At the last meeting of the City Council, Member Pamela Conley Ulich spent about 15 minutes repetitiously, and obviously incorrectly, asserting that “everyone is in favor of Legacy Park.” Nope! While it is fair to say that everyone is in favor of clean water, there is no evidence in the record that the Legacy Park project would have any significant effect cleaning waters in Malibu Creek or the surf zone. Several meetings ago, one particularly ill-informed individual who frequently stars before the Council stated as “incontrovertible” that surface runoff from the Civic Center area is responsible for “90 percent” of the contaminants reaching the creek. However, there is nothing in the record to support that assertion either.
The idea that runoff from 337 acres in the Civic Center area contributes 90 percent of contaminants in Malibu Creek, and therefore that only 10 percent comes from the 109 square miles of its watershed, seems preposterous on its face, especially considering the frequent algal blooms in the creek just downstream from the Tapia plant. There is a single, fundamental technical question that needs an authoritative answer before more funds are wasted, funds such as those so far trying to sell the phony environmental habitat fluff to justify Legacy Park.
By “authoritative” I mean an answer based on objective study by a competent entity rather than a set of tame consultants paid to support some goofy, preconceived, politically correct notions of what is environmentally good for Malibu and how to achieve it. The fundamental question is this: Should the Legacy Park project, or anything like it, be implemented if treatment of Civic Center surface runoff will have no measureable effect reducing contamination in the creek and the surf zone? Lurking the in the background is the question that won’t be asked: Do the various agreements that were necessary to gin up the Legacy Park project amount to a conspiracy or were they just plain dumb?
Don Michael