The Santa Clara River Must Be Protected

I would like to congratulate Amy Pyle and Richard Lee Colvin on an excellent article concerning the Santa Clara River (April 25).

As an 18-year resident and community activist, I would like to emphasize how important the people of Santa Clarita feel their river is. I can’t tell you how often I hear, “We don’t want to end up like the San Fernando Valley,” and central to that complaint is the concreting of the Los Angeles River.

The city of Santa Clarita has proposed an excellent river plan for the portion of the Santa Clara in its borders. The river would remain a central open space greenbelt linking neighborhoods with a common recreation focal point of bike trails, paths, recreational facilities such as golf courses and baseball diamonds and natural riparian habitat.

These recreational uses of a flood plain are logical, precluding the need for channelization to protect property improperly located there. Recreational facilities would allow watershed and natural habitat to remain intact and co-exist with an urban area as they have to some extent in the Sepulveda Basin.

The Santa Clara River is designated a Significant Ecological Area by the general plans of Los Angeles County and the city of Santa Clarita. This designation requires that development be compatible with the existing natural resource. There are 61 of these areas throughout the county.

The SEA designation has been sorely abused by developers and the county planning process. It is time the citizens of L. A. County stand up and demand that SEAs such as the Santa Clara River be properly protected and that flood-plain designations be properly respected by limiting development in those areas.

LYNNE A. PLAMBECK

Newhall