National Public Radio’s “Air Talk” becomes the latest debate forum over the Malibu Lagoon restoration project. A judge will decide the fate of the project Oct. 27.
By Knowles Adkisson / The Malibu Times
and Michael Aushenker / Special to The Malibu Times
The fate of the controversial California State Parks plan to recontour Malibu Lagoon will be decided Oct. 27 in a courtroom, but that did not stop the two sides in the debate from taking to the airwaves to make their cases. California State Parks Senior Environmental Scientist Suzanne Goode and Marcia Hanscom, the leader of a group opposing the project, sparred on the National Public Radio program “Air Talk” Sept. 19.
The project’s opponents believe the lagoon recovery plan, which was slated to begin in June, is destructive and that the wetlands preserve can repair itself over time. Project supporters include local environmental groups such as Heal the Bay, which say the idea that the lagoon can repair itself over time ignores science, and that the marshland must be rehabilitated before the lagoon becomes irreparable, choked by water flow blockage and years of upstream pollution and depletion of oxygen.
Hanscom’s organization, the Wetlands Defense Fund, along with two other environmental groups, has filed a lawsuit against the California Coastal Commission challenging the commission’s approval of the project. Days before the project was to begin on June 1, San Francisco Superior Court Judge Ernest Goldsmith issued a stay on the project based on procedural issues. Goldsmith will issue a final ruling Oct. 27.
Regardless of his final decision, bulldozers that will be used to dredge and recontour the lagoon would not begin work until next summer, when the lagoon is separated from the ocean by its sand berm.
Goode kicked off the radio program last week by arguing that the 1983 restoration effort to restore the lagoon had been done incorrectly and was now causing the accumulation of sediment and low oxygen levels in the water. The lagoon had been filled in during the 1970s and made into ball fields.
“We seek to correct what was a flaw in the orientation of the channels [created by the state Department of Transportation in 1983],” Goode said. “This lagoon is not healthy Š It looks beautiful from the surface, and yes, there are teeming birds in the main channels of the lagoon, but in the mud in the back channels, there is very little life.”
Hanscom disagreed with Goode’s characterization of the lagoon as a failing ecosystem.
“Half of the year, the sea closes off from the lagoon with the sandbar,” Hanscom said. “This lagoon is full of life.”
Hanscom called the $7 million project “one of the most devastating projects” approved by the Coastal Commission in 20 years. She objected to the use of bulldozers to rip out walking paths used by visitors to observe wildlife.
She also disagreed with Goode’s argument that mud, which is filling the lagoon at a rate of one inch per year, is choking it and making it stagnant. Hanscom said the mud was teeming with life forms. She said she consulted with her own expert, environmental attorney James Birkelund, who believes the environmentalists behind the lagoon makeover do not understand the ecosystem at work within the mud.
Moderator David Lazarus suggested that once the bulldozing is completed animal species harmed during the process would return and find their way again.
“Some of the species will be killed outright,” Hanscom countered. “The proponents of the project have admitted that Š That’s not restoration in my view.”
The debate on NPR comes on the heels of a long feature article in LA Weekly dated Sept. 1 that examined the issue in-depth. Opponents were quoted saying the project was overkill and that it could result in an unsuccessful rehabilitation such as two similar projects south of Los Angeles, the Bolsa Chica and Batiquitos wetlands.
Supporters of the project claimed opponents did not have a true grasp of the science behind it. Mark Abramson, who is leading the restoration project, levied a charge that the opposition from Hanscom and her husband Roy Van de Hoek was a personal vendetta after Van de Hoek was rejected from serving on a technical committee advising the project due to being unqualified.
Van de Hoek said he never requested to be on the committee, and that he and Hanscom were left out of the loop on the scope of the project.
Malibu City Councilmember Jefferson Wagner, who has proposed a middle ground that would require less bulldozing, also was quoted, saying the project was overkill.
Wagner said he believed Judge Goldsmith “is going step in and say, ‘You guys come to terms.’ Then they’ll be grabbing my homework.”