Clearing Trees on Riverbank

On Nov. 30 my wife and I went bike riding along the L.A. River alongside Griffith Park, south of the Glendale Freeway. We happened upon a bunch of trucks and men chopping up tree branches along the bikeway. The lead man was pretty curt, telling us that the orange cone by his truck meant we were not to pass. He also started defending the Army Corps of Engineers’ rationale for tree removal, saying it was “to keep trees from being uprooted and driven into bridges, clogging the flow and flooding innocent women and children out of their homes.”

We turned around and noted about 30 or 40 full-grown trees lying on the riverbank, totally brown in tree death. These were undoubtedly cut down weeks before and left in the riverbed, presumedly to wash into some bridge downstream. Left alone, some of these have stood for decades against the river, but I guess the corps needs them to show what happens when they get uprooted (by a chain saw) and cause the very damage they predicted. That’ll teach us to question their wisdom.

LOUIS MRAZ

Los Angeles