Big Tujunga

Thank you for the editorial “Wrong Course for Big Tujunga,” May 18. It certainly hit the nail on the head. At the hearing in City Hall on May 13 before the city Planning and Land Use Management Committee, opponents of the golf course in the Tujunga Wash raised the same issues you did. Our concern was more than the fate of the endangered slender-horned spineflower. It was the introduction of an inappropriate 6,000-yard golf course with a clubhouse, restaurant, pesticides and herbicides into a unique natural habitat that belongs to all the people.

Apparently the lessons of the Mississippi and the Red River of North Dakota haven’t registered in the brain cells of developers everywhere. The golf course honchos and the rest are blinded by dollar signs; they can’t read the huge sign that says “No Building in Flood Plains.” Floods in Big Tujunga are hardly uncommon. The Army Corps of Engineers says even a mild storm would take out part of the proposed course. A flood like the 1969 and 1978 events would destroy the course and leave 500,000 introduced cubic yards of fill and turf to completely gum up the wash. As your editorial says, “. . . an ecological habitat would be lost forever.”

SANDY WOHLGEMUTH

Conservation Chair,

Los Angeles Audubon Society

* Your editorial, “Wrong Course for Big Tujunga” took a wrong turn of its own. The golf course is the best of all possible courses for the Big T for three major reasons, all environmental:

* The business environment of Sunland-Tujunga would be greatly enhanced because people from other areas who would use this beautiful course and the bike, hiking and riding trails would also partake of the stores, shops and services in our community that provide jobs and tax dollars that support our schools, library and park, as well as our local police and firefighters.

* The youth environment would be improved by providing a stimulus for young golfers and budding ecologists on the course and the accompanying habitat preserve. Golf is better than gangs. And what teacher has nerve enough now to lead her class into a trashed wash populated with questionable tenants?

* Finally, the wash environment would improve dramatically with well-maintained greens and patrolled and protected golf, trail and nature study areas. The city Planning Commission’s approval was not the result of a frivolous review. Every financial and environmental point was rigorously scrutinized. Why bother having these experts spend their time if they can be overruled by an indecisive councilman who has forgotten the people he is supposed to represent?

WILLIAM ELEDGE

Sunland

* Bravo to The Times for stating the situation so honestly: “This is a development plan to bury that habitat under a golf course.”

With so little open space left, how can we even be talking about destroying what we should be preserving, protecting and valuing. People should be contacting their council members to object strongly to this deal that mostly benefits a few greedy developers, and murders a whole habitat.

DAVID V. GREGOLI

Encino

* Re “Effort Made to Head Off Plan for Golf Course,” May 21.

The Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy did not make an offer on the Cosmo World golf course site in Big Tujunga Wash as stated in your article May 21. We did meet with the representative of the lessee, Foothill Golf, and discussed preliminary matters pending an authorization from the conservancy board to actually begin an appraisal and subsequent negotiations. The conservancy will consider this matter on June 2 at a meeting to be held at William O. Douglas Outdoor Classroom in Franklin Canyon, 7:30 p.m.

JOSEPH T. EDMISTON

Executive Director, Santa

Monica Mountains Conservancy