The Los Angeles Times from Los Angeles, California • 66

Part II Thursday. March Cos Anflelt Clmes 6 Letters to The Times QooAnclcs Slimes PubhsMen HARRISON CRAY OTIS, ttW HARRY CHANDLER, 7-W NORMAN CHANDLER, UW0 OTIS CHANDLLR. IWIW Nuclear Threat and Children Wild and Scenic Tuolumne River ttm I tft Mt'mi alwb4 aft aaran, vAfW-t Oa, Umi wjr.at.aa afar) njifq aa1 mwm ifm tauO.r"a aral tm jh4 bar. Mt -4 vrurtra 4 raLaarJ 4Sr4 a9uat lafiara tna 4mm Uc Tki. Ihm aWrar laa Ralal.

MOU TOM JOHNSON, Publisher and lluef Ejuvutne Offkxr DONALD F. WRIGHT. Prescient and lliief Operating Offitrr Willi AM F. THOMAS, Uuvr and tMiunt Vict President VANCE ST1CKELL, Exteutivt Vkt President. Marketing CHARLES C.

CHASE. Executi Vict I'mident. Operations JAMES a BOS WELL, Vkt President. Emphttt and Public Retain ROBERT C. LOBDEU, Vict President and General Counsel AMES B.

SHAFFER. Vict President and Chief I manual Officer LARRY STRLTTON, Vict President. Operations CEORCE J. COTUAR. Managing Editor ANTHONY DAY.

Editor of the Editorial Pages JEAN SHARLEY TAYLOR. Associate Editor OTIS CHANDLER EddoMitChkf. Times Minor I9 'Democracy' and Killing Morton Kondracke's column Editorial Pages, March 22 blaming the nuclear-freeze movement for children'! fear of nuclear holocaust, reminds one of the opposition to sex education for children. Concern about sexuality among young peo-ple is not created by sex education any more than the realization by the youth that nuclear war will not "leave kids out of it" is generated by the nuclear-freeze advocates. Faced with the unprecedented possibility of youth everywhere having no future, Kondrai ke apparently would prefer that reality hidden from children and teen-agers, as though that were possible, let alone desirable.

The best antidote for a rational fear is to recognize what's involved and lake constructive action precisely what the teen-agers did who founded (without adult sponsorship or participation) the Children's Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. Perhaps ihe real fear is that young people will not blindly sup-lorl the suicidal paranoia of the arms rate. ROBERT FRIEDMAN Is Angeles Grandmothers Reading about the passing of George Ramos' grandmother. Feli-cilas. (Editorial Pages.

March 15) brought a flood of bittersweet memories of my own aliurhta. Manuehta Solis. She was the only grandparent I ever knew and she too left an unfillable void when she died a few short years ago. She was the closest link I had to my Mexican heritage and I remember countless stories about her childhood in Chihuahua during the Mexican Revolution. She also was always fretting that I was loo thin and offering me something to eat.

I was not her only grandchild, but I was the first. And that special bond created many special memories that time will never fade. ALMA SANTANA LAWSON Palos Verdes Estates Stanislaus County Supervisor Dan Terry (Letters. March 17) has taken Sen. Pete Wilson (R-Calif.) to task for supporting preservation of the wild and scenic Tuolumne River.

Wilson took his position after hearing from more than 10.000 Californians who favored river preservation. He received more letters on this issue than any other in 1983: more than on Lebanon, taxes. El Salvador or any other issue. Every major national conservation group and most major California newspapers (including The Times) support preservation of the Tuolumne. Supervisor Terry argues that the administrative process should proceed, and this is how environmental values will be protected.

He fails to note thul leaving the fate of the Tuolumne to the tender mercies of the federal Energy Regulatory Commission would be like asking the California cattlemen to endorse a vegetarian diet. The commission has only turned down one proposed hydroelectric project for environmental reasons in more than 50 years. Thousands have been approved. Clearly, if the Tuolumne ii to be protected, Congress must intervene in the process. There have been 28 studies of the Tuolumne since 18: nearly all have concluded that the best course of action would be preservation of the river.

The time for study is over: now is the lime for Congress to place the river in the National Wild and Scenic River System. Wilson is to be congratulated on taking a leadership role on this important issue. GERALD II. MERAL Sacramento Meral is executive director of the Planning and Constriction Uvyue. apologize for their appalling activities indicates that he means what he says.

Unless the Administration wants to find itself dragged into D'Aubuisson's sickening scenario for "solving" El Salvador's political problems killing enough Salvadorans to win the war it must accept the fact that a military victory is out of the question for either side in the four-year-old conflict, and push for negotiations between the new government and political representatives of the guerrillas. Peace talks will be long, complicated and frustrating, but they will be better than bloodshed. Considering the U.S. assistance that has already poured into El Salvador, the Administration certainly has leverage to make the government side come to the peace table. The Latin American governments of the Contadora Group Mexico.

Venezuela. Colombia and Panama have similar leverage with the insurgents, and have been working for a year to get peace talks started. So the potential for negotiations is real. What is needed now is the political will, both in Washington and in San Salvador, to pursue them. Certainly the fact that large numbers of Salvadoran citizens were willing to wait in line for hours to vote for presidential candidates is a hopeful sign.

It indicates that the majority of them have not succumbed to the political extremism that has so many of their countrymen killing each other in a stalemated civil war. But an election in and of itself cannot solve the many problems in.a country like El Salvador, where political turmoil is the inevitable result of centuries of poverty, political backwardness and corruption, and severe repression. Before the politics and the economics can be dealt with, the killing must stop. The killing will stop only when negotiations start. Last Sunday's voting in El Salvador with its technical difficulties, voter confusion and guerrilla sabotage was a useful reminder that not all elections are like those in established democracies.

It will take days to get final presidential vote tallies, but early returns and exit polls indicate that the official result will be about what most political observers expected. No candidate received a majority, meaning that a runoff election must be held within a few weeks. And the two candidates in that final election will be Christian Democrat Jose Napoleon Duarte and former Maj. Roberto D'Aubu-isson of the right-wing ARENA party. Because of this country's tradition of peaceful political change.

U.S. citizens tend to put great stock in elections. That is probably why the Reagan Administration is straining diplomatic rhetoric by describing El Salvador's voting as a triumph of democracy. The Salvadoran elections serve a short-term need for the White House by providing political leverage with which a hesitant Congress may be prodded to provide additional military aid for El Salvador's security forces. In the long run these highly touted elections could make El Salvador's political situation even worse.

That would happen if D'Aubuisson were elected president and followed through on campaign pledges to press the government's war against leftist insurgents to final victory. The moderate Duarte at least has said that he is willing to discuss a reconciliation with the insurgent leaders. D'Aubuisson has flatly and repeatedly rejected reconciliation. Administration officials are trying to downplay D'Aubuisson's rhetoric. But the major's past involvement with the bloodier side of Salvadoran politics he helped establish political factions that have degenerated into death squads, and refuses to A beautiful narrative painting by George Ramos of a fast-disappearing world we have lived in; and a sensitive portrayal of our beloved uliuelitas who without them, many of our lives would have suffered a tremendous void.

We do hunger for their caring touch. ANGEL M. ALDKRETE Novalo I sympathize with and agree with Kondracke that children should not Ik? terrorized or propagandized by debate on nuclear weapon policy. The unfortunate reality, however, is that not only are children aware of the specter of conflict between major nations, but also of the. dangers of nuclear pollution and warfare.

Their perception is far more terrifying than ours they see the potential for horror and are powerless to do anything to stop it. For the sake of their futures (and their tender psyches it is crucial that we adults create a shift in perception the one that Dr. Seuss portrays in his book. Our grotesque realities antiquale the notions of freedom vs. communism.

It is time that we seek lo perceive, and therefore create, a world in which we can live peacefully with our brothers and sisters on earth. WENDY ZACUTO Van Nuvs I cried when I read George Ramos' article about the passing of his grandmother. She wasn't just his grandmother. She was the universal grandmother of the Old World. I remember the Russian grandmother who smothered us with her afier-school poppy seed cookies.

Our own children will never forget their Italian grandmother who set out spreads that had no end, including her specialty, "grandma's soup." which was always on hand in the freezer. Today's kids slop for pizza or a taco with no TLC. In our neighborhood, the modern grandma works outside the home so that she can catch up on the material things she may have missed. How sad, not to have a grandma to see and know vou and fill vou with her love. JO CARROZZO Westminster Had There Been an Isa Yin Late Bus Teller Machines As a Bank of America customer, I was very interested in the article (March 24).

of A Hikes Fees in Bid to Spur Machine Transactions." The question I have to ask is who do I spur to fix the electronic banking machines? There is nothing more frustrating than to be out of money on a weekend, to approach a banking machine and to read that it is temporarily on the "blink." This seems to be the case here at the Long Beach of A machine on Second Street more and more frequently. Before raising costs, perhaps of A ought to work the bugs out of its svstems first. RICHARD J. WIDERYNSKI Long Beach gear that they might miss what they were looking for. The review will take three to six weeks to complete a relatively small delay in a plant that already has been hit with one delay after another for more than 10 years because of design and construction problems that everyone but Yin now says have been corrected.

The review still will leave unanswered one objection that seems to us perfectly valid. Commissioner Victor Gilinsky worries that none of Diablo Canyon's control-room operators have ever watched the dials and pushed the buttons in a nuclear power plant. It is. he says, like launching a ship with a crew that has never been at sea. and that is a difficult image to dismiss.

You need only to read the first of two Times reports Wednesday on the fifth anniversary of the worst nuclear accident in American history to find reinforcement for Gilinsky's concern. The operators at Three Mile Island did have experience at the controls of that now-dead power plant, but when the alarm bells went off, as one utility official said, they simply "didn't know what to do." Officials at said that they were stunned by Tuesday's decision one that will cost them about SI million a day until the issue is resolved. There is another way to look at their position. Had there been an Isa Yin in the hearing room the day the regulators cleared Three Mile Island. America might be celebrating five years of trouble-free operation at that plant rather than the fifth anniversary of an accident that clearly will cost more than $1 billion to clean up and may take more than a decade.

Who knows whether Isa Yin is right to worry that some of the pipes in California's Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant would snap in an earthquake? It will take a few weeks, but that question probably can be answered. Who knows whether Americans would have more faith in nuclear power had there been more worriers over the years and more regulators willing to listen before they licensed power plants that later proved to be flawed? Nobody will ever know the answer to that question, but the odds are that nuclear power would be in better shape physically and psychologically than it is now or is likely to be for a generation. Yin was the only one of 40 federal engineers and safety specialists to raise questions this week about a license to start up the Pacific Gas Electric Co. power plant on the San Luis Obispo County coastline. Something about the records on 18 miles of small pipe and the brackets that hold the pipe bothered Yin.

He said so in hearings before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission on Tuesday, noting that an "alarming" number of discrepancies managed to slip through earlier checks. That led him to wonder about the brackets holding bigger pipe, which could do farmore damage than the smaller pipe. His colleagues saw no such problem. One dissent, but he shook two commissioners who were prepared to vote to let Diablo Canyon start operating its nuclear reactors at low levels of power. They joined with a third commissioner to ask a panel of the country's top nuclear-plant experts to review the pipe situation.

Yin pleaded against a time-saving suggestion that the plant be brought on line while the inspection was being made. Inspectors would be so encumbered with anti-radiation There arc a few things that need to be slated about Terry's teller. First of all. his so-called "small group of. special interest 'environmental activists' is not so small as he would have us believe.

If one lakes into account the approximate number of permits that were issued last year alone for rafters and the numbers of fishermen who frequented the river during 1983. the figure would be more than a few. Try 10.700 for starters! Those are the recorded figures of those who enjoyed this breathtaking, lovely piece of wilderness, so far unspoiled by the effects of man. There are so many more of us who dream of the chance to someday see its rustic and wild splendor. And is it any wonder that this "small group of protesters" is "disturbing" Terry? After all, Stanislaus County would be about the only ones to benefit from this proposed change.

The power users in Stanislaus currently pay $38.07 per thousand kilowatt hour, compared to $122.07 in San Diego County. Their rate is already 40 less than the national average but that's not cheap enough I guess! The loss of this scenic, semi-free river that attracts so many people and is home for all the wildlife therein is too high a price for the sake of lesser rates for a few thousand customers. Terry has lumped rafters, fishermen, and supporters of "wild and scenic" areas into a "small group of special interest "environmental He makes "environmental activists" sound like a dirty word. Terry is echoing some of our previous politicians' and government officials' opinions of "well-meaning but ill-informed" nonsense. As supervisor in Modesto.

Terry represents the big business and politics of his own district and nothing more. Furthermore. Terry talks of "destroying the facts." We're talking about destroying a river! "Taming" the Tuolumne River is not what the rafters want! If rafters wanted a tame ride they would simply go visit Six Flags Magic Mountain and ride their "Roaring Rapids" ride. It is the river's inaccessibility, its unpredictability, the challenge, the thrill, and the incredible beauty of the Tuolumne River that attracts thousands of visitors each year. Let's keep it that wav! LISA SCHREFFLER Rowland Heights The news item (March 2), "RTD Almost Misses Bus in Bid to Push Metro Rail Stop." made my day.

It is about time a city official experiences what all bus riders know to be true, the poor service the RTD furnishes its riders. Fortunately, City Councilman John Ferraro only had to wait 20 minutes. If he rode the 260 bus down Atlantic Boulevard, he would really have to wait. Every day around 4 o'clock, I have to wait anywhere from 30 to 45 minutes for the bus to take me about three or four miles to my home. When one finally shows up.

it is usually overcrowded or another is directly behind it. Before RTD starts planning a subway system, it had better to do something about improving the already poor and inadequate system throughout Southern California. My opinion is that if we ever get a subway system it will probably be as ineffective as the bus system. M. L.

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Tvtar Mwsnas uanaaAJraaiAv floqurSaen? Prujgi7l CasralPO Bo 1K36I Davdlan CartMaan 13000 B'XnBv1 Sum 4 to Mam Fla 331371 OaoWaujmn JlllHlUllKPlO HWSII. scheduled to go to trial next Friday. The council's Government and Operations Committee has recommended that the city pay up and take steps to recover the cash. It also wants the city attorney's office to recommend a policy for future such cases involving public employees. Because the city attorney already represents the firefighters, anything that it says will represent a conflict of clients.

The council would do better to draft its own new policy. Because the case is an emotional one, the incident offers no shortage of issues to argue over. For some it is the sexist nature of the incident involving the first woman in a department where women remain scarce. For others the issue is hazing itself, no matter who is involved. For still others the issue is the original disciplinary action slaps on the wrist for those involved, who received brief suspensions.

Others ask whether the city should even be considering trying to wring $75,000 out of the firefighters if the decision is to settle out of court in view of the fact that they have been punished once, albeit lightly. These are interesting arguments, but they miss the essential point that this case will be settled under old rules and future cases must be settled under new rules. The place to start is that hazing is against clearly stated orders. The new policy should be just as clear that the city and its taxpayers will go to bat for any city worker who winds up in court for doing nothing more than his or her job. But the policy also should be clear that the city will not lift a finger to protect employees from their own foolishness.

In similar cases in the future, they should understand that they are on their own. It's called hazing testing a rookie's mettle, historic and presumably harmless. But Los Angeles taxpayers must foot the bill if one comes due in a 1979 case involving six firefighters accused of harassing the city's first woman paramedic until she shaved off her pubic hair. The woman has sued the firefighters and the city. The bill will come to $75,000 if Los Angeles settles out of court.

A City Council committee is exploring the city's chances of getting that money back from the firefighters, who at least had the decency not to insist on watching the act of shaving. The same committee is examining steps that might protect the city from similar embarrassments and payoffs in the future. In this case what is done is done, and the council ought to be looking most diligently for policies that will make it clear that the city will not pay for such nonsense again, and that future financial damages must come from offending employees themselves. State law properly protects public employees against lawsuits for actions taken in carrying out their duties unless the actions are clearly illegal. But, as the paramedic case illustrates, both policy and process need clarification, particularly in.the definition of duty.

The question of whether the firefighters were on the job when the hazing of which they are accused took place produced conflicting views. The record shows that the fire chief asked the city attorney's office to represent the firefighters, indicating a presumption that they were on duty at the time. Councilman Joel Wachs asked, in effect, where hazing is listed on the duty roster. If the city refuses to settle out of court, the case is Much too often we learn of news stories about car accidents involving the deaths of small children. I recall reading an article of such a case only a few weeks ago where two infants were killed in the same car accident.

The question that enters my mind when learning of such terrible occurrences is, "Was the Child in a car seat?" I. being a mother of a small child, am grateful for the new law (January. 1983) requiring children under 40 pounds to be properly belted in a federally approved car scat. It's a normal routine for my child to be buckled in safely whenever we travel. I too often see children in cars whose parents have neglected this life-saving responsibility.

Maybe those reporting news stories of car accidents involving deaths of small children should mention whether or not the children were in car scats not to place the blame or punish the parents of the dead children, but to make those parents who neglect to use them think twice the next time they put their children in the car. After all, wouldn't the parents of children killed in car accidents because they weren't in car scats want to pass on to us what they have learned only too late? JULIE L. BALDRIDGE Long Beach iraiPO Bo5OI JartfoM itltaoswaoaSI SW 11 wr.Tuon Jackson Headline Your story (March 22), about Jesse Jackson seeing racism in the presidential campaign and assailing the media, which you headlined as "Jackson Injects Racism Into Campaign. Assails Media," certainly substantiates his charge! KAROLE STOUT Los Alamitos The Times has received a number of letters making the same complaint, which was noted on March 23 in the following For the Record "The headline on a story Thursday shoidd have said "Jackson Sees Racism in Campaign, Assail Media" to reflect accurately Jesse Jackson's assertions about media coverage and attitudes of white voters toward his presidential candidacy. The headline had said, "Jackson Injects Racism Into Cam-paign, Assails Media." 4aitaaClv'PMaonU)ntotnv) '22 Mincon I AmoM VMfr MoaaotwlApt 3' 1224SMovoSniotarhrutvfi Rntwrt Gnttft Nak-aMlPO Bn49SR31 ClwMT Pmoos MMtTaMllHwunanRoad KlmvCMhi "000" WMn tatnn Pari73Av tswCtwnns ESnwws Pans8' DonCons StantovMmJpr Patina uwia 7 1 102' Mrtv Purts FaaJanaraiAvPiBrnro2! JuimntOnt tonwIPuit; VvoruiMI P00A Srhaorh" anlaliaaai ICamoHaalHoiall Mrxtatwmp TollalVnm.iBMO OWnrl CNvntlaku Tntvo 1001 Sam.

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