Letters to the Editor: Suburban housing in the Verdugo Mountains is a terrible idea

To the editor: Thank you for the excellent article about the threat to the Verdugo Mountains posed by the Canyon Hills luxury housing project.

We’re grappling with a human-caused climate crisis. It would be madness to destroy extensive natural carbon sinks.

We’re also experiencing the planet’s sixth mass extinction, another human-caused event threatening biodiversity. Reduced biodiversity contributes to unstable and unhealthy ecosystems.

The government’s primary obligation is to protect people, or at least it ought to be. The city of Los Angeles has the opportunity to discharge that obligation, in part, by requiring a new environmental impact report.

We should study, as part of the report, public acquisition of privately held land in the Verdugo Mountains for a wildlife sanctuary. L.A. is park poor, and this could help ensure that the land remains wild to help cool L.A.’s heat island and clean its filthy air.

Robert Leyland Monefeldt, Los Angeles

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To the editor: This project “sparks” worry — indeed.

The L.A. City Council approved the Canyon Hills environmental impact report in 2005. Eighteen years is a lifetime in terms of environmental planning, and the fire risk that Canyon Hills poses to extant neighborhoods is beyond irresponsible.

When we talk about the need to build housing, this is the opposite of what we mean. Constructing resilient communities for the future demands building up, not out.

Just months after the death of P-22, are we seriously debating whether mountain lions have the right to exist in this region? Are we seriously about to play with this level of fire danger?

This project cannot go forward without additional review.

Walden Corcoran, Valley Glen

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To the editor: The problem with construction in that hillside location is not the flammable plants. That would be mitigated to some degree by what we have seen in our suburbs for many decades: Scrap the native plants and install wide asphalt streets, with curbs and manicured grass from a nursery provider.

A better solution is to ban housing construction that includes lumber framing. Few other advanced countries build homes that contain dry lumber in walls and trusses.

Wood is cheap, and home builders are stuck in their ways. Result: The United States ranks 59th in the world in fire safety, calculated as fire deaths per 100,000 people.

Our houses last for decades. Other developed countries build with masonry, steel and concrete, which last for centuries.

Mike Roddy, Alameda