Mailbag: Highway unsafe for walkers

Regarding the story on the off-duty firefighter who was hit at Brooks Street the other day [“Police looking for hit-and-run driver,” Dec. 11]. I have contacted the Laguna Beach Police Department several times regarding the recent dangers of crossing Pacific Coast Highway and have not received any reply.

My office is on Brooks Street and PCH, and the most dangerous thing I do all day is cross the street. When I finally spoke with someone at the Police Department, they blamed Caltrans.

I called Caltrans and first asked why are they paving a perfectly good highway. They replied, “preventive maintenance,” and I asked when the crosswalks would be put back. They also removed the lights and buttons that illuminate the crosswalks. I am sick and tired of nearly getting killed on a daily basis and hope the firefighter is OK.

DAN BOERSMA

Dana Point

Trim trees for safety

Re: “Trees felled by storm,” (Dec. 11):

Aren’t we lucky this time? Only five trees fell and blocked streets and damaged only two cars. Nobody was hurt. At least that is all we know about.

We should point the finger at those who in this town do not take responsibility for their vegetation by keeping trees trimmed, especially those that are unlikely to withstand wind and/or heavy rain. The trees are the usual suspects: eucalyptus, ficus and palm trees that drop their large and heavy fronds, and pine trees that cover the streets with their needles.

I drove through some areas of our city early Tuesday morning as the city was sending trucks and people to clean up the mess. Every year far too many of our tax dollars go to clean up the mess.

I suggest that the City Council look at their policy about certain vegetation and realize that we can no longer be ignorant of the damage that eucalyptus, pine and palm trees do to our city every time there is a rain storm or the potential they have to fuel fires during the fire season. We are not over the “rainy season” nor over the drought yet. These rains could only help things to grow in abundance just in time for the next fire season.

Branches, twigs, leaves by the score,

it all make a great potpourri and more!

Piles and piles and hours of sweeping.

What a delight if you were only composting!

G. BROWN

Laguna Beach

Helping Prop. 8 succeed

Just making sure that I can look forward to next week’s front-page column on “How to help Prop. 8 succeed,” which would be for those of us who voted for and believe in traditional marriage.

I think, but I could be wrong, that the front page of newspapers are generally reserved for fact sharing of pertinent stories to our community, versus editorials supporting one side of an issue (albeit typically bent one way or another). Then the other side of the debate would be presented in a similar location by our “balanced news reporting” city editor and team.

Thank you very much for seeing that our newspaper is a place where diverse viewpoints (that is plural) are shared, such that our community can continue to be informed in a balanced way, and choose to “do their right thing,” which last I checked did not succumb to the matter of “when” but continued the matter of “whether.”

BRENT MARTINI

Laguna Beach

Closing beaches a real possibility

With the exception of Councilman Kelly Boyd, the Laguna Beach City Council recently voted unanimously to recommend closing more than 7.5 miles of Laguna’s beaches to all activities, including walking, swimming, surfing, body surfing, skimming, diving, snorkeling, kayaking, boating, fishing and/or any other human activity that may adversely effect the marine environment. This is insane, but the City Council has already done it!

As a resident of Laguna Beach, I plead with you to join me in demanding the City Council reverse their decision. The exact wording of the proposal could result in more than 7.5 miles of our beaches being turned over to the state’s “managing government agency” which will, from this point on, have absolute and complete control of Laguna’s beaches and the authority to close our beaches forever.

Obviously the council never even considered the possibilities of the proposal, instead opting to listen to the extreme environmentalists lobbying behind the Marine Life Protection Act, who assure us Laguna’s beaches will remain open, even though the managing agency would have the right to close them if the agency ever felt that our suntan lotion was adversely effecting the kelp. We cannot allow this to happen. Can you imagine what Laguna Beach would be like if we couldn’t enjoy our own beaches? If you don’t do something to change this vote, it’s going to become law.

The council’s near-unanimous support of that proposal turns over our beaches to the managing state agency, allowing them to decide, if and when we as residents of Laguna Beach can use our beaches.

It has not happened yet, but I’ll guarantee you, the vast majority of Laguna’s residents are not even aware of the possibility of their beaches being permanently closed. The supporters of the closures are using the council’s approval as one the cornerstones in pushing the legislation through.

It’s so important that the people living here, as well as all those who run businesses in Laguna, or visit, be made aware of exactly how potentially devastating the proposal is that the council members have approved. If the “governing agency” decides suntan oil is harmful to kelp, or anything else they decide might be harmful to the marine life, they close the beaches. Period. Once the MPLAs are set and they become law, there’s nothing any of us are going to be able to do.

E-mail Boyd at kellyboyd2006@gmail.com and demand to be heard on this issue. Act or we are going to lose our beaches.

MICHAEL FOWLKES

Laguna Beach

Marine reserve information

Once again, the Coastline Pilot can’t seem to get their details correct (“Devil in the Details,” Dec. 11).

The last few months you have been trying to scare the public with the misinformation that a marine reserve would result in closing our beaches to all activities. Now this week’s editorial states that “in June (2009), the council voted 4 to 1 to support a citywide no-take zone, before the first public meeting of the MLPA was even held.”

A list of all past and future meetings can be found on the Department of Fish and Game’s website ( www.dfg.ca.gov/mlpa/meetings_sc.asp). If you had bothered to do this research, you would have found that the first public meeting on the MLPA process in the South Coast Region was an Open House in June 2008, the Science Advisory team and Blue Ribbon Task Force had their first meetings in September 2008, and the first meeting of the South Coast Regional Stakeholders Group took place in October 2008.

In addition, Calla Allison, the city’s marine protection officer and RSG member, has spoken at numerous city council meetings about the MLPA process prior to the June council vote and at the request of the City Council, put on an MLPA informational workshop on March 21 that was attended by more than 80 members of the public, including two City Council members.

If the Coastline Pilot insists on pushing their agenda against a scientifically sound state marine reserve for Laguna Beach, I wish you would at least get the facts correct. The MLPA is an open and transparent process. All meetings are open to the public to attend, web streamed live on the Internet, and archived for future viewing.

A citywide marine reserve, included in Proposal 3 being considered now by the Department of Fish and Game, was given the highest ranking in all scientific categories (size, spacing, habitat replication) of the four proposals under consideration. Marine reserves that meet the science guidelines have the highest probability of success. Proposal 3 is the only map that meets the scientific guidelines.

SANDY DILDINE

Laguna Beach

Marine reserve part of state network

Regarding last week’s editorial, “Devil in the details:”

How does it work when the Coastline publishes another editorial without a named author that, this time, uses a collective “we” to sway our community in the wrong direction? Is our community to assume that everyone at the Coastline is so poorly informed and misguided about the Marine Life Protection Act?

It is true that this process has divided our town and it will take some solid efforts along with some time to heal these wounds but calling out the MLPA reserve as bad for Laguna simply does not help in that effort. It is clear to me that the Integrated Preferred Alternative now before the Department of Fish and Game will only help Laguna Beach oceans and our city economy overall. One step better would be the Science Advisory Team’s preferred option of Proposal 3 that just barely meets the minimum science guidelines to make these networked reserves connect.

I believe Laguna Beach deserves the best, so support for Proposal 3 is a simple choice and the best for our community.

Don’t be fooled by the claims of compromise in Proposal 2; it has little support outside of the commercial fishing industry and could be harmful to Laguna if it puts the statewide network at risk.

GREG O’LOUGHLIN

Laguna Beach

Kelp is the rain forest of the sea

I love our national parks and so do millions of others. They, too, were controversial when first conceived and planned, but our parks are now seen as an American jewel and best preserved for future generations.

As a marine biologist, I have been working underwater in Newport and Laguna Beach for the last seven years to restore our giant kelp forests and consequently our ocean’s fisheries.

Kelp forests, along with more than 800 different species that rely on them, are one of the most productive habitats on earth, and Orange County has lost more than 80% of them over the last 60 years. Most people do not know this. The reason is that most people have no idea what’s going on under the water.

The Marine Life Protection Act is being implemented because our fisheries are in crisis. More than 90% of the ocean’s finfish are gone and we are at a tipping point. In Laguna, we have lost significant numbers of abalone, sheepshead, giant sea bass and bull lobsters. Our fish are smaller and fewer. In Orange County, scientists are now concerned about low numbers of calico and sand bass.

The funny thing is, most people don’t know what the MLPA is trying to protect. Many are simply protecting their right to extract “their resources” from the ocean without understanding the future consequences of this “business as usual” attitude, while others just like the idea of protecting whatever it is that’s “under there.”

However, as a diver, I have watched the changes take place first hand and know full well that we need to restore and replenish our ocean. Having collected data for kelp restoration sites over the last seven years, I can tell you what is underwater now.

Unfortunately, because we have taken too many lobster and sheepshead, there are hundreds of thousands of out-of-control urchins devouring the kelp forests that we have begun to regrow with the help of more than 4,000 volunteers.

I know from historical record, from anecdotal stories, and scientific literature that things have changed in our oceans, and I believe that we should do whatever we can to protect our natural resources.

We depend on our oceans and it is in our self-interest to restore them to a healthy state.

We can “give up” seven miles of coastline in Laguna Beach, the length of a citywide reserve, to create a network of marine protected areas to restore our fisheries.

NANCY L. CARUSO

Garden Grove

Homeless are getting a free ride

It appeared that the city of Laguna Beach had found a successful solution for their homeless situation.

They got the American Civil Liberties Union off their backs by agreeing to stop enforcing the ordinance preventing people from sleeping overnight in parks and on beaches.

The settlement was announced by the ACLU on June 25 and it appeared the city’s problem was solved. Unfortunately, on Oct. 5 the Orange County Register reported Councilwoman Toni Iseman saying, “Council members said the number of homeless people is increasing, and so are residents’ and tourists’ complaints about them. We’ve watched people’s inability to enjoy our beaches and parks accelerate.”

Now the city has allocated $235,000 from property taxes and its housing fund to provide and maintain the homeless shelter in the Act V parking lot through June 15.

The homeless camp sites in the parks and on the beaches have since disappeared and the police have been able to resume enforcement of the illegal camping laws.

The homeless now have a free ride to the shelter, which provides a roof over their heads, mats to sleep on, dinner, breakfast and even a brown bag lunch to take with them when they get their free ride back to the beach in the morning. Once again it appears the city has been able to solve their problem.

In fact, this reminds me of my sixth-grade summer after graduating from El Morro Elementary School. I would get up in the morning, have breakfast and pack my lunch for the day.

Then, because I lived in the canyon, I would take the bus into town and go to the beach for the day. After a wonderful time hanging out with friends and getting into whatever mischief we could without getting into too much trouble, I would take the bus home, have dinner, go to sleep and then repeat. I had the perfect life! No responsibility, little to no accountability and, most of all, no desire or motivation to do anything else.

Does that sound a little familiar? It sounds a lot like the life we are being forced to provide for the homeless by the city!

However, summer never ends for the homeless, and we are facing an El Niño winter. The shelter has already been averaging 46 people a night and has a maximum capacity of 50.

The city has about 70 homeless residents and, according to Iseman, that number is increasing. Also, it has been reported by the Register that, “If it becomes too crowded, only people with local ties will be allowed to sleep there.”

I’m not a lawyer, but it seems to me that turning people away based on a lack of “local ties” to the area would break our agreement with the ACLU and add discrimination to their suit.

Maybe the city should look at their motivation.

First they wanted to avoid the pending lawsuit with the ACLU. Their chosen course of action was fear based and the result was negative. Then the people that the City Council are supposed to serve were irate because they were now in fear when they tried to enjoy the recreation areas that their tax dollars provide and maintain.

These are the same people who vote for the City Council members, causing them to act with fear again. It doesn’t take a fortune teller to see as far ahead as June 15, if not sooner because of weather etc., to know that this is going to have a negative ending.

Perhaps the City Council should take the approach of trying to act out of love, instead of fear, and see what kind of result that approach avails them.

Do the right thing for the right reason and see how that works for a change.

Ask not what they can do to save their own faces, ask what they can do to save their own souls. Seek a solution that will help the homeless help themselves. This reminds me of the old Chinese proverb: Give a man a fish and feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and feed him for a lifetime.

CAMERON HAMIL

Laguna Beach

Holidays are a time to help others

It’s holiday time and we are suppose to think of other people.

It feels good to know our town is providing shelter for the homeless and what’s even better is the fact that hundreds of “lagunatics” in churches and other groups are helping to feed these people and manage our shelter.

If you can help, please do and celebrate these days knowing our town did the right thing.

ROGER CARTER

Laguna Beach