To The Editor:

Do you remember when you last heard that there was a “Smog Alert” in your area, including the smog cloud coming up from NYC?

Do you remember waiting at a traffic light and having to roll up your windows because you couldn’t breathe the exhaust coming from the car in front of you, not to mention the fumes from the belching black smoke from the trucks on the highway? It’s been a while, hasn’t it. Now, if you see a truck with a bad exhaust you probably say to yourself “I wish a trooper would pull him over and get him off the road.”

I do remember when driving into LA in the 60’s and having my eyes burn from the air I was breathing; driving into New York City you found the sky a brownish yellow.

Then in December 1970 Nixon signed into law the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). … Slowly air quality began to improve. Restrictions on car and truck exhaust and on coal burning power generating plants began to make our air so much cleaner. There were 118 million cars on the road in 1970. … There are 285 million cars on the road today, over double, but because of the EPA restrictions the air we breathe is so much cleaner, for us and our children, even with over an additional 167 million cars.

Since then the Environmentalists have changed the battle cry from “give us clean air” to “lets save the environment to protect us from Climate Change.” ... Fast forward to now.

The EPA is now telling us there is no Climate Change, so, let’s reduce restrictions on car and truck exhaust and our present administration forces power plants to continue to burn fossil fuels, overriding the decisions made in the interest of customers by power companies, grid operators, state utility regulators and state legislators.

I just wonder how dirty the air needs to get before the EPA decides again that dirty air is what they should be protecting us, our children and our grandchildren from.

Ed Miklaszewski

Sandy Hook