Not quite going with the flow

Re “For L.A.’s waterways, it’s not easy being green,” Feb. 12

While the concrete trough we call a river was surely a mistake, I can think of a hundred other more pressing uses for our tax dollars than spending $2 billion to restore the Los Angeles River to its natural state.

The premise is that the restoration will enable a sense of community and bring beauty to our stucco-box sprawl. Our city seems to have difficulty in keeping up the parks we already have; what makes us think we would do any better with a 32-mile-long version of the same? With the difficulty of policing such a long stretch, it seems just as (or more?) likely that it will be a magnet for crime and homelessness as it would be a communal source of pride.

If we are really committed to urban beautification, how about eradicating the epidemic of graffiti that is proliferating on private property throughout our city? This decays my sense of civic pride far more than a concrete river ever will.

CHUCK WRIGHT

Los Angeles