Boland’s Push for Valley Secession Is Ill-Advised

* I was dismayed to read of Assemblywoman Paula L. Boland’s (R-Granada Hills) interest in having the San Fernando Valley secede from the city of Los Angeles (“Boland’s Next Breakup Drive: Separating the Valley From L.A.,” Oct. 13). Such Balkanization is ill-conceived for a variety of reasons.

First, Boland must be unaware of the reason the then-rural San Fernando Valley voted for annexation to Los Angeles: water. The large land interests in the Valley were some of the main support for the construction of the Owens Valley Aqueduct, on the assumption that the city would simply sell the windfall water supply for Valley agricultural use. Unanticipated in their scheme was the outcome of Vernon vs. City of Los Angeles, in which it was ruled that Los Angeles enjoyed exclusive rights to water brought into the drainage of the L.A. River but that it could not sell that water. If the Valley wanted L.A. water, it had to be part of Los Angeles, which is why the Valley sought annexation in 1915.

Should the Valley now secede, it would lose its claim to DWP water and would have to seek water from the over-allocated Colorado River and the California Aqueduct. This would make for challenging politics throughout the state and the West, bad-tasting water and probably a permanent condition of water restriction.

Second, the breakup of the city of Los Angeles would result in needless duplication of municipal government and service bureaucracies. In the current era of fiscal crisis, this is an unaffordable luxury.

Third, the fragmentation of a single functional urban economy across ever more municipal bodies rules out any sort of unified response to those problems affecting the entire metropolitan area, such as smog and economic restructuring. There would be contradictory responses to these problems and turf wars, all carried out by ever more tax-funded municipal politicians and all harmful to the residents of the greater L.A. area.

If the Assembly voice from Granada Hills goes through with this ill-advised scheme, might her next campaign be the secession of California from the Union?

CHRISTINE M. RODRIGUE

Reseda