Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Letter to the editor:

EPA downsizing may be positive

As a first-generation American with a carpenter-father figure, I was taught the value of collective bargaining to ensure fair wages and a safe and healthy work environment. I support that 100 percent. However, I do not support holding management hostage with feather-bedding practices.

The advances in technology, relevancy and duplications of bureaucratic processes call for bipartisan readjustments. The current Las Vegas Environmental Protection Agency downsizing was started by a Democratic administration and is continuing with the Republican administration. Let’s not use distracting inflammatory rhetoric.

As pointed out in the Las Vegas Sun article “Environmentalists decry early closure of Las Vegas EPA lab,” workers have been given three choices of retirement with incentives, looking for alternative placements or leaving. Some workers will be inconvenienced and/or shortchanged. That has been the history of our country from the Industrial Revolution forward. Let’s also remember that we sometimes have to sacrifice for the greater good of the country, such as with the current shift from fossil fuels to other forms of cleaner and more efficient energy.

The writer was medical director for the Nevada Test Site program for 18 years.