clothes dryer. I am in the process of installing a gas generator. I have been planning to install gas service to each of the ten fireplaces.
Why on earth should I accept the pathetic excuses put forward by the utility (Con Edison) for not monitoring every cubic inch of their product every hour of the day, and reporting results continuously?
Pamela Wolff
Reader Comments from ChelseaNow.com
Re: “Concerns Linger Over Radon Levels in Spectra Pipeline Gas” (news, May 21, 2014):
If gas production is so lucrative, what is the problem of the utility spending a few cents (proportionately) to do the testing to assure safety of the public? Why should the State defer to the Feds? Aren’t there at-home kits for the public to check in the kitchens from Sane Nuclear?
Barbara385
This is a flawed bill, which appears entirely impractical as written. It seems like the desired levels or measurements that are cited in the bill and in this article for the pipeline are actually the measurements that would be desirable in air in the home, and these are clearly two different measurements. Second it seems impractical to suggest turnang off gas at the delivery point (a city gate station/meter station) as a form of mitigation. Would Ms. Rosenthal’s solution then be that we build more pipelines and city gate stations into NYC and NY state in case we need to shut some of them off in winter?
Many of the activists at that hearing represent groups that have spread enormous amounts of misinformation on other projects like the Rockaway pipeline and the currently proposed LNG import project offshore, Port Ambrose. They appear to feel entitled to misrepresent facts because they have a cause that they are passionate about.
Karen Orlando
Re: “Ban Horse Carriages; Keep Citi Bikes” (editorial, April 23, 2014):
Until we as a City declare that we are an animal-safe city, we cannot protect the animals that are within our designated area. We need to get legislation that commits our city as one that does not abuse animals, children and the elderly. We should build up a pride in that we have been generous enough to move past the old habits of profiting on child labor and ignoring the needs of the elderly and hopefully also address the useless carriage rides in such a dangerous city and move onto humane tourist attractions.
Let the tourists pay to take an electric car to a designated area of the Park to feed the retired carriage horses a carrot.
Dot Bronx
UPDATE
Re: “A.G. Keeps After Airbnb To Turn Over Rental Records” (news, May 21, 2014):
Representatives of the Attorney General’s Office and Airbnb released a joint statement on the morning of May 21, announcing that Airbnb has agreed to comply with the A.G.’s May 14 subpoena. According to the terms of that agreement, Airbnb will first provide the A.G. with an anonymized list of those who have rented apartments through the website (with personal information such as names, email addresses telephone numbers redacted). From that list, the A.G. will then be able to notify Airbnb which users are “subjects of an investigation or potential [legal] enforcement action,” and will subsequently be able to compel Airbnb to quickly hand over personal information about those specific users. As part of the new agreement, Airbnb also said that it will add a feature to its website that will clearly display New York State apartment rental laws to any new site users who are listing an apartment within the state.
“Airbnb and the Office of the Attorney General have worked tirelessly over the past six months to come to an agreement that appropriately balances Attorney General [Eric] Schneiderman’s commitment to protecting New York’s residents and tourists from illegal hotels with Airbnb’s concerns about the privacy of thousands of other hosts,” said the May 21 joint statement, by Janet Sabel, First Deputy Attorney General of Affirmative Litigation for the Attorney General, and Darren Weingard, Deputy General Counsel of Airbnb. “The arrangement we have reached today for compliance with the Office of the Attorney General subpoena strikes this balance.”
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