Letter: Tree Troubles

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Letter to the Editor

Tree troubles

The Malibu Times article, “Iconic sycamore lives to see another day” from June 18 reports on the various groups involved in saving a 150-year-old sycamore tree now slated for removal. Options to save the tree from being removed are being considered that would solve safety issues involved, including the widening of PCH at Cross Creek Road and adjacent development requirements in planning for four years. All groups seem to want to solve this dilemma, but appear to be without an answer.

One option not mentioned is the possibility of moving the tree 25 to 50 feet seaward onto State Parks land. If this option has been discussed, vetted and rejected, please provide the rationale of the group in a future article. If the primary objection to this option is cost, what is that cost estimate? The current, strong feelings of the Malibu community to save the tree may prove a willingness to spend the money and work to obtain private and public funding to achieve the funds.

Saving this sycamore tree may be so desired by citizens and other factions involved that funding to do this may be possible. Malibu has had expensive, multi-million dollar projects planned and proposed in past decades that were soundly rejected, such as the Whitnall Freeway down through Malibu Canyon and the nuclear power plant at Corral Canyon. Here is a situation that may indeed be expensive, but give the City of Malibu, the youth and citizens of Malibu a chance to vet this subject in open meetings. If the cost estimate is plus or minus $1 million to move the tree with a 50 percent or better chance of success, perhaps the public would get behind it. 

Ronald L. Rindge