Offshore Rigs

Secretary of the Interior Donald Paul Hodel, in his response (Letters, May 20) to criticism about the federal government’s plan for offshore oil leasing along the California coast, dismissed the visual pollution created by the closest inshore derricks as having “an apparent size smaller than a dime held at arm’s length to a person on the beach.” In stating how negligible a size this is, though, Hodel might do well to remember that both the sun and the moon are also merely the size of “a dime held at arm’s length.” Hopefully, Hodel is endowed with abnormally long arms and particularly small dimes.

TIMOTHY E. HULLAR

Riverside