Letter: Zoo solar (November 29, 2012)

Your article “Zoo’s newest exhibit: solar” (Business, Nov. 28) told us far too much about how this city works.

The main entrance to the zoo parking lot is now adorned with 50 solar-powered electric-vehicle recharging stations.

What we have to do is strip the Kumbaya from this travesty and lay the reality before the world.

1. The project was 100 percent paid for by the U.S. taxpayer and SDG&E ratepayers – that’s all of us – few of whom will ever see or use it. And the zoo is promising more of this in the very near future (probably to go with [a] new $10 a day parking lot).
2. While no one dared tell us what it actually cost, a fair number would be nearly a million dollars. And while the solar panels might last only about 20 years, the supports seem so overbuilt as to be to NASA specs and capable of surviving a nuclear blast.
3. The top three “celebrants” at the grand opening of this thing (Sanders, Gully, Avery) … are about as connected to the reality of the common man as Justin Bieber or Madonna.
4. The good news is that people seem to be able to drive their battery-powered cars to a socket and then suck enough juice to go home and power their house (a feature offered by many electric vehicles) – at the taxpayer and ratepayer’s expense.

All we need now are federal grants so that people can get one of those electric cars and plug that sucker in! Oh! That’s right! There already are federal grants!

Robert Beken, San Diego