Baltimore needs a costly new set of pipes

How many of us take for granted our safe and relatively inexpensive supply of water? Baltimore’s water system is a national and international model as one of the first to wipe out waterborne diseases thanks in part to chlorination efforts adopted in 1912.

Did you know our water comes from the Gunpowder River to Loch Raven Reservoir where gravity sends it via the “new” 7-mile tunnel built in 1931 to the Montebello Water Filtration Plant? The original tunnel, built in 1880, is how city treated water still gets pumped back to Baltimore County. About 30% of the treated water is lost every day due to leaks. It is referred to as “non-revenue water.” It costs $2.5 million-a-mile to replace pipes with an average age of 70 years.

Baltimore fought a long and expensive battle to wrest control of the water supply from private hands culminating in the purchase of the Baltimore Water Company in 1854 for more than $1 million. As Baltimore’s industrial might and population have both faded, demand for its water has plummeted so the cost of maintaining the system falls on fewer customers. Safe water is one greatest advances to public health. Replacing hundred-year-old pipes is not politically popular but it is essential (“Neglect can be costly: A lesson too easily lost,” Dec. 28).

— Carl R. Gold, Towson

Weather report changes outlook on strip searches

The Baltimore Sun recently reported that the suspected Hamas terrorists occupying and using one of the last humanitarian sites in their territory were forced by Israeli Defense Forces to “strip in winter weather” (“Israeli troops forcibly remove staff and patients from northern Gaza hospital, officials say,” Dec. 27).

However, according to weather reports, the high that day in Gaza was 65. Wouldn’t you agree this is more an inconvenience and not particularly life threatening? That is unless you fear that someone is wearing a suicide vest under their winter clothes or unless you’re hired by the Associated Press to report for The Sun.

Could you please clarify your definition of winter weather conditions or publish a correction to your AP report?

— Morris Gavant, M.D., Baltimore

Why reward price-gouging grocers?

I agree with Dan Rodricks that Gov. Wes Moore’s “support of supermarkets selling beer and wine is a solution looking for a problem” (“Dan Rodricks: One scarf, two kinds of people and 10 things nobody asked about,” Dec. 28).

I find it particularly galling that during the last election cycle, one of the Democratic Party’s talking points was that greedy corporations were price gouging Americans at the grocery store as evidenced by their recent record profits. So in Maryland, let’s punish these greedy corporations by allowing them to further pad their bottom line by letting them sell beer and wine?

Something is wrong with this picture.

— David Holmack, Rosedale

Carter advocated for mental health care

President Jimmy Carter gave hope to mental health constituencies across the country (“Jimmy Carter, the 39th US President, has died at 100,” Dec 29). His administration crafted the Mental Health Systems Act which would have given a huge funding boost to community mental health centers and opened up access to non-institutional care for millions. Congress passed it in 1980 but President Ronald Reagan repealed it the next year. As a result, more people with long-term mental illnesses ended up on the streets.

Carter was a caring and compassionate human being. His Carter Center, for my money one of our effective nonprofits, has saved lives across the world. Well into his nineties, he was still building houses for Habitat For Humanity.

Jimmy and Rosalynn, his wife of 77 years, were the best mental health advocates the White House has ever seen. I shed a few tears when she passed and I’m shedding a few more today.

— Herb Cromwell, Catonsville