“Our prime purpose in this life is to help others. And if you can’t help them, at least don’t hurt them.” —Dalai Lama
The most recent Malibu Lagoon project was born 12 years ago when Proposition 50, the clean drinking water proposition, passed in 2002, giving the State of California literally billions of dollars to use on projects for coastal protection and “restoration.”
This restoration project is based on a State Parks Environmental Impact Report done in 2006, which predates new science regarding pollution in the creek, before the Tapia treatment was required to stop sending treated water into the Malibu Creek, and does not even consider the impacts from the proposed Rindge Dam removal, let alone the current fiscal crisis the state is now in.
The Malibu Lagoon is one of the last remaining coastal wetlands within Santa Monica Bay. It hosts both avian and aquatic species and super stars such as the endangered tidewater goby fish and the nesting snowy plover bird.
The people of California elected Jerry Brown to be our governor in 2010. The State of California is closing 70 state parks this year because of the state budget deficit. Governor Brown and the legislature approved $11 million in cuts to state parks and $10 million in cuts to off-highway vehicle parks in the next fiscal year, with $22 million in cuts to state parks in future years. Yet, in an era when we are cutting fiscal waste, State Parks is moving forward with a $10 million-plus project in Malibu, which is set to begin on June 1, 2012.
Is this kind of thinking strange? Less than a year before the collapse of Lehman Bros. plunged the global economy into a near depression, the Wall Street firm awarded nearly $700 million to 50 of its highest paid employees.
The Malibu Lagoon Project spends precious public resources to bulldoze and dredge the Malibu Lagoon in the name of “restoring” it. The permit allows for the State to kill five endangered tidewater goby fish and to displace and/or kill hundreds of other birds and fauna. Many people believe the project is not a “restoration,” but a blank check and an experiment on a fragile ecosystem which is thriving to the naked eye.
We invite the governor and all people to visit to the lagoon and see for themselves the hundreds of birds and fish that make the Malibu Lagoon home.
We invite the governor and the people to see the one bridge in the lagoon that provides public access to the world famous Surfrider Beach.
Instead of building bridges to nowhere, is the State Parks going to waste public money to literally destroy that bridge to somewhere?
Many of the people with concerns about the lagoon, including longtime Malibu resident Carol Moss, longtime Malibu surfer Andy Lyon, various past and present Malibu City Council members and others don’t always agree on everything, but they are united with a common cause to protect and preserve Malibu and the planet’s precious natural resources.
Will California’s Governor, Jerry Brown, show us what fiscal leadership looks like by listening to the people and take a time-out to reconsider this project before the destruction commences on June 1?
If we can’t trust government to be fiscally responsible now, can we afford to trust our government in the future when we are asked to vote for tax increases in November?
Pamela Conley Ulich