Two Views on the Damming of the Sespe

John Flynn’s 51-mile Sespe Creek compromise is no compromise at all.

The last four miles have been developed for more than 100 years and flow through the city of Fillmore. That is hardly the criteria for a “Wild and Scenic River.” To take all 55 miles of Sespe Creek would cost millions of eminent domain dollars. We would have to kick four miles of families off property they own and have worked for generations. Sen. Alan Cranston’s 55-mile bill still advocates that legal slugfest. How out of touch and uneducated can that untenable position be?

Now County Supervisor John Flynn comes out and says, OK, let’s give up those last four miles. Huh? Let’s be clear--we never had it. It is the “Keep the Sespe Wild” zealots who demand total control of the whole river--at everybody’s expense. Now your newspaper calls Flynn’s 51 miles a Sespe compromise.

Thirty-two percent of California rivers are already “Wild and Scenic,” compared to a nationwide average of 4%. We cannot afford any more. In this semiarid desert we have a responsibility to our future generations to keep our water options open for reservoirs anywhere on the Sespe.

CHUCK BENNETT, Ojai