Readers Write (Aug. 13): Colorado wastewater spill, animal welfare, bicycling and motoring, prescription drugs, Sid Hartman

I held my forehead, mouth agape, reading about the initial chemical findings on the Animas spill. It's paralysis-inducing data, and officials are lying about the significance — flat out.

While the Environmental Protection Agency is the proximal cause, from what we know, I hope the appropriately named river provides the catalytic animus to jump-start a very critical discussion on how and why we create these vast volumes of poison in service of our day-to-day activities.

Let's remember, too, that we've often dumped and typically still dump these things among poor folks, locally and globally. This is a visible error insomuch as we've all seen it; I submit that worse occurs beyond our view.

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People in five states are directly affected and more downstream may see some of the toxic pollution caused by a mistake at the cleanup site of an abandoned gold mine in Colorado. Minnesota, too, has had some problems with mining waste. Take a trip with Google Earth and check out the Iron Range — all the concentrating plants have tailing basins that have the potential of harming nearby waterways, lakes and rivers. Minntac has a large one north of Virginia on the other side of the divide where water flows north to Lake Vermilion and on to the border lakes. A spill from Minntac tailing basin cell one would flow to Lake Vermilion.

Until the mining industry gets it act together and finds ways to treat its waste, the EPA needs to tightly monitor these sites. The fact that now overseas corporations want to mine near the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness should not be considered until the mess they are still making is treated to make it safe. Our lakes and streams are much different from the fast-flowing mountain streams that flush themselves — our waters slowly wind through the land and will hold the toxic pollution. The land on the Canadian Shield is fragile and has taken eons to develop. We need to protect these beautiful gifts of nature.

The writers of the Aug. 10 commentary "Health care reform: Who gets hepatitis C drugs? Who pays?" stated: "In the worst cases, hepatitis C patients require liver transplants, a high-risk operation that can cost up to $500,000." I feel angry and sad about what's implied by that statement. My wife died in 2011 at age 61 from liver failure caused by hepatitis C. She had contracted the virus in her late teens and early 20s while using drugs. In her late 20s, she became sober and stayed sober until her death. She made mistakes but didn't ask to get hepatitis C. The people today who've gotten hepatitis C in many different ways? They didn't ask for it, either. The worst-case scenario isn't money; it's death.

These photos demonstrate more than thousands of words the routine transformation of a baby animal into a production-line product. When we are allowed to see the routine cruelty of the process of turning live animals into food, we cannot pretend we don't know the suffering being inflicted day after day. That is why so many large factory farms sponsor ag gag bills — to keep such sights from the public eye. What we don't see, we don't concern ourselves about.

I am very grateful to every small farmer who gives farm animals a chance at a reasonably pleasant life, short though it may be. I am even more grateful to those businesspeople working to devise excellent substitutes for the meat and dairy we consume. Being aware that animals have a central nervous system like ours and so feel pain as we do is the beginning of bringing necessary changes into being.

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I was heartsick after reading "Research dog's fate revealed" (Aug. 9). For 40 years I've been working with animals, with 20 of those years as a master's-qualified animal behaviorist. I was fortunate to study in Britain, where the feelings and emotions that human and nonhuman animals share were well-recognized, even in the 1980s, when computer-generated research and the use of human donors replaced animal testing. Working for the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, we successfully ended this horrific practice in the European Union.

This shift in consciousness has now occurred in this country. Marc Bekoff of the University of Colorado has long addressed the fact that nonhuman animals are far more similar to humans than different; yes, animals can and do feel pain and anxiety. Bekoff and Jane Goodall set forth "Ten Trusts" that we must honor with animals as custodians of this planet. In a University of Minnesota laboratory last year, "Bette," or beagle 4CC4, lived a life of loneliness and immense suffering; let us hope that her hard life and painful death were not in vain.

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New bike-lane crossing designations in blue stripes add to the confusion on our streets. East 26th Street has blue, Copenhagenish lines at bike crossings and driveways — places where the driver only has to look one way for car and bike traffic and ought to look anyway! So now there are yellow and blue to add to the confusion. Am I to try to prioritize blue and white and yellow crossings? Are not all crossings of the same safety value?

Please refer to Internet images of bike lanes and bike paths in Copenhagen.

It appears that I'm to learn to parallel park with oncoming traffic on the driver's side and oncoming bikes on the passenger side. I invariably skin the curb.

To add to my dismay, there are electric signs downtown in white that are difficult to read interspersed with the old metal ones. It's a mishmash of day- and night-legible signage.

I left South Dakota to teach in Bloomington in 1960 at the age of 25. There was Sid Hartman. In June of this year, I turned 80 — and there, still, is Sid Hartman. He certainly has become an icon for this state. I don't know how to start this, but I think a section of Target Field should be named for two of the sports characters of this time period — Halsey Hall and Hartman.