Letters to the Editor: We’re building more suburbs in a water emergency. How is this possible?

To the editor: We all know California is in a severe drought, and soon we will surely have to make mandatory cutbacks in water use. The California Department of Water Resources, according to one of your recent articles, has just issued a “0% water allocation, a milestone that reflects the dire conditions in California.”

Yet now we are to welcome the development of nearly 20,000 homes in the brand-new Centennial community at Tejon Ranch in the far northwest portion of Los Angeles County?

Even as the developer claims Centennial will be a “net-zero” emissions community designed to “combat global warming,” where will this community get its water? Again, aren’t we in an ongoing and severe drought? And don’t we all think there are just too many people in California at this point?

Endless growth and entire new communities cannot be the answer when water resources are becoming more and more scarce. Until we have established new ways to collect water during storms, created more reservoirs, and expedited desalination plants, it’s the height of irresponsibility to build a new huge community in Southern California, no matter how “net-zero emissions” the developer claims it will be.

We just don’t have the water. Or do we? Which is it?

Sandy Johnson, Woodland Hills

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To the editor: L.A.’s streets teem with homeless encampments, minimum wage earners pay the bulk of their paycheck to their landlord, bidding wars drive single-family homes beyond the reach of the middle class — and the Center for Biological Diversity and the California Native Plant Society have nothing better to pursue than to try and make it even worse by opposing the developments at Tejon Ranch.

Kudos to Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Mitchell Beckloff for telling them to take a hike. These two outfits seem to have never met a home for a human that they liked and have always ignored the social consequences of their actions.

It is time to get a shovel in the ground and make these homes available to suffering L.A. residents.

Mike Post, Winnetka

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To the editor: Hasn’t the L.A. County Board of Supervisors learned anything from the Woolsey fire, Bobcat fire and other wildfires that have destroyed neighborhoods?

The urban-wildland interface is an unwise location for further housing development in Southern California. We do need more housing; zoning density is a wiser, safer course than wilderness development.

Yet once again, money motivates while science is silenced. We never learn.

Kay Blanco, Santa Monica