Would you like some whine with that?

Mark Reese

Whine, Whine, Whine.

God forbid that a non-Huntington Beach resident read the

Independent. The only possible perception they could come away with

is the residents of Huntington Beach are a bunch of whiners.

Let’s start with a few local issues. The Long Beach Airport: The

planes are so noisy that Huntington Beach residents want a federal

investigation into “what’s really going on.” Folks, how many planes

really land at Long Beach everyday? Twenty or 30? The planes fly

right over my house and the only time they are noticeable is if I

happen to be standing outside.

What about the motorcycles on Golden West? These are loud and

annoying. The soccer kids on Saturday morning at the local school

yard? Let’s ban them. They are too noisy. What about Disneyland and

Angel Stadium (Edison Field)? The booming of the fireworks every

night at 9:30 p.m. or so is predictably noisy. Let’s sue to stop

them. Better yet, let’s file a complaint with the local air quality

district about the pollution. We can force Disney and the Angels to

complete an Environmental Impact Report on the effect of their

fireworks on our city (of course, we would scream that the EIR is

inadequate, biased and a political sellout should we disagree with

the findings). Did anyone do an environmental report for the proposed

Huntington Beach Fourth of July fireworks at the pier? Let’s whine

about that.

The desalination plant: now here’s a project to whine about. From

the comments in the Independent, it is clear that most of the

opposition does not have a clue as to the technical feasibility and

management of water resources. Are we so clueless as a city that we

don’t believe we can effectively manage a project like this? I know,

the water is supposedly going to some other community with no benefit

to Huntington Beach.

By the way, where do you think our water comes from? Huntington

Beach? Nope, somebody else’s community. I’m guessing a good portion

of the water originates in Colorado, Utah or the San Bernardino

mountains. Hey, but let’s not let these small details affect our

right to whine. OK, we’ll just let the county trump us, build the

plant and they get all of the money. Oh yes, we don’t get to manage

the process either. We can whine about that, too.

I could go on and on but it would just be more whining on my part.

By the way, I like the Mailbag article from the resident that said

he’s put up with enough of having to live near the Ascon landfill and

the power plant. The city needs to act to shut these down now. This

guy would have had to have lived in his present home for nearly 50

years or so to truly have an arguable case that he was here first and

has been disproportionately affected. If not, didn’t he take the time

to notice those large stacks at the power plant before he bought that

dream home? Kind of hard to miss. But hey, we’re all blind when our

personal interests are at stake. Besides, we can whine about the

power plant later.

* MARK REESE is a Huntington Beach resident. To contribute to

“Sounding Off” e-mail us at hbindy@latimes.com or fax us at (714)

965-7174.