Be prepared
To the editor:
Welcome to hurricane season! Be sure to check your stash of water supply, batteries, etc.
You may have recently lost your insurance protection, so add to your checklist getting gouged with a hefty insurance hike in your bill while refreshing your hurricane homeowners’ insured status. The craven toadying for insurance company campaign contributions from our Republican-dominated legislators has resulted in new legislation largely aimed at allowing insurance companies to gouge consumers and refuse payment on claims.
This legislation means you may be largely unprotected in the event of a hurricane incident in your home. Insurance carriers that refused payment on claims until sued, have been rewarded by the Republicans with new restrictions on lawyer intervention. Removing pesky lawsuits on behalf of the consumer predictably means more homes will be lost to damage while the roof repairs wait on insurance carriers’ delay tactics.
Also this is the week to stop fertilizing your yard. During the summer, poisoning the water supply is not lawful. Your lawn is part of the aqua filter. Here in Cape Coral we have ground water and seepage to our water supply. So please don’t spray poison on your lawn until October. Not only does fertilizer create red tide and green algae which kill manatees and the water life; it can create airborne neurotoxins that can impact those of us who breathe using air. You may literally be making yourself crazy to create a green lawn in an environment unsuitable to lawns in the first place.
Please consider being a good environmental steward this year, and stash your toxins in a waterproof container out of reach of the kids until after the end of the hurricane season. We love what you’ve done with the place, by the way.
Ellen Starbird
Cape Coral