Water

Your editorial plea for the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power and Owens Valley to work together on a new water agreement (“Working Together on Water,” Oct. 18) is praiseworthy. However, some of your rhetoric belies a subtle bias that must be confronted before a truly workable agreement is possible.

Specifically, Angelenos must realize that the water supply they consider “vital to the well-being of 3 million people . . .” is in a large part being used to keep golf courses and residential landscaping green and is therefore no more justifiable than using water in the Owens Valley “. . . just to grow alfalfa or irrigate streamside greenery” (which, incidentally, Angelenos enjoy by the thousands as tourists each year).

A drive through neighborhoods in Bishop and other towns of the Owens Valley reveals a landscape that is much more in tune with the desert environment. Los Angeles is also a natural desert and, perhaps, its citizens could learn a valuable lesson from the way their northern neighbors live within climatic and geographical constraints.

FRANK L. POWELL

Bishop