Saving Our Ocean From the Fate of Our Rivers

There’s the matter of the Los Angeles, San Gabriel and Santa Ana rivers, which were turned into huge concrete ditches. My imagination transports me back to the time, not too long ago as time goes, a little more than a century, when the rivers were free to meander as they would across the natural flood plains.

None of the early settlers were stupid enough to build homes on a flood plain.

That kind of stupidity came into vogue a little later on. It came with increasing urban congestion and the urge to make a buck from real estate development of the flood plains.

The rivers were sunk in concrete channels. The opportunity to let the rivers have their way across flood plains that would provide a natural and agricultural richness was lost.

Also lost to the future was natural replenishment of sand, lost through erosion, on our beaches, not to mention the disappearance of our estuaries, nurseries for fish populations.

Alas, today we cannot undo the damage done to our environment. But we can prevent future damage by shedding the old growth-at-any-cost attitudes that threaten to transform Southern California into an urban wasteland.

Proper rivers we have no longer. But a proper ocean we still have--or, at any rate, an ocean that seems to be withstanding the stupid urban assaults we make upon it. But the warning signs are there. Toxic wastes are exerting their ravaging effects. Fish populations are suffering. Seismic blasts shake the ocean floor in the search for oil.

Additional offshore oil drilling looms, with threat of increased pollution.

I can still see Stewart L. Udall, interior secretary from 1961 to 1969 and a conservationist, telling an audience at UC Santa Barbara in the fall of 1965 that, no, there would be no oil drilling in federal waters off the coast.

Less than a year later, they began building the platforms. Then came the great oil spill of 1969.

Now we have Secretary of the Interior Donald P. Hodel, who faces the same old oil politics as did his predecessors.

After all, oil is what wags the nation and the world.

Still . . . I cannot help myself from voicing a wee objection. That ocean out there is so beautiful, so magnificent in all her moods, such a great source of life, that it’s a crying shame to mar her surface with more oil platforms and run the risk of more pollution.

I suggest, Mr. Secretary, that we take note of what has happened to our rivers and flood plains. Maybe we could all drive a little slower, use a little less energy generally and sink a few less oil wells into our ocean floor.

In the end, I think, secretaries of the interior would sleep with better consciences, and in their retirement years be able to enjoy watching the seascape, uncluttered by a forest of oil rigs.

A man who can give such a precious gift to future generations is certainly a man for all reasons.

I wish there had been such a man for our rivers and flood plains.

And estuaries. And airports. And freeways.

What a wonderful land this could have been, could be, can be, with a lot more caring for the natural amenities.