In a letter published in your paper last week Shelley Luce, executive director of the Santa Monica Bay Restoration Commission, claimed that the scientists who backed her plan for Malibu Lagoon “left no doubt that the plants and animals are much worse off here than in other coastal lagoons in Southern California. This is no less rhetoric than the previous claims made by proponents of this ill-conceived project. There is no evidence in the record that there are any plants or animals imperiled by the lagoon in its current state and no such evidence was presented to the Coastal Commission.
In fact, the endangered Tidewater Goby is doing well in the lagoon channels, and while Luce and her team claimed to the Coastal Commission staff that none of these endangered fish are in the channels they plan to bulldoze and dredge, the report they relied on by Tidewater Goby expert Dr. Camm Swift states otherwise. Swift not only found these endangered fish west of the main channel, but his conclusion was not heeded by either the Coastal Commission or Luce’s organization.
“The construction of the proposed restoration of Malibu Lagoon should be timed to avoid disturbance of the western shoreline during the months of May-November, when larval Tidewater Gobies are using the nearshore habitat,” Swift said. Since bulldozers are planned to roll in June, the gobies are at risk during their most vulnerable and important time of their life cycles-during breeding and juvenile stages of their short one-year life spans. In addition, Luce fails to reveal how much money her agency and others who support the project are receiving if this project goes forward.
According to a state audit by the Department of Finance dated June 9, 2010, Santa Monica Baykeeper was awarded $147,835 and the Resource Conservation District of the Santa Monica Mountains was awarded $925,259. In addition, according to the State Water Board, Heal the Bay was awarded $250,000 to plan this project in meetings which were not open to the public, in spite of protests by members of the Malibu Lagoon Task Force stakeholders group. A significant amount of each of these awards is for staff overhead, which is perfectly legal, but needs to be disclosed so that the public understands why these organizations’ representatives are so overjoyed to be in favor of destroying native plants and animals at Malibu Lagoon and why rhetoric and politics wins over genuine scientific evidence.
Marcia Hanscom, director, Wetlands Defense Fund