Clean Air

Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan deserves congratulations for standing up to the Air Quality Management District and environmentalists and pushing for a delay in the new smog rules (Aug. 10 and 13).

Just like Minnesota has winters and Florida has hurricanes, Los Angeles has smog, and always did, even in the days of the Indians when it was called the “bay of smokes.” The bureaucrats have been trying to clean our air for years, but nature won’t let them. We’re at a point now where the new smog plans from AQMD and EPA will cripple what’s left of our economy and destroy a lot of individual freedom, but do hardly anything to improve the air.

Every politician running for office this November, from Kathleen Brown and Pete Wilson on down, should be forced to commit themselves like Riordan has. Will they stand with the ordinary people of Los Angeles and the basin and fight the regulators and environmentalists? Or will they cave in and let the clean-air junkies make a disaster area of L.A. for the sake of air quality standards that nature won’t let us meet?

JORDAN A. SIMPSON

Huntington Beach

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How distressing to read that Mayor Riordan’s cynical, tired plan for economic growth in Los Angeles is to wage war on clean air. Here’s another idea. Let’s start with the premise that Angelenos are entitled to clean, nontoxic air. Period. Then let’s create the strongest economy we can while continuing to have clean, nontoxic air.

If the mayor believes we can’t have a strong economy and a healthy environment, then let’s replace him with a mayor who thinks we can.

VICTOR FRESCO

Venice