Clearing Flood Control Channels

Re “A Time to Clear All Channels,” Oct. 26.

Flood control channels have been constructed for one reason: controlling floods to protect lives and property. To now re-designate them as habitat is as foolish as prohibiting brush clearance from high-fire areas.

While The Times is critical of the disagreement among supervisors on the best way to clear flood control channels, you miss the fact that arbitrary regulations from the federal level place an unfunded mandate of approximately $30 million on new “mitigation” measures. Mitigation, in this case, means replanting weeds from the channels to other locations, up to a 3-to-1 ratio. This cost robs the special fund property taxpayers pay for vital flood control channels.

Like an exotic fungus, the bureaucratic maze is blocking local officials from taking logical steps to protect residents’ lives and property. For almost two years, Public Works has been attempting to secure the required permits to clear the channels. It will be after the first of 1998 before we are best prepared for predicted El Nino storms.

Common sense must prevail. Lives must always take priority over vegetation that grows in flood control channels after they are built. Congress needs to act to restore sanity to the terrible imbalance that now threatens all of us before the El Nino storms hit Southern California.

MICHAEL D. ANTONOVICH

Supervisor, 5th District

* Re “Dispute Delays Clearing of Channels,” Oct. 22.

For whom do [Zev] Yaroslavsky and [Gloria] Molina think these channels were constructed? Certainly not for some obscure animal or plant life. While I support the conservation of wetlands and other animal habitat, the fact that certain animals or plants are thriving in these channels should not ameliorate the county’s responsibility to maintain the channels for the purpose for which they were constructed.

Second, who voted for these two individuals? Birds? Plants? The voters and taxpayers of this county are entitled to a return on their votes and taxes. What do Yaroslavsky and Molina think is more cost-effective: Hiring bulldozers, backhoes and dump trucks to clear the channels now, or paying to clean up flood damage? The answer is very simple.

MICHAEL J. ALLEGRETTI

Northridge