Water Terror

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Sandy City residents are pretty pissed off that their water managers didn’t let them know that the fluoride tank in the main pump room added waaaay too much of the chemical to city water two weeks ago and turned some faucet blasts yellow-no bueno!  This chemical, promoted to prevent tooth decay, also can accelerate water pipe corrosion. So why are we putting this chemical in our water?

Step back in time to January 25, 1945 when Grand Rapids, Michigan became the first U.S. City to fluoridate it’s drinking water. The city did their due diligence and decided that adding fluoride (a toxic chemical in high doses) would be a good thing to protect the tooth enamel of children and adults. Well, right wing opponents immediately chimed in to say that adding the chemical to the water was a communist plot and that this added chemical would ‘Bring America to its knees by poisoning the water supply.’ We were, at that time, deep into a Cold War against the Soviet Union and their respective allies. Rumors were flying that communists were infiltrating every inch of American life and that we should be diligent in protecting ourselves from the ‘Red Terror’. Anyhoodle, as the years wore on, the fluoride scare faded away and the Cold War ended.

A few years ago, WIRED magazine reported that “roughly 170 million Americans drink fluoridated water today, and statistics show that dental health in the U.S. has improved dramatically as a direct result of it”. In the 1970’s Utah public health officials explored adding fluoride to water treatment facilities in Salt Lake County. Park City, Orem and Tooele had it in their water, but only 2.5% of the entire state drank the chemical in their daily water intake. A poll by the Public Utilities Dept. found 70% of 705 local residents were in favor of fluoridation. The 1,100 member Utah Dental Association was in favor of adding it noting that Utah was one of the least fluoridated states in the country. It got on the ballot and failed.

In 2003 voters in Davis and Salt Lake Counties approved fluoride in our water supplies. The Center for Disease Control had urged ALL states to put in the optimum levels of the chemical to prevent tooth decay. The chair of the Utah County Health Board stated that ‘Tooth decay is unbridled in Utah…call it an epidemic, especially among our low-income people…and dental disease is the largest health problem among elementary school children.”

Now it seems we may not want this chemical in our water any more. Sandy citizens in public hearings pointed out that fluoride is in virtually every toothpaste and that we don’t need additives to our drinking water supply.  Methinks since the power outage/accident in Sandy (which caused the massive amount of chemical to be released into the water system) that more people may be talking about their own drinking water. Sandy officials found copper and lead in the water after the accident which caused them to hand out water bottles to citizens in the effected areas. The EPA website has much info on safe drinking water at www.epa.gov ‘home water testing’.

https://www.deseretnews.com/article/575194/Fluoride-in-Utah-Well-Cold-Wars-over.html

https://health.utah.gov/oralhealth/fluorideGuidelines.php

https://www.wired.com/2012/01/jan-25-1945-fluoridation-better-teeth-or-commie-plot/

Be Careful

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Picture this: you’re a self-employed REALTOR (we all are self employed). You haven’t sold a home in a month and a potential buyer calls and wants to see your new listing you just put on the market. It’s kinda in the middle of nowhere, but you agree to meet this stranger at 8 PM in the dark. You show up and the stranger turns out to be a rapist, robber, murderer or all of the above. This happened to a local agent about twenty some odd years ago who worked at a real estate brokerage in Sugar House. This was pre-internet days when those free ‘homes’ magazines were out at every grocery store. In this woman’s story we learned (later) that the perpetrator profiled the agent by her photo that was published in the magazine and went to check out her listings to see which one was the most secluded, with the least amount of neighbors. He liked her looks and so called her, offered to pick her up at her office, and took her out there. She began to show him the home,  walked down into the basement ahead of him and he then grabbed her and raped her. This sick f-k then drove her back to her office (located across from the Rape Recovery Center) but was soon tracked down by a helicopter/dogs in the canyon and arrested, convicted, and went to prison.

REALTORS drive nice cars and show nice homes and are victims of crime all over the United States.  This unfortunate fact was brought back home this past week when three people allegedly killed a local real estate agent and hid his body in the crawl space of a home they were renting. The agent had gone to evict the tenants but sadly they decided to evict him off the planet. They supposedly cleaned up the property by pulling out the bloody carpet (but neglected to wipe the hardwood floors) and stole his car. It took two days for the police to find his body after he was reported missing.

My friend and fellow REALTOR, Dave Stokoe, worked for RanLife Real Estate in Sandy, Utah. He was a stand-up guy, who, despite being self-employed, was always in a cheery mood. He leaves behind a wife and four kids. Could he have prevented the attack? We don’t know the real details but we do know no one should ever lose their life over a property dispute. A vigil with hundreds of folks was held last Monday and a page has been set up to help his family with funeral expenses.

www.gofundme.com/in-memory-of-dave-stokoe.  

How safe is your work environment? In this day and age even walking to your car to go home can be scary. Dave didn’t get up the morning of January 17th and expect to die. Be careful out there folks and make sure you give a hug to the people you love every day…because one day your life will flash before your eyes and you better make sure it’s worth watching.

Practice What You Preach

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Ugh, the Utah State Legislature is back in session. Hide your wallets, and gird your loins brothers and sisters! Did you know nine of every 10 legislators are members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and are white, male and Republican? That data might explain how the legal blood alcohol level got changed this year to .05-the lowest in the country, and how Prop 2 (the voter-approved access to medical cannabis) may be legal to use but completely impossible to obtain for a long, long time. They love to gird their loins and ours as well, and gosh, they do it for so little pay.  But hey, all elected officials get to park free in Salt Lake City during the 45 days they are in session.

There are many parking spaces at and around our state capitol building and two large public lots east of the Senate building. While votes come and go, committees meet, and back room deals happen in those sacred halls on the hill, citizens can have a hard time finding any open spaces once the 29 senators and 75 representatives, and their staff members park their vehicles. If you’ve ever been to a protest on the hill during the annual legislative session you know how hard it is to park and hopefully have learned NOT to try and park there by walking, biking or taking transit.  Neighbors of the building do get heightened protection from parking enforcement this time of year because there are so many violators parking illegally by blocking private citizen’s driveways and alleyways (I know, I used to live across the street). Frankly, it’s a big parking and often traffic mess during that month and a half every year.

The irony is that UTA has Bus Route 500 set up to run FREE to and from downtown to the Capitol building and back each year, and the bus is often empty. You can catch it at the stop right above the Church office parking under Main Street and the Church headquarters.  There are also 32,000 parking spaces in downtown Salt Lake City where a person could park and then walk to a bus stop to avoid the parking hell on the hill. Salt Lake’s mayor says she wants all of us to use public transit to help cut down on our air but then encourages legislators to park (which means they have to drive first)  for free downtown during the session. In her January 2019 State of the City address she said: “From expanding bus service to working cooperatively with companies like UTA, Lyft, Uber, GreenBike, Bird and Lime, Salt Lake City is committed to exploring every idea to help people move around in a greener way.”

Maybe the Mayor envisions elected state officials will fill up their pork barrels at R & R BBQ and then waddle through the snow to a UTA stop so they can attend a Senate Agriculture Committee meeting to find ways to get tax cuts to mega corporate pig farms near Delta.  No, that will never happen because UTA ridership statistics show that most people in our state do not take public transit, including the Mayor and most of the legislators. IF the Mayor threw out the free parking rule then maybe a few of the elected might actually park in a Frontrunner lot and take a train, TRAX and bus to the hill? Don’t all elected officials seem to say in their campaign propaganda that they want to see expanded UTA service and cleaner air? Practice what you preach.

https://www.slc.gov/blog/2019/01/17/salt-lake-city-mayor-addresses-housing-transit-clean-air-and-public-safety-in-2019-state-of-the-city-address/

https://house.utah.gov/

www.wikipedia.org