Readers React:  Dusty dreams near the Salton Sea

To the editor: In rapid succession, The Times has written brilliant front-page articles on the impending demise of the Salton Sea and the desperate lives of farmworker families scattered in trailer parks between Thermal and Mecca. Yet the connection was not made. (“Bumper crop of squalor,” Oct. 6, and “Hope is drying up,” Oct. 1)

The thousands of adults and children in the trailer parks live a few miles from the Salton Sea. If the Salton Sea is allowed to evaporate, who do we think will be hit hardest by the toxic dust that will be left?

Will the children wash the poisonous dust away with the tainted water? Where is the humanity?

Jack Shakely, Rancho Mirage

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To the editor: In your article, an organizer for a nonprofit says: “It’s like the abyss of the Valley. We get left out of the California dream.”

Maybe this person should ask some of these people to take them back to where and how they were living in Mexico.

At least these people build their own communities, help one another and are paid a fair wage to feed and clothe their families.

None of us automatically gets to live the California dream, not even the people who are born in here. These people have gotten themselves a good start on it — and each generation will achieve a little bit more of that dream, as long as they are willing to provide for themselves as they have.

Vickie Casas, Los Angeles

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To the editor: As a professional in the construction industry, I am very aware of the difficulty of obtaining approvals and permits for nearly any type of construction project, especially in California.

I am building a single-family home, and permits and fees will cost tens of thousands of dollars. Many of these fees, costs and requirements are questionable at best, and many are just another method of taxation.

Most people are sympathetic to the plight of those in the story, but to waive the requirements for some projects but not others is unfair. Either we are a country of rules and laws, which are applied equally and to all, or we are not.

Doug Clagg, El Segundo

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To the editor: On a humanitarian basis, one can have deep sympathy for the plight of people living in the conditions described.

However, for those who illegally enter the U.S., then set up “camps” that turn to squalor, who don’t speak English and who don’t understand our laws of habitation, why should the public be forced to provide a solution to a situation that should never have occurred in the first place? If slum landlords or exploitative farmers are beneficiaries, why aren’t they assessed the cost to clean up these messes?

Bob Aronoff, Pasadena

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