Improving Flood Protection in California

Peter King’s challenging column (Jan. 8) on the great California flood calls for new thinking about the urgent need to develop a comprehensive program to prevent repetitive recurrence of such disasters. The real problem: Do we have among the leaders in government, business, technology and the environmental community enough people with the intellectual capacity and the political will to accept that challenge?

Initial signs are not encouraging. In the same day’s paper, Gov. Pete Wilson ratchets up his tiresome and mean-spirited campaign of welfare bashing.

While developers gobble up more acreage in the San Joaquin Valley building housing tracts in flood plains, will our elected officials in Sacramento (including all those new “citizen legislators”) have the vision to do more than bicker about how little can be spent to patch up the existing (and inadequate) flood-control infrastructure?

To those who cringe at a possible modest tax increase to do the job right--think back on the most revealing media image of the past few weeks. It was a shot of a billboard standing in the middle of a vast open field announcing plans for still another new housing development. Advancing flood waters were already lapping at the bottom of the sign. Is that what we want the future of California to be?

SAUL HALPERT

Sherman Oaks

* Call me a river hugger, but contrary to George Skelton’s implications (“Be Careful What River You Ask For,” Jan. 6), I have almost as much respect for the types of water projects my grandfather helped build as I do for the rivers created by nature. One didn’t grow up as Pat Brown’s grandson--both camping with him in the mountains of the Sierra Nevada and going to a ribbon-cutting for a new dam--and not come away with an appreciation for the impressive endeavors of humans and the marvelous creations of Mother Nature.

Where does this leave us in the face of an inland sea that’s risen up in Northern California? Much as my grandfather would have done, I look at such a crisis and see opportunities, not scapegoats.

The great opportunity we now have is to win public support for both reinvesting in the state’s existing waterworks system and allowing our rivers more room to breathe. Each has clearly suffered from lack of interest and respect, and accomplishing those things could greatly improve public safety and the environment.

Rather than blaming some nonexistent “purists” for flooding, we should be embracing a balanced and thoughtful effort at improving flood protection and enhancing our river systems.

CHARLES CASEY

Associate Conservation Director

Friends of the River, Sacramento