Arroyo realities

I read the article on the Arroyo Seco in the May 29 Star-News and said to myself "They have to be kidding". I read the article again and decided, these guys are serious. First I would recommend that they go to the Pasadena library and get a copy of "Pasadena One Hundred Years," turn to page 33 and see what Pasadena and Altadena looked like in 1900 from Echo Mountain, and they will notice that man has planted 95 percent of the trees you see today. Second, you can see the west bank of the Arroyo Seco, which is an inner gorge and there is no navigable river and only a few trees. There are still a few native giant oaks and some sycamores that follow the old stream bed from Millard Canyon all the way down to the Los Angeles River.

The water that you see in the concrete channel today is there because of the concrete channel. There never was a year-round river. I live in Altadena, north of Altadena Drive and west of Lake Ave. Today I poured water from a bucket onto a rose bush and in 29 seconds the water was gone. If the concrete flood-control channel was not there, I am sure that the water from the little stream would leach into the ground before it reached Washington Boulevard.

I remember the flood of 1938. I was in the second grade, and after the rain stopped, our family took a drive to see the damage. That picturesque little stream at Devils Gate Dam had become a roaring, raging torrent with the water going over the spillway. You don't need to plot a new course -- the water in flood stage goes where it wants to go, and it went straight south and took out the golf course.

I don't know where the water went when it got to the Rose Bowl. Maybe a hydrologist and fluvial geomorphologist plotted a new path around the structure because it is still there. I have seen water over the spillway and the flood control channel full more than once and it worked beautifully, and that certainly justifies it being there. When we have those occasional heavy rains and the ground is saturated to the point that the dam overflows, there is nothing you can do, as it happens in a matter of hours.

I know it is the duty of some to spend state money, but you can accomplish a lot more for a lot less by cleaning and repairing that wonderful flood-control channel.

M. Bruce Chubbuck
Altadena