Nurses join others, including Food & Water Watch, in Carson where the city council is voting tonight on a temporary ban on oil drilling following fracking concerns.

As registered nurses and Fallbrook Healthcare District residents, red flags went up for us when we read last week’s Village News. How can this be? For those who may not know, our little community hospital is operated by the largest for-profit corporation in America – Community Health Systems (CHS), which made $265 million in profits in 2013, according to Fortune magazine. It seems the healthcare district has already spent some of our money on a consultant’s report and held months of closed-door meetings leading up to the article.

I am a Nebraska citizen from Holt County. I have been speaking out against KXL since my first editorial in April 2009. I drink water from the aquifer, 52 feet down, absolutely pure, no treatment or filtration needed. The first route would have been 2 miles to the west of our private well and I was terrified. I called the EPA and an environmental scientist told me he would be concerned also. My concerns were confirmed when I heard Dr Goeke, a UNL water specialist (who now the pipeline proponents quote as having no concern to the water) testify at a NE legislative hearing Dec 1, 2010 that contaminants could migrate up to 2 miles in our groundwater!

Nurses at Marin General Hospital are demanding action to resolve what they say are potentially dangerous patient care issues at the county's largest hospital. Ten nurses voiced their concerns at Tuesday night's meeting of the Marin Healthcare District board. The district board oversees Marin General; but a separate board deals with the hospital's day-to-day operations. Ninety nurses have signed a petition calling on the hospital to respond to a detailed list of issues affecting patient care. The nurses say many of the problems stem from inadequate staffing and continued difficulties utilizing the hospital's new computerized physician order entry system.