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EditorialsMuddlsd Waters Made MurkierThe Red Hook Sewer project is a benign enough-even useful-plan. It is,simply stated, a plan to move raw sewage which is now being dumped into theGowanus Canal and the Buttermilk Channel from Park Slope and SouthBrooklyn to a point in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, there to be scientificallytreated for disposal.The Gowanus Canal is nearly hopelessly polluted. The Buttermilk Channelis just as bad. W hile raw sewage continues to be dumped in the two estuaries,the problems will only get worse. Therefore there is every reason in the worldto dum p-and pum p-that sewage elsewhere, and treat it.Simple enough. Or so one would think. But no; in the hands of several cityagencies what began as a straightforward and sensible plan has grown into abureaucratic nightmare. In the course of construction work for the sewer overthe last three years, the South Brooklyn waterfront neighborhood has beenexcavated and left open; houses have weakened and collapsed; three peoplehave died and scores have lost homes; and work on the sewer remains to becompleted.Now trouble has cropped up on the other end of the project, in the BrooklynNavy Yard. Vinegar Hill is a new name for the community that borders theNavy Yard, a neighborhood that includes century old homes and is in anexciting%u2014if fledgling-process of renovation. Recent blasting in the Yard, todemolish the old concrete ship stays on the site of the proposed treatmentplant, threw concrete chunks onto neighborhood streets and throughwindows. By sheer luck the fragments resulted in no fatalities. Demolitionstopped. Earlier digging and constriiction left trenches open for months andcommunity members charge that during that time water leaked through tobasements and weakened foundations. The trenches were dug, in part to testthe strength of those foundations. The trenches are now filled, and diqqinqhasstoppkl.So now on both ends, everything has stopped, while city agencies consultand consider alternatives. But no one has ready alternatives. City EPA headFrancis McArdle says the city has learned its lesson from the waterfrontdisaster But it doesn%u2019t look like that to us. ILIooks more like the people ofVinegar Hill have learned from that Columbia Street disaster, and at thesefirst signs of trouble they are justifiably afraid for themselves.Building a %u201c killer%u201d sewer to clean up neighborhoods seems to us to be apretty muddled mixing of priorities.Walking Small By L. J. DavitBY L.J. DAVISI%u2019m a pinko. When you think bleeding heart liberal, think me. I am the original goo-goo. and my head is so pointy that when I cut my hair (on the infrequent occasions when I do cut it, bathe, shave, or change my clothes) I have to use a pencil sharpener. I have run an Arab for Congress on the Lower East Side and a poet for President in South Bend, Indiana. I am a Nixon-hater and a Wallace-baiter. I have devoted my life to the proposition that they also serve who only stand and prate.I cheerfully admit to all of the above and if you want to send me a one-way ticket to a socialist country (the Cotswolds are lovely this time of year), I%u2019m clearly your man. Heck, I%u2019ve never met a payroll, and the idea of the government running things fails to cause me to lose a second%u2019s sleep. (I do lose sleep when I think about the people who run the government, though, but that%u2019s a different story.) If I were on welfare I would probably cheat like Lockheed, and I am a firm believer in universal suffrage.In short, I am bad news.These are the things I will cheerfully admit about myself%u2014the beacons, as it were, by which I have steered my life%u2014 and I therefore experienced something of a twinge when I discovered the other day that in truth I am a fascist white racist pigwith a first-class ticket on the next tumbril. I admit to being white; except for not bathing (see above) there isn%u2019t much I can4 In short, I wastrapped in one ofthose snares thatappears to be mylot in life ,..%u2019do about that, having made a serious mistake in choosing my parents.Fascist-racist is something new, however, and I confess that I was fairly thrown for a loop by the accusation, especially because my interlocuter gave few if any signs of ever having heard of Italy, brown shirts, fasces, or Benito Mussolini and indeed gloried in his ignorance; for some reason, my own familiarity with the subject was taken as conclusive evidence of my racism, not my fascism, don%u2019t ask me why, it%u2019s complicated enough already.I have been accused of being somepeculiar things in my time%u2014in England, I was once officially declared a baby buggy, and here in Brooklyn our own gas company spent considerable treasure, effort, and idle threats in a doomed attempt to prove that I was actually Mrs. Esmeralda Colon%u2014but these were honest differences of opinion.Come to think of it, an honest difference of opinion is how I became a fascist. Or maybe it%u2019s how I became a racist. Having somebody scream hysterically in my face makes my ears ring, and you must forgive me if I%u2019m a little fuzzy on the subject.All I said was, I said I didn%u2019t think another low-income housing project in my neighborhood was exactly the best idea I%u2019d heard since the minimum wage.Now, it so happens that I%u2019d formed this opinion for a number of reasons, none of which need concern us just now. Suffice it to say that -I had given the matter some thought. This thought might have been good or bad, but even if it was a poor thing, it was mine own. I was even prepared to share my lucubrations on the subject, but this proved to be a fatal mistake: having thought about the subject was just another indictment on the list, another footnote in a catalogue of crime that soon bid fair to eclipse the career of the infamous Professor Moriarity himself. It was called: confusing the people with a lot of fancytheories. This, I gather is another of the sinister quirks of the middle-class mind, something%u2014a middle-class mind, that is%u2014that I hadn%u2019t even suspected I possessed. (I mean,-my maid and gardener don%u2019t think I have a middle-class mind, and my gamekeeper positively roared with laughter at the thought.)In short, I was trapped in one of those snares that appears to be my lot in life, wherein I find myself doomed to live out the reverse of the fable of the Emperor%u2019s Clothes: stripped to the buff of my identity, I am then piled with whatever vestments happen to be handy in the wardrobe of my companions%u2019 paranoia until, hey presto, a reasonable facsimile of somebody else%u2019s goofy fantasy life stands there, not me. This is somewhat harder than growing old, reasonably more pleasant than having an engine block dropped on your head, and not my idea of fun. Still, there it is, and it%u2019s certainly a lot easier than trying to figure out who, exactly, I happen to be. In order to do that, you would have to start off with the fact that I am Welsh. That%u2019s right, Welsh. Welsh and Swedish and French. Who knows anything about the Welsh and Swedes? Who knows anything true about the French?I think you see the problem. Now, if you%u2019ll just give me a hand with these SS shoulder tabs...Community ForumBY KENNETH P. NOLANIn the labyrinth of the Internal Revenue Code one sentence is 433 words long. Federal regulations concerning the size of a baby rattle to the type of toilet seat number 75,000 pages. Legal documents buttressed by %u201cin the event that%u201d and %u201cin light of the fact%u201d seem endless and incomprehensible. Even journalists stuff clauses and parentheticals into sentences.Length impresses and rewards. No longer are the arrested put in jail, but in detention facilities. School children don%u2019t study English but Language Arts. A library becomes a learning resource center.High school students write one sentence essays. %u201cTerm paperese%u201d satisfies the college assignment. When in doubt about a test question, write volumes is the professional school maxim.The struggle against the turgidity of prose has begun. President Carter demands that all regulations be written in clear, simple English and signed by their author. New York%u2019s %u201cPlain Language%u201d law mandates that all residential leases and consumer contracts under $50,000 be written %u201cin a clear and coherent manner using words with common and everyday meanings.%u201dFederal agencies have hired con-' %u2022 %u00bb t v ___i _ 1 __t_ T T 'IA n n | ,b iu id llfb , b u u i a a lv u u u tp u & i^ov-u, u u m v %u00bbof %u201cThe Art of Readable Writing,%u201d to assist in writing understandable regulations. President C arter%u2019s executive order compels agencies to review regulations. Kenneth P. Nolan is an attorney anda Windsor Terrace, Brooklyn, resident.periodically, to involve the public in their formulation and to publish semiannual agendas considering cost and alternatives.The Dept, of Labor has recently recommended eliminating 1100 regulations, including 10 of 12 pages of wooden ladder specifications and requirements that toilets in workplaces have open front seats. Increasingly, the farmer and merchant complain that regulations choke the small business. Yet they are so vast and often outmoded that government officials are unaware of their application.Mayor Koch urged a law preventing cars from blocking intersections only to learn such a regulation has been in effect since 1949. New York City's mind-boggling seven-volume, 8,000 page Administrative Code outlaws puppet shows from windows, the wearing of bathing suits on city streets, but orders hitching posts for horses outside City Hall.The Plain Language law, effective Nov. 1, 1978, legislates clarity of expression. The public should comprehend the consumer contract now glutted with legalese. Insurance policies, leases, installment contracts, pension plans would be affected. Toward this goal, one insurance company reduced the words in a conventional policy by 40 per cent. Businesses failing to comply are subject to a maximum penalty of $10,000.Banks, some attorneys and corporations have advocated the law %u2019s repeal, suggesting its ambiguity would increase litigation while courts determine new definitions. Because a document is simply stated is no indication that its interpretation will be without dispute, they claim. More importantly, they ask, should the already overburdened courts be arbiters of prose? What constitutes clear, simple English?%u2018Tocontend thatthe President%u2019sexecutive order orthe Plain Languagelaw are solutions isto underestimatethe problem.%u2019_____Amendments eliminating the prohibition against technical language, such as %u201cC.O.D.,%u201d and resolving conflicts with other laws that compel specific contractual language have been enacted. Yet difficulties persist. A business can not determine in advance whether its contracts conform to the law. Liability remains vague. Even the law itself is not written in plain language. It states in part: %u201cAny creditor, sellor or lessor who fails to comply with the foregoing provisions of this subdivision shall be liable to a consumer who is a party to a written agreement governed by the provisions thereof ...%u201dTo contend that the P resident%u2019sexecutive order or the Plain Language law are solutions is to underestimate the problem. Few write well. From college presidents to judges to Ph.D.s, to be verbose and confusing, is to succeed. Bureaucrats and experts hide behind their jargon.Legal terms of art, such as %u201cconsideration,%u201d %u201cexecuted,%u201d etc., are useful. But only where the accompanying language is clear. Without legal study, an intricate real estate lease will continue to be an enigma. The standard apartment lease, or an installment contract on a washing machine should be explicit.During the 60%u2019s and early 70%u2019s schools disregarded gram m ar, accepting the vernacular of the street. Literature was discussed; composition ignored. Remedial writing programs have been instituted, but only piecemeal. One half the English curriculum should be writing. %u2014The burden, however, lies on the universities and professional schools who certify the authors of our rules. We mistakenly assume a college graduate can write, although writing was never studied.Law is a profession of words. .Yet most law schools do not consider communication. New York%u2019s largest law firm, Shearman & Sterling, hired an instructor to teach the simple sentence. Of the 60 writing samples submitted by associates from me rnosi prestigious iaw schools, not one was acceptable.Knowing your subject is insufficient. Unable to communicate, the bureaucrat who writes policy or the legislator who creates law fails. Writing, a skill and art, must be learned.Page 6, TH E PHOENIX, August 24,1978