Hubris is “excessive pride or self-confidence”… Likewise the California Coastal Commission’s unanimous Oct. 13 vote green-lighting Santa Monica Bay Restoration Commission’s Heal the Bay’s bulldozer blitz, destroying, re-shaping, raping Malibu Lagoon in their image, beginning June 2011. Damming and draining the lagoon’s brackish habitat to gouge a big salty hole; blowing more than $10 million of expiring, scarce bond money to do it, without fixing any of the lagoon’s real problems-uncontrolled spew, from Tapia to shopping centers, Rindge Dam’s impounding sediment, overdevelopment. If this project isn’t stopped, precedence set will mean no wetlands in the state would be safe.
It won’t be philosophic question time for most of the animals occupying lagoon territory now-death, food sources wasted, shelter gone. The shortest path to the beach would be destroyed-a clever cross-section through the islands, three bridges are alternatively surfer runways, wildlife observatories, outdoors classrooms, family-gathering areas (birds below, people above).
I was privileged to spend days in Malibu Lagoon collecting many of the 2,600 “No Bulldozing” petition signatures at the third bridge to show people what would be lost. But I was blown away when Publisher Arnold York’s Opinion (whom I so seldom agree with) of Oct. 6 came out-graphically depicting what the project would mean, showing he understood this project to be playing God, with a take-another-look approach warranted. If only proponents of this violent experiment understood the Precautionary Principle “first, do no harm,” or would admit “playing God” when there’s so little left is far beyond their pay grade …
John Ulloth, Mission Hills