Readers React: El Niño: Why ‘bad’ weather is good for animals, plants and people

To the editor: Where is the joy? Yes, El Niño may well bring floods, mudslides and more. Yes, we have failed to create an infrastructure to capture rain. (“Fires followed by floods: California faces dramatic climate year with El Nino, drought,” July 21)

But what about all the water-starved beings in our region: the plants and trees, the birds and the animals? We coexist with these other beings that will be blessed, along with us, by nature’s gift of rain.

What does it say about our connection to the natural world that El Niño is framed so much as a problem that won’t really serve us humans? I say, “Gracias, El Niño.”

Sharon Whittle, Pasadena

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To the editor: OK, we nonbelievers are impressed. About four weeks ago, an interfaith “prayer for rain” ceremony convened in Chino, as reported by The Times on June 21. Seven different deities were formally beseeched to deliver us from the worsening drought.

Those incantations obviously worked. Recently, Southern California received rainfall breaking all records for July.

Not to seem ungrateful, but could the interfaith group tweak its prayers a bit? Next time it should ask that the divinely prompted precipitation be more evenly distributed, so as to not wash out bridges on vital highway links.

And, oh, would it be asking too much to have God and the gods dispense with the high heat and humidity in future storms? Otherwise I might be moved to pray for money to buy an air conditioner.

Aaron Mills , Solana Beach

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To the editor: Since rain in California appears to be too much or almost nothing in a given year, and surface storage is limited and expensive, why not intensify efforts to replenish aquifers?

With all of the wells that have caused concern for depleting aquifers, we have a good idea of where the aquifers are and could quickly place replenishment wells in locations where excess water is known to accumulate during anticipated El Niño rainstorms.

For example, I would think that farmers in the San Joaquin Valley would have the experience and desire to refill that vast aquifer, whose water level has fallen by more than

3 million acre-feet over the last few decades, and they have the irrigation system in place to capture and direct excess water.

Adding to aquifer replenishment infrastructure in the concrete metropolitan area of Los Angeles County would require more time and effort, but it would give us all the satisfaction of not wasting precious rainfall without the difficulty of siting more reservoirs.

Dan Hutchison, Hawthorne

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