Re-landscaping isn’t only answer

Re Adan Ortega’s letter on native plants (Letters, Dec. 4): Southern California, without its cooling lawns and shady trees, without its camellias, azaleas, gardenias, ferns and seasonal bedding flowers, would be a very different place indeed. Native plants can be lovely, but often for no more than three months of the year.

Only 5% of California’s water is used by residential consumers, while 85% is used by agriculture. And yet, residential customers are required to do 100% of the water conserving, while the state imposes no mandatory conservation requirements on agriculture.

Rather than spending millions of our ratepayer dollars propagandizing for re-landscaping with drought-tolerant plants, it’s time that the Metropolitan Water District puts its influential lobbying efforts to work in Sacramento on our behalf. MWD needs to get the Legislature to require California’s No. 1 industry, agriculture, to do its full part in conserving water.

Ellen Stern Harris

Beverly Hills

Ellen Stern Harris is a Metropolitan Water District board member emeritus and executive director of the Fund for the Environment