Development and Redevelopment

* My thanks to the Times for telling me about Milt McAuley (“Inveterate Hiker, Author Guides Several Generations to the Beauties of the Santa Monicas,” Aug. 23). I have become a lover of the Santa Monica trails and I will look for some of his literature to help me discover and enjoy them.

The irony of the article is the fact that on the opposite page are letters telling how the Los Angeles City Council has put a developer on the Department of Water and Power board and given him power in decision making over an environmental issue. This would be funny but for the fact that California is under assault in every quarter from developers whose lives and fortunes revolve around habitat destruction.

Dear council members, think redevelopment. That is, the improvement of developed areas.

Rick Caruso and his crowd are not interested in redevelopment because it is cheaper to plow up fresh earth rather that fix what has been blighted and can be fixed again.

CHUCK HEINOLD

West Hills

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* Re “High-Power Sale,” Aug. 9.

What a loss it would be to develop Chatsworth Reservoir!

There is nothing else left of this size, and we are fortunate enough to have the Nature Conservancy available to lease the land. There will always be other places to put golf courses and sports fields, but there will not be another place in the city of Los Angeles to have a nature preserve of this size.

This land is currently shown in the city’s General Plan as open space, and this is what it should stay. We know that the Department of Water and Power has money problems, but it can sell many other parcels it owns to raise money, without sacrificing this beautiful, ecologically significant area.

Many people and groups have been working for years to save the reservoir as a nature preserve and are so frustrated that they have been stopped so close to their goal.

DWP board: You have the ability to make a great contribution to the Los Angeles area by preserving this reservoir for future generations. Please don’t sacrifice this beautiful preserve for short-term cash flow.

PEGGY DEKOM

Chatsworth

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* Did You ever go away on vacation and come back from the open farmlands and rolling hills of Missouri or Oregon or our own San Joaquin or Napa valleys to our dirty air and never-ending pavement? The Chatsworth Reservoir is inhabited by the gray horned owl, the Canada geese, the bobcat, mule deer and the other species, much like the days before 1918. It has been empty since the 1971 Sylmar earthquake and brings the sweet smell of wild oats and fresh air to the Valley.

The issue of urban sprawl and the destruction of another wildlife habitat rears its ugly head. The DWP owns 400 other properties, but the Chatsworth Reservoir could bring $50 million to DWP coffers, per Rick Caruso, developer and chairman of the DWP [board of directors]. Leasing the land to the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy (championed by Councilman Hal Bernson) would cut $50,000 to $350,000 from the DWP’s annual maintenance, but Caruso dropped those negotiations while a study is being done. He had just better think about the lasting impact of adding another golf course, soccer field or housing development. When it’s gone, it’s gone!

“If all the beasts were gone, we would die of great loneliness of spirit. For whatever happens to the beast, happens to us. All things are connected. Whatever befalls the earth, befalls the children of the earth,” Chief Seattle.

SUSAN MOYER

West Hills