Short-sighted plans for dams

Regarding “System remains focused on dams” (Feb. 21): A more natural, easier to build and less expensive solution to our drought/flood cycles exists. Can it be that everyone in state government is so shortsighted or inertia paralyzed that even when a better, cheaper alternative is now clear, we will begin to build dams not even yet started? We will throw away billions because we are too inflexible to make a midcourse correction?

Judith Murphy, Portola Valley

Blended water

Regarding “On tap for S.F.: New recipe for drinking water” (Feb. 22): With the news that local groundwater will be combined with our Hetch Hetchy water supply to create a “blended” drinking water, might I suggest some names for this new beverage? 49 Square (for the size, in miles, of our metropolis); Herb2O (in honor of The Chronicle’s Herb Caen); or simply W.W.T.M. (Water With Tasty Minerals)?

Milton Pierce, San Francisco

BART’s security

After being attacked on BART, I researched violence in the system. The research seemed conclusive that BART knows it has a few very dangerous stations. I would like to know what BART is doing about the numerous physical attacks taking place in Civic Center BART and other stations where violent attackers can easily avoid police by hopping onto Muni via the escalator overlap in the San Francisco stations. I was attacked on Sunday, and the police say he got away along this familiar route.

Have they considered plainclothes police occasionally at these dangerous stations to stop an attack or at least let perpetrators know they cannot escape easily? Have they considered putting screens up along the escalator so violent attackers cannot so easily escape via Muni?

Additionally, I filed a police report with San Francisco Police Department on the incident: I would expect BART security personnel to follow up on every incident of violence in its system, if for no other reason that you are not taking enough clear and easy steps to make passengers safe. I have not heard from them. Frank Lopez, San Francisco

Health care model

Before the Affordable Care Act, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts passed a health care reform act under Republican Gov. Mitt Romney (Romneycare). The Democrats recognized a good thing when they saw it, and “Romneycare” became a model for some of the ACA. Are the GOP in this Congress that selfish, or are they just too stupid, that they can’t step back and incorporate these two models to come up with a plan they can own? Deborah Hecht, Berkeley

Failed levees

Regarding “Damaged dams pose challenge of older designs” (Feb. 20): The post refers to “widespread destruction from Hurricane Katrina on the Gulf Coast.” The fact of the matter, in my mind, is that the flooding of New Orleans was overwhelmingly the fault of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, who were responsible for designing and building the levee system, not the hurricane itself.

An irregular, flawed federal funding process led to a piecemeal levee system that included some low-cost solutions that compromised the quality, safety and reliability of the designs, according to a 2007 report by the American Society of Civil Engineers Hurricane Katrina External Review Panel. Had there been no design defects present in the levees in New Orleans, Hurricane Katrina would have made much less news and would not now suffer the fate of being referenced only as a terrible natural disaster.

Rather, it would be labeled a terrible engineering disaster. It is my hope, as a former resident of New Orleans, that with wider dissemination of correct information, blame for the city’s flooding will eventually shift from nature to the failed infrastructure.

William Ferguson, Los Angeles

Russian connection

Regarding “All involved” (Letters, Feb. 20): While people have the constitutional right to say what they want, they do not have the same right to have that speech publicized. As “fake news” has inserted itself time and again into the legitimate media on the platform of free speech, the Chronicle has an obligation to weed it out. The letter writer suggesting that Hillary Clinton’s and Sen. Bernie Sanders’ campaigns should be investigated for illicit contact with Russian officials just because President Trump’s is is preposterous.

His analogy to athletes being drug tested is just as illogical. Winners of athletic competitions are tested simply because they won, not because there is evidence of their cheating. Trump is being investigated because there is concrete evidence of connections and contacts between candidate Trump operatives and Russian officials. There is no such evidence concerning Clinton and Sanders. Donna DeDiemar, Berkeley

Cross the divide

The Oroville Dam provides a metaphor for the state of the country today. For years, through rain and drought, the dam held its own, just as the nation’s structure held up while the ebb and flow balanced between the parties as they found a way to work, albeit begrudgingly, together. But just as the dam’s spillway was crumbling beneath the surface, so, too, did the country begin to sag under the weight of ultra-partisan politics.

The fissure grew ever greater when the Tea Party movement obstructed anything former President Barack Obama tried to achieve. When the downpour culminated in the election of a man who had not a moment’s public service on his resume, whose truth-impaired, ego-driven rants and calculated kleptocratic machinations have deluged us over the past month such that it’s hard to find solid ground — the dam finally broke. Yes, we need new infrastructure: We don’t need walls to keep people out; we need dams to hold us together and bridges to cross the divide. Wilma Murray, Martinez