sa¹ú¼Ê´«Ã½

Clover Point parking signs are at the wrong height

The posts at Clover Point with signs for disabled parking need be removed or adjusted. The signs, big and bulky, and at window height, impose on every view from a car window.

How about letting us disabled folk see the wonderful views too, without the obstructive signs. They do not look good in photos!

This is an easy fix. Just cut the posts down to a reasonable height where they do not intrude on the view.

Marleesha Kedde

Victoria

Right time, right place to save a child’s life

It saddens me deeply to hear the mention of the possible destruction of the Centennial Square fountain.

I have a vivid memory of what could have been a tragic event from the 1970s that I helped avert by being in the right place at the right time.

I was having a sandwich and coffee on the side of the fountain when I saw an inflated jacket floating in the water. I did not think anything of it until I saw an arm within the coat.

I jumped in and grabbed it, and it was a little child, perhaps seven or eight years old. He appeared to be OK and was vigorously coughing up water.

Two ladies came running from the Fisgard Street direction and were pleased that he was OK.

Shortly afterward was when the heavy plastic was installed, apparently at the insistence of the police.

Barry Tateham

James Bay

What a waste of perfectly good wood

The photograph of a demolished church on Goldstream Avenue left me as heartbroken as the broken lumber being crunched by an excavator.

All of this reusable lumber being crushed will need to be dumped at our rapidly filling Hartland landfill.

Why do we allow houses and buildings to be demolished without being deconstructed first and let this beautiful air-dried, mostly clear fir lumber have a second life as a new building?

This one-use, wasteful practice will only result in more garbage and necessitate the cutting of more of our precious forests.

I despair that unless deconstruction bylaws are enacted, the new housing regulations will see thousands of perfectly good homes and buildings being trashed to accommodate higher density housing.

It takes a particularly perverse genius to turn a renewable resource and turn it into a garbage/deforestation problem.

Jim Pine

Victoria

New ideas needed for production of electricity

Given climate change impact on hydro dam power production, sa¹ú¼Ê´«Ã½ Hydro might wish to support rooftop solar installations by subsidizing bigger systems than the houses need.

Also, a way to augment existing power dam infrastructure, particularly during droughts, is to have floating solar systems on reservoirs.

E-power storage will still be a problem. We might need to see water reservoirs as energy storage in a different way (like rechargeable batteries), with turbines and pumps between tiered reservoirs.

This has been done at Niagara Falls for ­decades.

Bill Yearwood

Victoria

With deer cull, Parks sa¹ú¼Ê´«Ã½ ignored revenue stream

Re: “Parks sa¹ú¼Ê´«Ã½ says 84 deer killed in $834,000 cull using helicopter,” Dec. 20.

$9,928.57 per deer spent killing 84 deer. This is yet another example of a ridiculous waste of taxpayer funds.

Someone with great scientific precision estimated that between 300 and 900 pesky deer infest Sidney Island. The total cost to eradicate these animals is outrageous.

It seems to me that hunters would have paid a fee to take out a few deer each, creating a revenue stream rather the eye-watering cost paid to date.

Bev Highton

Oak Bay

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