Dear Editor: While I’m much in favor of well-maintained utilities and safe construction practices, some efforts seem to go a bit overboard and leave our city permanently disfigured.

Specifically I’m referring to the pre-construction paint marks all over the place indicating where and what work is to be done and the location of potentially unseen hazards.

Some of these may be marginally helpful to the crews in the absence of good drawings of the job and the site, but those which are not destroyed by the project remain long after the work is done. In fact, some seem to still be present when the next project in the area comes along.

Essentially, it has become an officially sanctioned form of graffiti. However, it is a blight on the quality of all of the neighborhoods in which these projects crop up.

While some of this is likely required by law and not under the control of the city, surely within a week of the project’s termination the contractors could be required to make it disappear, either 1.) by removing it without leaving scars in the underlying surface, or 2.) by covering it up with something more permanent than the original markings.

As it is, we are leaving disfiguring marks to be discovered by anthropologists of the next millennium who will be left to wonder why we took such poor care of our visual environment.

Hugh Hoskins

Downey

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Published: June 19, 2014 - Volume 13 - Issue 10