Letters: Promise, peril of scrap yards

Re “Illegal scrap yards heaping up,” Aug. 22

Illegal scrap yard operators are actually some of America’s true entrepreneurs. They add value to materials that often would be buried in our landfills. Our elected officials must make recycling easier and our citizens must vote to allow the officials the money to do so.

About $11 billion worth of our resources was bulldozed into the ground in 2010, according the nonprofit group As You Sow, which promotes environmental and social corporate responsibility. Can anyone think of a good way to spend $11 billion?

Gregory Allen Harman

Rancho Cucamonga

Those who are eating away at our infrastructure are treated as petty thieves, as if their crimes won’t have consequences. Railroad tracks are vulnerable, as is the copper wiring that knits our communications and electrical grid together.

These perpetrators are in it for the money, without any concern for the risk to lives or the astronomical replacement cost of their theft. All involved in this illegal commerce should be prosecuted based on actual damage and potential dangers they create, not the trivial cost of the raw materials. This pernicious activity must be shut down before its tragic results become evident.

Al Rodbell

Encinitas

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