Regarding your June 19 editorial, "Building boom on 'Hill' brings jobs, N-unease": If the new Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement Facility will be safer than Rocky Flats, "that's something"...? No, editors, that's actually nothing. More careful than BP? Healthier than Chernobyl? Cleaner than Love Canal?

As the new plutonium facility moves forward, it represents the triumph of entrenched, outdated, moneyed interests over real national security or intelligent policy. A new generation of H-bombs has serious national and global consequences — it's not just about local jobs. The real local issue? All that charming nuclear waste they're about to produce will remain in New Mexico forever, heaped on top of the Cold War waste.

The real cost is the road not taken. What should our national labs do with their brilliant minds and fat budgets? Beef up our already-bloated arsenal or address the world's real problems? Your offhand tone about this tragedy does your readers a disservice.

Sasha Pyle
Santa Fe

Offshore opponent

Rep. Ben Ray Luján has been one of the most outspoken critics of offshore drilling and BP. When President Obama announced his new offshore drilling plan, Luján was the only member of the delegation who was critical of his plan. After the BP oil spill, he continued to criticize offshore drilling plans. Since the BP oil spill, Luján has been holding BP's feet to the fire.

Visit YouTube to watch him grill the head of BP America at a committee hearing, asking him why it put profits ahead of the lives of its workers. And just the other day he demanded that BP halt a planned $50 billion dividend payment until it compensates the people of the Gulf. Ben Ray Luján has been outspoken against offshore drilling.

Billy Knight
Taos

Trust in the trust

Regarding recent comments concerning the Valles Caldera Trust and its alleged elitism and restrictive public-access policies: The Valles Caldera Trust has had some bumps, but it has fulfilled its role as a working ranch and has provided access with educational workshops, seminars and van tours that cover subjects including archaeology, botany, ecology, geology, history and wildlife.

The Valles Caldera has become, in a very short period of time, an outstanding example of sustainable government management of public lands.

On the other hand, the National Park Service, which some say should now manage the Valles Caldera, has at times alienated and polarized the Native American community. The Valles Caldera Trust has managed what was once a private preserve as a very public entity that respects the multi-culturalism of New Mexico. Turning this to the National Park Service is not the best management direction.

Rudy Ríos
Placitas

Military trap

I deeply admire President Barack Obama and his policies, except for one. I think he's been caught in the same trap that has ensnared many presidents before him, namely the military trap whose current manifestations are the war on terror and the war of necessity in Afghanistan.

Terrorism is a tactic used by powerless people all over the globe who have no armies and so resort to homemade or stolen weapons; how do we wage a war against that? Better would be a plan to end the poverty, homelessness, hunger, poor education, poor health care, and oppression of women that generate hopelessness and feed terrorism.

It's necessary next year to cut $6.8 million dollars from the already strapped Santa Fe Public Schools budget. Estimates of the total cost of the two wars are about $3 trillion — about $1 million per minute. Ending these conflicts seven minutes sooner would cover the entire Santa Fe Public Schools shortfall for next year, a sobering illustration of misplaced American priorities.

Marvin A. Van Dilla
Santa Fe