Readers React: A new environmentally destructive freeway in L.A. County? You’re kidding

To the editor: As I drove the 14 and 395 Freeways to Mammoth Lakes recently, I thought that while I did not like to look at so many electricity-generating windmills on the landscape, we need renewable energy and the infrastructure that creates it must go somewhere.

So there’s a difference between windmills in the desert and the proposed 63-mile freeway that would connect Palmdale and Lancaster to Victorville, Apple Valley and Adelanto. (“L.A. County set to build its first new freeway in 25 years, despite many misgivings,” Feb. 10)

The freeway will permanently scar the landscape and obliterate some of the last available open space in Los Angeles County. Massive new developments will accompany the freeway, creating a second San Fernando Valley in the desert.

The highway developers are moving forward with a highly flawed environmental impact report that fails to address what will happen to endangered animals in the high desert or our iconic Joshua trees. This is totally unacceptable.

I thought California had matured to the point where we can develop transportation and housing projects and also protect the environment at the same time. To keep California golden, we must reject this destructive project.

Belinda Faustinos, Rosemead

The writer is executive director of the group Nature for All and the former head of the San Gabriel and Lower Los Angeles Rivers and Mountains Conservancy.

..

To the editor: They have got to be kidding!

At the same time as the California Air Resources Board is holding SB 375 hearings on how California can meet its goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the state 40% by 2030 (transportation is the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions, by the way), this new toll highway proposal is being touted to “relieve anticipated traffic congestion” from the very sprawl development that it itself would bring into the Antelope Valley.

Darrell Clarke, Pasadena

The writer is transportation chair of the Sierra Club Angeles Chapter.

Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinion and Facebook.