Posted by Dick Analog on April 22, 2005 at 13:48:13:
In Reply to: Write our legislators posted by Walt on April 22, 2005 at 08:32:28:
Thanks, Walt, for the call to action. This is scary legislation.
Since I work in one of our state’s most essential, yet beleaguered industries – mining - I’m well-acquainted with the procedure to send notes to our legislative representatives. Each of our senators has their own web site:
http://boxer.senate.gov/
http://feinstein.senate.gov/
and each site has its own web tool to send e-mail to the senator’s attention. You have to jump through a few hoops to get the message out, but it’s fairly painless. It’s helpful to draft up your message beforehand, off-line, then paste it into the message box.
Here’s what I sent to Senators Boxer and Feinstein
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Dear Senator Boxer:
It is my understanding that Sen. Rick Santorum has introduced a bill which would severely restrict public dissemination of weather and oceanographic data generated and distributed free of charge by the NOAA/National Weather Service. This legislation is designed to protect the interests of various commercial entities which generate and sell similar information.
As a frequent recreational user of waters off the California coast, I depend on certain types of information provided by NOAA, including wave height, wave frequency, and water temperature to safely plan my outdoor activities. These are hardly the types of information that a commercial weather provider will have an interest in either generating, or selling. Not having free and easy access to this type of information, as is now available from the NOAA, would jeopardize my, and other others’ like me, ability to safely enjoy coastal recreational activities.
I urge you and your colleagues to do everything in your power to stop this potentially dangerous legislation in its tracks, before it even leaves the committee process.
Sincerely,
Dick Jones
Valencia, CA